good stead in reclaiming the little waifs and strays to whom she afterwards devoted herself. Her motherliness comes out in a hundred ways in the story of her life. Her endless patience with the truant and naughty children was such as many a real mother might envy. She was especially proud of the title of "the old mother" which the Indian women, whom she visited towards the close of her life, gave her. In writing to a friend, she once said: "There is a verse in the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,' and the motherly love of my heart has been given to many who have never known before a mother's love." She adopted a child in 1858 to be a daughter to her, and writes gleefully: "Just think of me with a little girl of my own about five years old, readymade to my hand, without the trouble of marrying—a darling little thing, an orphan," etc. etc. Her friends spoke of her eager delight in buying the baby's outfit. It was her motherliness that made her so successful with the children in the reformatories and industrial schools; moreover, the children believed in her love for them. One little ragged urchin told a clergyman that Miss Carpenter was a lady who gave away all her money for naughty boys, and only kept enough to make herself clean and decent. On one occasion she heard that two of her ex-pupils had "got into trouble," and were in prison at Winchester. She quickly found an opportunity of visiting them, and one of them exclaimed, directly he saw her, "Oh! Miss Carpenter, I knew you would not desert us!" Another secret of her power, and also of her elasticity of spirit, was her sense of humour. It was like a silver thread running through her laborious life, saving her from dulness and despondency. In one of her reports, which has to record the return of a runaway, she said: “He came back resembling the prodigal in everything except his repentance!" The motto which she especially made her own was Dum doceo disco-While I teach, I learn. Her father had a school for boys in Bristol, and Mary and her sister were educated in it. They were among the best of their father's pupils, one of whom, the Rev. James Martineau, has left a record of the great impression Mary's learning made upon him. She was indeed very proficient in many branches of knowledge. Her education included Latin, Greek, mathematics, and natural history; and the exactness which her father and the nature of her studies demanded of her, formed a most invaluable training for her after career. For many years the acquisition. of knowledge, for its own sake, was the chief joy of her life; but a time came when it ceased to satisfy her. She was rudely awakened from the delightful dreams of a student's life by a severe visitation of cholera at Bristol in 1832. From this period, and indeed from a special day-that set apart as a fast-day in consequence of the cholera-dates a solemn dedication of herself to the service of her fellow-creatures. She wrote in her journal 31st March 1832, what her resolution was, and concluded: "These things I have written to be a witness against me, if ever I should forget what ought to be the object of all my active exertions in life." These solemn self-dedications are seldom or never spoken of by those who make them. Records of them are found sometimes in journals long after the hand that has written them is cold. But, either written or unwritten, they are probably the rule rather than the exception on the part of those who devote themselves to the good of others. world has recently learned that this was the case with Lord Shaftesbury. There is a time when the knight-errant consciously enrols himself a member of the noble band of warriors against wrong and oppression, and takes upon himself his baptismal vow-manfully to fight against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant to his life's end. The It must be remembered that when Mary Carpenter first began to exert herself for the benefit of neglected children, there were no reformatory or industrial schools, except those which had been established by the voluntary efforts of philanthropists like herself. Aided by a band of fellowworkers and wise advisers, chief of whom were Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, and his daughters; Dr. Tuckerman, of the U.S.A.; Mr. Russell Scott, of Bath; Mr. Sheriff Watson, of Aberdeen; and Lady Byron, Mary Carpenter set to work to establish a voluntary reformatory school at Kingswood, near Bristol. Her principle was that by surrounding children, who would otherwise be criminals, with all the influences of a wholesome home life, there was a better chance than by any other course, of reclaiming these children, and making them useful members of society. To herd children together in large, unhomelike institutions, was always, in Mary Carpenter's view, undesirable; the effect on character is. bad; the more perfectly such places are managed, the more nearly do the children in them become part of a huge machine, and the less are their faculties, as responsible human beings, developed. Over and over again, in books, in addresses, and by the example of the institutions which she managed herself, Mary Carpenter reiterated the lesson. that if a child is to be rescued and reformed, he must be placed in a family; and that where it is necessary, for the good of society, to separate children on account of their own viciousness, or that of their parents, from their own homes, the institutions receiving them should be based on the family ideal so far as possible. With this end in view, the children at Kingswood were surrounded by as many home influences as possible. Miss Carpenter at one time thought of living there herself, but this scheme was given up, in deference to her mother's wishes. She was, however, a constant visitor, and a little room, which had once been John Wesley's study, was fitted up as a resting-place for her. On a pane of one of the windows of this room her predecessor had written the words, "God is here." She taught the children herself, and provided them with rabbits, fowls, and pigs, the care of which she felt would exercise a humanising influence upon them. The whole discipline of the place was directed by her; one of her chief difficulties was to get a staff of assistants with sufficient faith in her methods to give them an honest trial. She did not believe in a physical force morality. "We must not attempt," she wrote, "to break the will, but to train it to govern itself wisely; and it must be our great aim to call out the good, which exists even in the most degraded, and make it conquer the bad." After a year's work at Kingswood in this spirit, she writes very hopefully of the improvement already visible in the sixteen boys and thirteen girls in her charge. The boys could be trusted to go into Bristol on messages, and even 66 thievish girls" could be sent out to shops with money, which they never thought of appropriating. But although the success of the institution was SO gratifying, it had no legal sanction; it had consequently no power to deal with runaways, and the great mass of juvenile delinquents were still sentenced to prisons, from which they emerged, like the man into whom seven devils entered, in a state far worse than their first. Mary Carpenter's work was not only to prove the success of her methods of dealing with young criminals, but, secondly, to convince the Government that the established system was a bad one, and thirdly, and most difficult of all, to get them to legislate on the subject. A long history of her efforts to obtain satisfactory legislation for children of the perishing and dangerous classes is given in her life, written by her nephew, Mr. J. Estlin Carpenter. It is enough here to say that in the House of Lords, Lord Shaftesbury, and in the House of Commons, Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Adderley (afterwards Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Norton), were her chief supporters. Mr. Lowe (now Lord Sherbrooke) was her chief opposer. Liberal as she was, born and bred, as well as by heart's conviction, she confessed with some feeling of shame, that the Tories "are best in this work.” At last, in 1854, her efforts were crowned with success, and the Royal Assent was given to the Youthful Offenders Bill, which authorised the establishment of reformatory schools, under the sanction of the Home Secretary. It is a striking proof of the change that has taken place in the sphere and social status of women, that Mary Carpenter, in the first half of her active life, suffered what can be called nothing less than anguish, from any effort which demanded from herself the least departure from absolute privacy. When she began her work of convincing the public and Parliament of the principles which ought to govern the education of juvenile criminals, her nephew writes that to have spoken at a conference in the presence of gentlemen, she would have felt, at that time (1851), as tantamount to unsexing herself. When she was called upon to give evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1852, her profound personal timidity made the occasion a painful ordeal to her, which she was only enabled to support by the consciousness of the needs of the children. Surely this excessive timidity arises from morbid self-consciousness, rather than from true womanly modesty. Mary Carpenter was enabled, by increasing absorption in her work, to throw it off, and for her work's sake she became able to speak in public with ease and selfpossession. She frequently spoke and read papers at the Social Science Congresses, and at meetings of the British Association. A letter from her brother Philip describes one of these occasions, at the meeting in 1860 of the British Association at Oxford, when her subject was, Educational Help from the Government Grant to the Destitute and Neglected Children of Great Britain." "July, 1860. "There was a great gathering of celebrities to hear her. It was in one of the ancient schools or lecture-halls, which was crowded, evidently not by the curious, but by those who really wanted to know what she had to say. She stood up ... and read in her usual clear voice and expressive enunciation. It was, I suppose, the first time a woman's voice had read a lecture there before dignitaries of learning and the Church; but as there was not the slightest affectation on the one hand, so on the other hand there was neither a scorn nor an etiquettish politeness; |