308 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



in her way. If not, the time will come when, either as a 

 young married woman whose husband's duties keep him 

 absent during most of the day, or as one whom accident 

 or choice has withheld from marriage, she will feel that 

 desauvrement which drives so many women into frivolity 

 and folly, and sinks many more into ill-health and fretful 

 misery. 



Tennyson bade Lady Clara Vere de Vere employ, in 

 what is now called philanthropy, the hours which might 

 drag wearily with her if she desisted from playing with 

 hearts. He recognised the fact that women who through 

 no fault of their own, be it remembered are born to no 

 very distinct duties, must have some occupation to fill 

 their minds and lives, or they will infallibly take to some 

 form of mischief. No doubt it is a gain that so much 

 should now be almost universally acknowledged. The 

 question of finding wise and fruitful work for the many 

 women, married or single, who have time and heart and 

 brain insufficiently occupied, still remains, whether we 

 like it or not, one of the burning questions of the day. 

 But the experience of the last twenty years has shown I 

 think, beyond dispute that the late Laureate's solution of 

 the difficulty is not a satisfactory one. Far be it from me 

 to cast discredit on the noble work which has been done, 

 and is still being done, among the poor of London and 

 other great cities; but in the opinion of all who have 

 thought on the subject, and, still more, of those who have 

 had practical experience of it, there is no channel from 

 which the activity of amateurs should be more carefully 

 diverted. The long apprenticeship, the severe application, 

 the entire self-devotion, to the exclusion of other occupa- 

 tions, which distinguish the professional from the amateur, 

 should be required before people are allowed to deal 

 with burning social questions, to tamper with the lives 

 of others, to risk pauperising individuals by indis- 



