Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays
by
Charles Kingsley
Part 4 out of 4
The more the merrier; but the fewer the better fare -
cannot be expected to lend their aid in increasing the population
by saving the lives of two-thirds of the children who now die
prematurely in our great cities; and so still further overcrowding
this unhappy land with those helpless and expensive sources of
national poverty--rational human beings, in strength and health.
Moreover--and this point is worthy of serious attention--that
school of political economy, which has now reached its full
development, has taken all along a view of man's relation to
Nature diametrically opposite to that taken by the Sanitary
Reformer, or indeed by any other men of science. The Sanitary
Reformer holds, in common with the chemist or the engineer, that
Nature is to be obeyed only in order to conquer her; that man is
to discover the laws of her existing phenomena, in order that he
may employ them to create new phenomena himself; to turn the laws
which he discovers to his own use; if need be, to counteract one
by another. In this power, it has seemed to them, lay his dignity
as a rational being. It was this, the power of invention, which
made him a progressive animal, not bound as the bird and the bee
are, to build exactly as his forefathers built five thousand years
ago.
By political economy alone has this faculty been denied to man.
In it alone he is not to conquer nature, but simply to obey her.
Let her starve him, make him a slave, a bankrupt, or what not, he
must submit, as the savage does to the hail and the lightning.
"Laissez-faire," says the "Science du neant," the "Science de la
misere," as it has truly and bitterly been called; "Laissez-
faire." Analyse economic questions if you will: but beyond
analysis you shall not step. Any attempt to raise political
economy to its synthetic stage is to break the laws of nature, to
fight against facts--as if facts were not made to be fought
against and conquered, and put out of the way, whensoever they
interfere in the least with the welfare of any human being. The
drowning man is not to strike out for his life lest by keeping his
head above water he interfere with the laws of gravitation. Not
that the political economist, or any man, can be true to his own
fallacy. He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method
though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only
deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly
enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered the
head of a dehumanised pedant--namely, that once famous "Preventive
Check," which, if a nation did ever apply it--as it never will--
could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the
questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural
crime.
The only explanation of such conduct (though one which the men
themselves will hardly accept) is this--that they secretly share
somewhat in the doubt which many educated men have of the
correctness of their inductions; that these same laws of political
economy (where they leave the plain and safe subject-matter of
trade) have been arrived at somewhat too hastily; that they are,
in plain English, not quite sound enough yet to build upon; and
that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin any
theories. Be it so. At least, these men, in their present temper
of mind, are not likely to be very useful to the Sanitary
Reformer.
Would that these men, or the clergy, had been the only bruised
reed in which the Sanitary Reformers put their trust. They found
another reed, however, and that was Public Opinion; but they
forgot that (whatever the stump-orators may say about this being
the age of electric thought, when truth flashes triumphant from
pole to pole, etc.) we have no proof whatsoever that the
proportion of fools is less in this generation than in those
before it, or that truth, when unpalatable (as it almost always
is), travels any faster than it did five hundred years ago. They
forgot that every social improvement, and most mechanical ones,
have had to make their way against laziness, ignorance, envy,
vested wrongs, vested superstitions, and the whole vis inertiae of
the world, the flesh, and the devil. They were guilty indeed, in
this case, not merely of ignorance of human nature, but of
forgetfulness of fact. Did they not know that the excellent New
Poor-law was greeted with the curses of those very farmers and
squires who now not only carry it out lovingly and willingly to
the very letter, but are often too ready to resist any improvement
or relaxation in it which may be proposed by that very Poor-law
Board from which it emanated? Did they not know that Agricultural
Science, though of sixty years' steady growth, has not yet
penetrated into a third of the farms of England; and that hundreds
of farmers still dawdle on after the fashion of their forefathers,
when by looking over the next hedge into their neighbour's field
they might double their produce and their profits? Did they not
know that the adaptation of steam to machinery would have
progressed just as slowly, had it not been a fact patent to babies
that an engine is stronger than a horse; and that if cotton, like
wheat and beef, had taken twelve months to manufacture, instead of
five minutes, Manchester foresight would probably have been as
short and as purblind as that of the British farmer? What right
had they to expect a better reception for the facts of Sanitary
Science?--facts which ought to, and ultimately will, disturb the
vested interests of thousands, will put them to inconvenience,
possibly at first to great expense; and yet facts which you can
neither see nor handle, but must accept and pay hundreds of
thousands of pounds for, on the mere word of a doctor or inspector
who gets his living thereby. Poor John Bull! To expect that you
would accept such a gospel cheerfully was indeed to expect too
much!
But yet, though the public opinion of the mass could not be
depended on, there was a body left, distinct from the mass, and
priding itself so much on that distinctness that it was ready to
say at times--of course in more courteous--at least in what it
considered more Scriptural language: "This people which knoweth
not the law is accursed." To it therefore--to the religious
world--some over-sanguine Sanitary Reformers turned their eyes.
They saw in it ready organised (so it professed) for all good
works, a body such as the world had never seen before. Where the
religions public of Byzantium, Alexandria, or Rome numbered
hundreds, that of England numbered its thousands. It was divided,
indeed, on minor points, but it was surely united by the one aim
of saving every man his own soul, and of professing the deepest
reverence for that Divine Book which tells men that the way to
attain that aim is, to be good and to do good; and which contains
among other commandments this one--"Thou shaft not kill." Its
wealth was enormous. It possessed so much political power, that
it would have been able to command elections, to compel ministers,
to encourage the weak hearts of willing but fearful clergymen by
fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no
clique of unpractical fanatics--no men less. Though it might
number among them a few martinet ex-post-captains, and noblemen of
questionable sanity, capable of no more practical study than that
of unfulfilled prophecy, the vast majority of them were
landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full
of worldly experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled
all their lives in finding and in employing men and money. What
might not be hoped from such a body, to whom that commercial
imperium in imperio of the French Protestants which the edict of
Nantes destroyed was poor and weak? Add to this that these men's
charities were boundless; that they were spending yearly, and on
the whole spending wisely and well, ten times as much as ever was
spent before in the world, on educational schemes, missionary
schemes, church building, reformatories, ragged schools,
needlewomen's charities--what not? No object of distress, it
seemed, could be discovered, no fresh means of doing good devised,
but these men's money poured bountifully and at once into that
fresh channel, and an organisation sprang up for the employment of
that money, as thrifty and as handy as was to be expected from the
money-holding classes of this great commercial nation.
What could not these men do? What were they not bound by their
own principles to do? No wonder that some weak men's hearts beat
high at the thought. What if the religious world should take up
the cause of Sanitary Reform? What if they should hail with joy a
cause in which all, whatever their theological differences, might
join in one sacred crusade against dirt, degradation, disease, and
death? What if they should rise at the hustings to inquire of
every candidate: "Will you or will you not, pledge yourself to
carry out Sanitary Reform in the place for which you are elected,
and let the health and the lives of the local poor be that 'local
interest' which you are bound by your election to defend? Do you
confess your ignorance of the subject? Then know, sir, that you
are unfit, at this point of the nineteenth century, to be a member
of the British Senate. You go thither to make laws 'for the
preservation of life and property.' You confess yourself ignorant
of those physical laws, stronger and wider than any which you can
make, upon which all human life depends, by infringing which the
whole property of a district is depreciated." Again, what might
not the "religious world," and the public opinion of "professing
Christians," have done in the last twenty--ay, in the last three
years?
What it has done, is too patent to need comment here.
The reasons of so strange an anomaly are to be approached with
caution. It is a serious thing to impute motives to a vast body
of men, of whom the majority are really respectable, kind-hearted,
and useful; and if in giving one's deliberate opinion one seems to
blame them, let it be recollected that the blame lies not so much
on them as on their teachers: on those who, for some reasons best
known to themselves, have truckled to, and even justified, the
self-satisfied ignorance of a comfortable moneyed class.
But let it be said, and said boldly, that these men's conduct in
the matter of Sanitary Reform seems at least to show that they
value virtue, not for itself, but for its future rewards. To the
great majority of these men (with some heroic exceptions, whose
names may be written in no subscription list, but are surely
written in the book of life) the great truth has never been
revealed, that good is the one thing to be done, at all risks, for
its own sake; that good is absolutely and infinitely better than
evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of them:
"Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to
heaven?"--they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting
you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the
new and startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of
an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is
not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part
thereof, that which they keep for Sundays and for charitable
institutions, is too often mercenary, though they know it not.
Their religion is too often one of "Loss and Gain," as much as
Father Newman's own; and their actions, whether they shall call
them "good works" or "fruits of faith," are so much spiritual
capital, to be repaid with interest at the last day.
Therefore, like all religionists, they are most anxious for those
schemes of good which seem most profitable to themselves and to
the denomination to which they belong; and the best of all such
works is, of course, as with all religionists, the making of
proselytes. They really care for the bodies, but still they care
more for the souls, of those whom they assist--and not wrongly
either, were it not that to care for a man's soul usually means,
in the religious world, to make him think with you; at least to
lay him under such obligations as to give you spiritual power over
him. Therefore it is that all religious charities in England are
more and more conducted, just as much as those of Jesuits and
Oratorians, with an ulterior view of proselytism; therefore it is
that the religious world, though it has invented, perhaps, no new
method of doing good; though it has been indebted for educational
movements, prison visitations, infant schools, ragged schools, and
so forth, to Quakers, cobblers, even in some cases to men whom
they call infidels, have gladly adopted each and every one of
them, as fresh means of enlarging the influence or the numbers of
their own denominations, and of baiting for the body in order to
catch the soul. A fair sample of too much of their labour may be
seen anywhere, in those tracts in which the prettiest stories,
with the prettiest binding and pictures, on the most secular--
even, sometimes, scientific--of subjects, end by a few words of
pious exhortation, inserted by a different hand from that which
indites the "carnal" mass of the book. They did not invent the
science, or the art of story-telling, or the woodcutting, or the
plan of getting books up prettily--or, indeed, the notion of
instructing the masses at all; but finding these things in the
hands of "the world," they have "spoiled the Egyptians," and fancy
themselves beating Satan with his own weapons.
If, indeed, these men claimed boldly all printing, all
woodcutting, all story-telling, all human arts and sciences, as
gifts from God Himself; and said, as the book which they quote so
often says: "The Spirit of God gives man understanding, these,
too, are His gifts, sacred, miraculous, to be accounted for to
Him," then they would be consistent; and then, too, they would
have learnt, perhaps, to claim Sanitary Science for a gift divine
as any other: but nothing, alas! is as yet further from their
creed. And therefore it is that Sanitary Reform finds so little
favour in their eyes. You have so little in it to show for your
work. You may think you have saved the lives of hundreds; but you
cannot put your finger on one of them: and they know you not;
know not even their own danger, much less your beneficence.
Therefore, you have no lien on them, not even that of gratitude;
you cannot say to a man: "I have prevented you having typhus,
therefore you must attend my chapel." No! Sanitary Reform makes
no proselytes. It cannot be used as a religious engine. It is
too simply human, too little a respecter of persons, too like to
the works of Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and the
good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is
good to the unthankful and to the evil, to find much favour in the
eyes of a generation which will compass sea and land to make one
proselyte.
Yes. Too like the works of our Father in heaven, as indeed all
truly natural and human science needs must be. True, to those who
believe that there is a Father in heaven, this would, one
supposes, be the highest recommendation. But how many of this
generation believe that? Is not their doctrine, the doctrine to
testify for which the religious world exists, the doctrine which
if you deny, you are met with one universal frown and snarl--that
man has no Father in heaven: but that if he becomes a member of
the religious world, by processes varying with each denomination,
he may--strange paradox--create a Father for himself?
But so it is. The religious world has lost the belief which even
the elder Greeks and Romans had, of a "Zeus, Father of gods and
men." Even that it has lost. Therefore have man and the simple
human needs of man, no sacredness in their eyes; therefore is
Nature to them no longer "the will of God exprest in facts," and
to break a law of nature no longer to sin against Him who "looked
on all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." And yet
they read their Bibles, and believe that they believe in Him who
stood by the lake-side in Galilee, and told men that not a sparrow
fell to the ground without their Father's knowledge--and that they
were of more value than many sparrows. Do those words now seem to
some so self-evident as to be needless? They will never seem so
to the Sanitary Reformer, who has called on the "British Public"
to exert themselves in saving the lives of thousands yearly; and
has received practical answers which will furnish many a bitter
jest for the Voltaire of the next so-called "age of unbelief," or
fill a sad, but an instructive chapter in some future enlarged
edition of Adelung's "History of Human Folly."
All but despairing, Sanitary Reformers have turned again and again
to her Majesty's Government. Alas for them! The Government was
ready and willing enough to help. The wicked world said: "Of
course. It will create a new department. It will give them more
places to bestow." But the real reason of the willingness of
Government seems to be that those who compose it are thoroughly
awake to the importance of the subject.
But what can a poor Government do, whose strength consists (as
that of all English Governments must) in not seeming too strong;
which is allowed to do anything, only on condition of doing the
minimum? Of course, a Government is morally bound to keep itself
in existence; for is it not bound to believe that it can govern
the country better than any other knot of men? But its only
chance of self-preservation is to know, with Hesiod's wise man,
"how much better the half is than the whole," and to throw over
many a measure which it would like to carry, for the sake of
saving the few which it can carry.
An English Government, nowadays, is simply at the mercy of the
forty or fifty members of the House of Commons who are crotchety
enough or dishonest enough to put it unexpectedly in a minority;
and they, with the vast majority of the House, are becoming more
and more the delegates of that very class which is most opposed to
Sanitary Reform. The honourable member goes to Parliament not to
express his opinions, (for he has stated most distinctly at the
last election that he has no opinions whatsoever), but to protect
the local interests of his constituents. And the great majority
of those constituents are small houseowners--the poorer portion of
the middle class. Were he to support Government in anything like
a sweeping measure of Sanitary Reform, woe to his seat at the next
election; and he knows it; and therefore, even if he allow the
Government to have its Central Board of Health, he will take good
care, for his own sake, that the said Board shall not do too much,
and that it shall not compel his constituents to do anything at
all.
No wonder, that while the attitude of the House of Commons is such
toward a matter which involves the lives of thousands yearly, some
educated men should be crying that Representative institutions are
on their trial, and should sigh for a strong despotism.
There is an answer, nevertheless, to such sentimentalists, and one
hopes that people will see the answer for themselves, and that the
infection of Imperialism, which seems spreading somewhat rapidly,
will be stopped by common sense and honest observation of facts.
A despotism doubtless could carry out Sanitary Reform: but
doubtless, also, it would not.
A despot in the nineteenth century knows well how insecure his
tenure is. His motto must be, "Let us eat and drink, for to-
morrow we die;" and, therefore, the first objects of his rule will
be, private luxury and a standing army; while if he engage in
public works, for the sake of keeping the populace quiet, they
will be certain not to be such as will embroil him with the middle
classes, while they will win him no additional favour with the
masses, utterly unaware of their necessity. Would the masses of
Paris have thanked Louis Napoleon the more if, instead of
completing the Tuileries, he had sewered the St. Antoine? All
arguments to the contrary are utterly fallacious, which are drawn
from ancient despotisms, Roman, Eastern, Peruvian, or other; and
for this simple reason, that they had no middle class. If they
did work well (which is a question) it was just because they had
no middle class--that class, which in a free State is the very
life of a nation, and yet which, in a despotism, is sure to be the
root of its rottenness. For a despot who finds, as Louis Napoleon
has done, a strong middle class already existing, must treat it as
he does; he must truckle to it, pander to its basest propensities,
seem to make himself its tool, in order that he may make it his.
For the sake of his own life, he must do it; and were a despot to
govern England tomorrow, we should see that the man who was shrewd
enough to have climbed to that bad eminence, would be shrewd
enough to know that he could scarcely commit a more suicidal act
than, by some despotic measure of Sanitary Reform, to excite the
ill-will of all the most covetous, the most stupid, and the most
stubborn men in every town of England.
There is another answer, too, to "Imperialists" who talk of
Representative institutions being on their trial, and let it be
made boldly just now.
It will be time to talk of Representative institutions being good
or bad, when the people of England are properly represented.
In the first place, it does seem only fair that the class who
suffer most from epidemics should have some little share in the
appointment of the men on whose votes extermination of epidemics
now mainly depends. But that is too large a question to argue
here. Let the Government see to it in the coming session.
Yet how much soever, or how little soever, the suffrage be
extended in the direction of the working man, let it be extended,
at least in some equal degree, in the direction of the educated
man. Few bodies in England now express the opinions of educated
men less than does the present House of Commons. It is not chosen
by educated men, any more than it is by proletaires. It is not,
on an average, composed of educated men; and the many educated men
who are in it have, for the most part, to keep their knowledge
very much to themselves, for fear of hurting the feelings of "ten-
pound Jack," or of the local attorney who looks after Jack's vote.
And therefore the House of Commons does not represent public
opinion.
For, to enounce with fitting clearness a great but much-forgotten
truth, To have an opinion, you must have an opinion.
Strange: but true, and pregnant too. For, from it may be deduced
this corollary, that nine-tenths of what is called Public Opinion
is no opinion at all; for, on the matters which come under the
cognizance of the House of Commons (save where superstition, as in
the case of the Sabbath, or the Jew Bill, sets folks thinking--
generally on the wrong side), nine people out of ten have no
opinion at all; know nothing about the matter, and care less;
wherefore, having no opinions to be represented, it is not
important whether that nothing be represented or not.
The true public opinion of England is composed of the opinions of
the shrewd, honest, practical men in her, whether educated or not;
and of such, thank God, there are millions: but it consists also
of the opinions of the educated men in her; men who have had
leisure and opportunity for study; who have some chance of knowing
the future, because they have examined the past; who can compare
England with other nations; English creeds, laws, customs, with
those of the rest of mankind; who know somewhat of humanity, human
progress, human existence; who have been practised in the
processes of thought; and who, from study, have formed definite
opinions, differing doubtless in infinite variety, but still all
founded upon facts, by something like fair and scientific
induction.
Till we have this class of men fairly represented in the House of
Commons, there is little hope for Sanitary Reform: when it is so
represented, we shall have no reason to talk of Representative
institutions being on their trial.
And it is one of the few hopeful features of the present time,
that an attempt is at last being made to secure for educated men
of all professions a fair territorial representation. A memorial
to the Government has been presented, appended to which, in very
great numbers, are the names of men of note, of all ranks, all
shades in politics and religion, all professions--legal, clerical,
military, medical, and literary. A list of names representing so
much intellect, so much learning, so much acknowledged moderation,
so much good work already done and acknowledged by the country,
has never, perhaps, been collected for any political purpose; and
if their scheme (the details of which are not yet made public)
should in anywise succeed, it will do more for the prospects of
Sanitary Reform than any forward movement of the quarter of a
century.
For if Sanitary Reform, or perhaps any really progressive measure,
is to be carried out henceforth, we must go back to something like
the old principle of the English constitution, by which intellect,
as such, had its proper share in the public councils. During
those middle ages when all the intellect and learning was
practically possessed by the clergy, they constituted a separate
estate of the realm. This was the old plan--the best which could
be then devised. After learning became common to the laity, the
educated classes were represented more and more only by such
clever young men as could be thrust into Parliament by the private
patronage of the aristocracy. Since the last Reform Bill, even
that supply of talent has been cut off; and the consequence has
been, the steady deterioration of our House of Commons toward such
a level of mediocrity as shall satisfy the ignorance of the
practically electing majority, namely, the tail of the middle
class; men who are apt to possess all the failings with few of the
virtues of those above them and below them; who have no more
intellectual training than the simple working man, and far less
than the average shopman, and who yet lose, under the influence of
a small competence, that practical training which gives to the
working man, made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry,
endurance, courage, and self-restraint; whose business morality is
made up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial
world, unbalanced by that public spirit, that political knowledge,
that practical energy, that respect for the good opinion of his
fellows, which elevate the large employer. On the hustings, of
course, this description of the average free and independent
elector would be called a calumny; and yet, where is the member of
Parliament who will not, in his study, assent to its truth, and
confess, that of all men whom he meets, those who least command
his respect are those among his constituents to secure whom he
takes most trouble; unless, indeed, it be the pettifoggers who
manage his election for him?
Whether this is the class to whose public opinion the health and
lives of the masses are to be entrusted, is a question which
should be settled as soon as possible.
Meanwhile let every man who would awake to the importance of
Sanitary questions, do his best to teach and preach, in season and
out of season, and to instruct, as far as he can, that public
opinion which is as yet but public ignorance. Let him throw, for
instance, what weight he has into the "National Association for
the Advancement of Social Science." In it he will learn, as well
as teach, not only on Sanitary Reforms, but upon those cognate
questions which must be considered with it, if it is ever to be
carried out.
Indeed, this new "National Association" seems the most hopeful and
practical move yet made by the sanitarists. It may be laughed at
somewhat at first, as the British Association was; but the world
will find after a while that, like the British Association, it can
do great things towards moulding public opinion, and compel men to
consider certain subjects, simply by accustoming people to hear
them mentioned. The Association will not have existed in vain, if
it only removes that dull fear and suspicion with which Englishmen
are apt to regard a new subject, simply because it is new. But
the Association will do far more than that. It has wisely not
confined itself to any one branch of Social Science, but taken the
subject in all its complexity. To do otherwise would have been to
cripple itself. It would have shut out many subjects--Law Reform,
for instance--which are necessary adjuncts to any Sanitary scheme;
while it would have shut out that very large class of benevolent
people who have as yet been devoting their energies to prisons,
workhouses, and schools. Such will now have an opportunity of
learning that they have been treating the symptoms of social
disease rather than the disease itself. They will see that vice
is rather the effect than the cause of physical misery, and that
the surest mode of attacking it is to improve the physical
conditions of the lower classes; to abolish foul air, fouled
water, foul lodging, and overcrowded dwellings, in which morality
is difficult, and common decency impossible. They will not give
up--Heaven forbid that they should give up!--their special good
works; but they will surely throw the weight of their names, their
talents, their earnestness, into the great central object of
preserving human life, as soon as they shall have recognised that
prevention is better than cure; and that the simple and one method
of prevention is, to give the working man his rights. Water, air,
light. A right to these three at least he has. In demanding
them, he demands no more than God gives freely to the wild beast
of the forest. Till society has given him them, it does him an
injustice in demanding of him that he should be a useful member of
society. If he is expected to be a man, let him at least be put
on a level with the brutes. When the benevolent of the land (and
they may be numbered by tens of thousands) shall once have learnt
this plain and yet awful truth, a vast upward step will have been
gained. Because this new Association will teach it them, during
the next ten or twenty years, may God's blessing be on it, and, on
the noble old man who presides over it. Often already has he
deserved well of his country; but never better than now, when he
has lent his great name and great genius to the object of
preserving human life from wholesale destruction by unnecessary
poison.
And meanwhile let the Sanitary Reformer work and wait. "Go not
after the world," said a wise man, "for if thou stand still long
enough the world will come round to thee." And to Sanitary Reform
the world will come round at last. Grumbling, scoffing, cursing
its benefactors; boasting at last, as usual, that it discovered
for itself the very truths which it tried to silence, it will
come; and will be glad at last to accept the one sibylline leaf,
at the same price at which it might have had the whole. The
Sanitary Reformer must make up his mind to see no fruit of his
labours, much less thanks or reward. He must die in faith, as St.
Paul says all true men die, "not having received the promises;"
worn out, perhaps, by ill-paid and unappreciated labour, as that
truest-hearted and most unselfish of men, Charles Robert Walsh,
died but two years ago. But his works will follow him--not, as
the preachers tell us, to heaven--for of what use would they be
there, to him or to mankind?--but here, on earth, where he set
them, that they might go on in his path, after his example, and
prosper and triumph long years after he is dead, when his memory
shall be blessed by generations not merely "yet unborn," but who
never would have been born at all, had he not inculcated into
their unwilling fathers the simplest laws of physical health,
decency, life--laws which the wild cat of the wood, burying its
own excrement apart from its lair, has learnt by the light of
nature; but which neither nature nor God Himself can as yet teach
to a selfish, perverse, and hypocritical generation.
Footnotes:
{1} This lecture was one of a series of "Lectures to Ladies,"
given in London in 1855, at the Needlewoman's Institution.
{2} The substance of this Essay was a lecture on Physical
Education, given at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, in 1872.
{3} 9, Adam Street, Adelphi, London.
{4} A Lecture delivered at Winchester, May 31, 1869.
{5} Lecture delivered at Winchester, March 17, 1869.
{6} I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip
Stanhope Worsley, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
{7} Odyssey, book vi. 127-315; vol. i. pp. 143-150 of Mr.
Worsley's translation.
{8} Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted
to find that my wishes had been anticipated at Girton College,
near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was
removed: and that the wise ladies who superintend that
establishment propose also that most excellent institution--a
swimming-bath. A paper, moreover, read before the London
Association of School-mistresses in 1866, on "Physical Exercises
and Recreation for Girls," deserves all attention. May those who
promote such things prosper as they deserve.
{9} Lecture delivered at Bristol, October 5, 1857.
{10} This was spoken during the Indian Mutiny.
{11} Speech in behalf of Ladies' Sanitary Association. Delivered
at St. James's Hall, London, 1859.
{12} Fraser's Magazine, No. CCCXXXVII. 1858.
{13} We find a most honourable exception to this rule in a sermon
by the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the
Old Testament, with notes by Dr. Sutherland.
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