rasping they get for it all by
a hard squeeze in the press at the end of every week, to keep them from
forgetting their own discomforts or their neighbours' ills, for
Parliament being dispersed in vacation, there is the fourth estate to
legislate by public acclaim.

Most remarkable it is, and commendable, and a feature only a few years
old, that the principal morning and evening papers should take up one
after another of philanthropic institutions, and even of individual
cases, and advocate them vigorously, while they spare no wrong from
censure, and freely discuss remedies, which are much harder to talk of
than any wrongs. Philanthropy is made popular by the press, and many a
good worker is cheered by this powerful help. Blessings on their type!

But on the other hand, lest we should subside into doing good, hoping
better, and making the best of things in a practical way, the whole has
to be reviewed at the end of each week by a hard hebdomadal board, on
which a dozen clear thinkers sit aside and criticise all the rest of us.
Perhaps it is a part of the irreverence of our times that one should
gradually lose awe in the presence of this weekly printed wisdom. Or is
it that experience finds types are just as fallible as tongues for
telling truth, and that years give us hardiness even in the presence of
that most mighty, wise, and impudent of all earthworms,--man, that judges
the very God of Heaven.

However, the brilliancy of these critics flares out and attracts, and it
ought to attract, though it need not dazzle, even if it be the brilliancy
of the electric light, warming as little, and darkening one side as much.
Their thoughts reach thousands, and without the answers: thus to
thousands they are judgments, not arguments. It is a tremendous
responsibility to wield such powers, and perhaps it is not felt by a
corporate body as each one of them would acknowledge for himself.

It is a good sign of them, or of the age, that they should yield to man's
innate love of continuous detraction?

Is not their own shibboleth the hardest of all, the most shifting, the
most inaudibly pronounced by themselves, if it be not a universal "No,"
and yet the most rigorously insisted upon? Is there not a "cant" of the
vague and complacent denial, quite as bad as that of the too positive and
assumed belief? Will it cure the weakness of the milk-and-water they
complain of to pour in mustard and vinegar? and would not any one man,
w