r
for the romantic hypothesis. There is a good deal of romance and
sentiment in the Sister's view of her work among the poor; but it is a
romance that nerves her to a certain grandeur of soul. A London
clergyman in whose district the black fever had broken out could get no
nurses among the panic-stricken neighbours. He telegraphed to a "Home,"
and next morning he found a ladylike girl on her knees on the floor of
the infected house, scrubbing, cleaning, putting the worn-out mother to
bed, hushing the children, nursing quietly and thoroughly as few nurses
could do. The fever was beaten, and the little heroine went off at the
call of another telegram to charge another battery of death. It is this
chivalrous poetic side that atones for the many follies of Sisterhoods;
for the pauperism they introduce among the poor, the cliqueism of their
inner life, the absurdities of their "holy obedience." Each of these
charitable agencies in fact has its work to do, and does it in its own
way. On paper there can be no doubt that the Sister of Mercy is the more
attractive figure of the three. The incumbent of a heavy parish will
probably turn with a smile to the more methodical labours of the
Deaconess. But those who shrink alike from the idealism of one and the
system of the other, who feel that the poor are neither angels nor
wheels in a machine, and that the chief work to be done among them is
the diffusion of kindly feeling and the drawing of class nearer to
class, will probably prefer to either the old-fashioned District
Visitor.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF OXFORD.

To most Oxford men, indeed to the common visitor of Oxford, the town
seems a mere offshoot of the University. Its appearance is altogether
modern; it presents hardly any monument that can vie in antiquity with
the venerable fronts of colleges and halls. An isolated church here and
there tells a different tale; but the largest of its parish churches is
best known as the church of the University, and the church of St.
Frideswide, which might suggest even to a careless observer some idea of
the town's greatness before University life began, is known to most
visitors simply as Christchurch Chapel. In all outer seeming Oxford
appears a mere assemblage of indifferent streets that have grown out of
the needs of the University, and this impression is heightened by its
commercial unimportance. The town has no manufacture or trade. It is not
even, like Cambridge, a great agri