icient; nor is
there much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also give
them those conditions under which culture can be realized. In these
cold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using the
word in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture,
not in books.

Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognize that Mary Carpenter gave
to the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. In
early life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness of
being a wife and a mother; but later she became content that her
affection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse in
the prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne,'
seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, she
rather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the best
public work. 'It is quite striking,' she says in one of her letters, 'to
observe how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed of
late years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, have
quite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb all
their powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them by
God, and want no more.' The whole passage is extremely interesting, and
the phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one of
Charles Lamb.

_Mrs. Somerville_ and _Mary Carpenter_. By Phyllis Browne, Author of
_What Girls Can Do_, _etc._ (Cassell and Co.)

ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 16, 1887.)

In society, says Mr. Mahaffy, every civilized man and woman ought to feel
it their duty to say something, even when there is hardly anything to be
said, and, in order to encourage this delightful art of brilliant
chatter, he has published a social guide without which no _debutante_ or
dandy should ever dream of going out to dine. Not that Mr. Mahaffy's
book can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular. In discussing
this important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed the
scientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he has
adopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible.
There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration,
and the reader is left to put the Professor's abstract rules into
practice, without either the examples or the warnings of history to
en