ave abundant leisure, which can in no way be so properly or so
pleasantly filled up, as in making themselves intimately acquainted with
the worth and the wants of all within their reach. With their wants,
because it is their bounden duty to administer to them; with their
worth, because without this knowledge, they can not administer prudently
and appropriately."

I expressed to Mrs. Stanley the delight with which I had heard of the
admirable regulations of her family, in the management of the poor, and
how much their power of doing good was said to be enlarged by the
judgment and discrimination with which it was done.

"We are far from thinking," replied she, "that our charity should be
limited to our own immediate neighborhood. We are of opinion, that it
should not be left undone anywhere, but that _there_ it should be done
indispensably. We consider our own parish as our more appropriate field
of action, where providence, by 'fixing the bounds of our habitation,'
seems to have made us peculiarly responsible for the comfort of those
whom he has doubtless placed around us for that purpose. It is thus that
the Almighty vindicates his justice, or rather calls on us to vindicate
it. It is thus he explains why he admits natural evil into the world, by
making the wants of one part of the community an exercise for the
compassion of the other. As in different circumstances, the faults of
one part of mankind are an exercise for the forbearance of the other.

"Surely," added Mrs. Stanley, "the reason is particularly obvious, why
the bounty of the affluent ought to be most liberally, though not
exclusively, extended to the spot whence they derive their revenues.
There seems indeed to be a double motive for it. The same act involves a
duty both to God and man. The largest bounty to the necessitous on our
estates, is rather justice than charity. 'Tis but a kind of pepper-corn
acknowledgment to the great Lord and proprietor of all, from whom we
hold them. And to assist their own laboring poor is a kind of natural
debt, which persons who possess great landed property owe to those from
the sweat of whose brow they derive their comforts, and even their
riches. 'Tis a commutation, in which, as the advantage is greatly on our
side, so is our duty to diminish the difference a paramount obligation."

I then repeated my request, that I might be allowed to take a practical
lesson in the next periodical visit to the cottages.

Mrs. Stanle