twelve and a half cents an hour. Now, from these two facts it is plain that there is great want of good seamstresses, and abundant work and good pay when they are to be found. No class of workers, be they men or women, work at such extravagantly remunerative prices as good dressmakers, and this is because the supply of such workers is so insufficient. The remedy for want of work, and want of all the good which work brings, lies in the education of the hands; and no public school for girls should be supposed to do more than a small part of its duty if the hands are neglected. If the mind and manners are refined by studies of the highest order, so much greater is the danger of "the daughters of the people" who have their own living to earn. If hundreds have been driven by poverty to ruin, we are also told that many of them come from the numbers who have been so much educated in their intellect as to lose, or as never to have cultivated, the power and love of work with their hands. No woman who understands any branch of work required in a family ever needs to starve or be unhappy. Hundreds of happy homes would welcome them, and labor and refinement would unite to make life a daily blessing. The fields are white with the harvest, but it is women who must be the reapers. For, if they neglect these gardens which the Lord hath planted, who shall do the work there?

THE SCOTT CENTENNIAL.

E.

The Centennial Anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott was celebrated in many places on the 15th of August. Among the many notices called out by the occasion we have read nothing which more entirely accords with our views than an article in "The Nation," of Aug. 17, from which we are glad to copy large extracts into our columns.

"Scott is now somewhat faded, it is common to say; and undeniably it is true to say so. It was, of course, inevitable that such fame as his should fade. But it is as inevitable that no fading will ever deprive it wholly of its brightness, and that there will always be honor for this new creator of the art of story-telling, and affectionate esteem for this most manly of men. Unless we feel too

much of it, we of to-day can hardly feel at all our fathers' delighted and wondering admiration for this extraordinary genius. They had been reading dull romances, and he gave them, month after month, from his inexhaustible brain, stories which still, after we have listened to the countless multitude of the story-tellers whom he called into being, are a delight to old and young. They were absorbed in fierce discussions of fundamental problems of politics and of society itself, and he called them away and showed them, truly or falsely, truly and falsely, we may say, the beauty there was in the past which he so sincerely reverenced. And besides peopling the past for them with that wonderful throng of men and women, kings, captains, knights, churls and barons, priests, outlaws and statesmen, wizards, ghosts, lovers, - besides vivifying history for them, he educated their tastes also, and gave them higher views and a keener enjoyment both of nature and of art.

--

queens,

"It may be doubted if our children will not be paying him as much homage as we, and if nearly all of him that was perishable has not already fallen away, leaving him to stand as now for generations yet to come. The first poet of his time he will never be again. There may be, as there have been, disputes as to whether the divine gift was really his at all, and if his 'thumping metrical romances' merit the title of poems; but the boys, and the men, too, of 1971 will have better fortune than can well be hoped for them if, when next the great Scotchman's birthday is commemorated, they have found poetry more spirited, gallant, inspiriting, pictorial, honest, and human than they may read where Lord Marmion beards the Douglas, and rides across the quivering drawbridge; or King James joins battle with Surrey; or Roderic's men start from the heather, and vanish again at the black chieftain's signal; or day sets 'on Norham's castled steep and Tweed's fair river;' or the stag makes his midnight lair in lone Benvoirlich; or the luckless page sings the boding song to her betrayer as they ride towards Flodden Field. We may venture to predict that to love this poetry will still, a hundred years from now, be an education in manliness as surely and truly as to love the Lady Elizabeth Howards of that day will be a liberal education.

"And so, also, of the novels. There will, doubtless, be many a story-teller to help the many there have already been to draw away a portion of the public over which Scott once reigned sole sovereign. But where will it be that our posterity, in the last quarter of the coming century, will have found their better story-teller? Will

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it be some one whom we have with us now, or have had with us, who will be thought to have beaten the 'Antiquary'? Will 'Vanity Fair,' or 'Pickwick,' or 'Adam Bede,' be more read than Ivanhoe,' and 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian,' and 'The Bride of Lammermoor,' and 'Waverly,' and 'Old Mortality'? Will our grandchildren know Clive Newcome, and Becky Sharp, and Henry Esmond, and Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Squeers better, and be the better for knowing them better, than they will know Dugald Dalgetty, and Dirck Hatterick, and Dominie Sampson, and Jeanie Deans, and Meg Merriles, and Edie Ochiltree, and Monkbarns, and Rob Roy? Or will it be some novelist of their own? So far as we of to-aay can judge, whatever they find in Scott's successors, as known to us, great as several of them have been, they will not find a work or a set of works which can ever balance that wonderful series of volumes which have held the last three generations captive; they will not find what will supersede that wonderful series of 'Scotch novels.' That is their appropriate name, no doubt; for though Rebecca and Rowena and Count Robert and King Louis and Charles and Richard and Saladin and Leicester and poor Amy Robsart and Elizabeth are immortal in his pages, and though we watch with him the combat beside the Syrian fountain, or thread the streets of Paris, or climb mountain-passes of Switzerland, or wander with Wayland Smith through English lanes, or take water with Raleigh on the Thames; nevertheless, of all the wide lands which we visit with him, and of all the men and women that people them, it is in Scotland and among his own countrymen and countrywomen that he is immeasurably best. Not only physically, but in all ways, he was strongest when on the heather; and it can hardly be but that the distinctively Scotch novels, from the deep tragedy of 'The Bride of Lammermoor' and 'St. Ronan's well' to the racy comedy of 'The Antiquary,' will suffice to give him permanence so long as the main thing in a novel is truthful delineation of widely interesting characters and captivating story. The humor, the strong sense, wide observation, the perfect sincerity and kindness of heart, the almost universal tolerance and justice, the comprehensive sympathy, the hearty relish of the wholesome good of life, these qualities as shown in these books make it as certain as it is fortunate that they have in store for them a long immortality.

"It is, indeed, upon Scott's goodness as a man that a great part of the esteem in which he will be held as a poet and as a novelist Few men placed in a position of pre-eminence like will be based.

his have ever escaped with less of blame; and, of such blame as he has had to bear with, the world is now disposed to withdraw much. We smile a little at the exaggerated loyalty which bent him to his knees before the Prince Regent; we are sorry to smile when we hear of his reluctance that a baronet should be known to have written 'Waverly;' and we are sad when we think of Abbotsford, with its Gothic mansion, its piper and the pibroch, the baronial state and the lavish hospitality which brought the great genius in his age to a poverty not too honorable, and brought him, too, the fatal opportunity for that splendid exercise of courage and determination which broke his mind and body and ended his life. But we are all now beginning to remember the merciful saying, or rather the just saying, that every man has the faults of his virtues, and that the Scott who built Abbotsford for himself and others is the Scott who built for us the fabric of mediaval society. He had his piper to play before him at dinner; but what should we know of the wild Highlands had not the poet loved them and their ways, not only wisely and well, but too well also, and not with perfect wisdom?

A CORRECTION BY DR. GANNETT.

We are very sorry that the following communication from Dr. Gannett was not published in the last number of our magazine. We more and more honor the liberal views and comprehensive plans of those who were our leading men forty and fifty years ago.

BOSTON, July 3, 1871.

TO THE EDITOR of the RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE:

Dear Sir: In a notice of the last annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association in THE RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE for this

month, on pages seventy-eight and seventy-nine, the writer cites Mr. Hale as having said that the Association "originated as a publishing body," and afterwards speaks himself of its having been “started with a limited purpose." As these statements are suited to convey a wrong impression, will you allow one who was familiar with the early history of the Association to correct them? The American Unitarian Association at its commencement announced, in the second article of its constitution, that its "objects shall be to diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests of pure Christianity throughout our country." Neither in this, nor in any other article, is there the least restriction in regard to the methods which might be used for securing those ends; and no indication of meth

ods was given, because it was the wish of the founders of the Association that they by whom its affairs might be managed should be at liberty to adopt every form of action that should seem feasible and judicious. One of the first attempts of the committee, of course, was to supply the want of cheap and sound religious tracts, and the publication of such tracts was continued from year to year, because they were in the direct line of the purpose of the Association; but they were not regarded as more than a partial expression of that purpose, and from the first other measures were brought into use, as, for example, the holding of public meetings, and the conducting of a somewhat wide correspondence. Indeed, what clearer proof could be furnished that in its original design the Association embraced the largest possible range of action than the fact that its present operations have required for their initiation or prosecution no change in the language which described its original objects?

It is but justice to those who are no longer here, to recognize the breadth of their purpose, however imperfectly it may have been realized in the measures which they were able to institute.

MR. JOHN PRENTISS.

G.

We publish with pleasure the following communication from the oldest patriarch of all among Unitarian, or indeed American, publishers:

Dear Sir: In THE RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE, for July, the proprietor, Mr. Bowles, has given some interesting reminiscences of a Unitarian publisher, he having been complimented on a late occasion as "the patriarch of the Unitarian publishers." Mr. Bowles says, "That year [1829] I bought of Mr. John Prentiss, of Keene, 'The Liberal Preacher,' and paid six hundred dollars for the subscription list."

Will you permit me to say that one object of getting up "The Liberal Preacher" was for Mr. Sullivan's benefit, as with a growing family I much feared his salary would not meet his expenses. I published it for several years, deducting from its income barely the expense of printing and distributing the work, paying over to some seven or eight hundred dollars. him yearly all the profits, The six hundred dollars for the subscription list was a contract between the firm of Bowles & Dearborn and Mr. Sullivan, he receiving, with my full consent, all the avails.

J. P.