establishments in which women are not only the attendants, but the actual heads and governors. At Turin is a "Female Community," consisting of four hundred members, women of all ages, maintaining themselves by their united labour, and they are ruled by a superior elected from among themselves; they live in unity and peace under this controlling power, and have existed as a community for a century. Whatever the system may be, there must be great individual power and talent necessary to maintain such a government as this. The common school-girl training would hardly suffice here. The characters that could form and carry on these works will be made in spite of, rather than by, it, for merely benevolent impulses or sentimental charity are not equal to such demands. The difficulty in England will probably be found to be the necessity of obedience to rules and to a supreme power. Obedience implies confidence in, and reverence for, the power which claims it; a blind submission the best amongst us are not inclined to yield, and till women are duly trained to become the superintendents of others, and fitted for the special work they are to carry on, we cannot hope for success.
Looking forward into the future, we can picture to ourselves a Model Workhouse; but whether the vision will be realized in ten, twenty, or fifty years, we cannot say. Mrs. Jameson, in speaking of the progress of such matters in England, says,[1] "For about ten years, perhaps, the means of carrying it out may be considered and debated; in another ten years some plan will be proposed; and in another ten years perhaps adopted; for such is the usual progress of any great moral movement in ' that other public,' " whom we must influence.
We can but endeavour to hasten its advent by shewing the necessity of a change in the present system, not by exaggerating its defects, but by exhibiting its true working. At the head of such a workhouse should be a woman of education, judgment, and, above all, of religious devotion to her work; with a heart full of love for young and old, sick and poor, because they are a sacred charge committed to her care. And for this superintendence a woman would seem to be the fittest person, comprising as it does, the sick and aged, children, the outcast, and the fallen. But in the due adjustment of the "Communion of Labour" (from the forgetfulness of which law our errors hitherto have arisen), the lady superintendent (as she might be fitly called) must have the assistance of the other sex in her arduous labours. We might hope that to such a person gain would not be an object, therefore additional expense would not be incurred here;[2] but the
