Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine, December, 1862.

Whatever else may be doubtful respecting woman's “general worth and particular missionariness,” it is pretty well conceded that she is in her right place teaching the young, reclaiming the sinful, relieving the poor, and nursing the sick. Her pursuit of the True and the Beautiful in literature, science, and art, may be (however unjustly) derided as a failure or denounced as an invasion of fields which she can never adequately cultivate; but her pursuit of the Good, her efforts to ameliorate and brighten human life, have never been repudiated, and are daily more warmly recognised. Also, on the part of women themselves, there is a tendency, in nine out of ten, to choose one or other line of benevolent action, rather than any path of science, art, or learning. They love the beautiful, they distantly reverence the true; but a class of little children is better to them than a picture, and the recovery of a sick patient more interesting than the solution of a problem. Of the three great equal revelations of the Infinite One, the Good is open to all women at all times, the True and the Beautiful only exceptionally and by special grace. Of this pursuit, then, of the Good—or, in other words, of woman's philanthropy generally—we purpose to write a few pages, and notably of the prospects of such work in England at this time.