Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine for November, 1862.

In the Convocation of Canterbury for this year of 1862, the readers of such journals as report in full the sayings and doings of that not very interesting assembly, were surprised to find the subject of Protestant Sisterhoods, or Deaconesses, discussed with an unanimity of feeling almost unique in the annals of ecclesiastic parliaments. High Churchmen and Low, Broad Churchmen and Hard, all seemed agreed that there was good work for women to do, and which women were doing all over England; and that it was extremely desirable that all these lady guerillas of philanthropy should be enrolled in the regular disciplined army of the Church, together with as many new recruits as might be enlisted. To use a more appropriate simile, Mother Church expressed herself satisfied at her daughters “coming out,” but considered that her chaperonage was decidedly necessary to their decorum.

Again, at the Social Science Congress of this summer, in London, the employment of women, the education of women, and all the other rights and wrongs of women, were urged, if not with a unanimity equal to that of their reverend predecessors, yet with, at the very least, equal animation.