"I assure you," said Mrs. Stanley, "you over-rate her. Lucilla is no prodigy dropped down from the clouds. Ten thousand other young women, with natural good sense, and good temper, might, with the same education, the same neglect of what is useless, and the same attention to what is necessary, acquire the same habits and the same principles. Her being no prodigy, however, perhaps makes her example, as far as it goes, more important. She may be more useful, because she carries not that discouraging superiority, which others might be deterred from imitating, through hopelessness to reach. If she is not a miracle whom others might despair to emulate, she is a Christian whom every girl of a fair understanding and good temper may equal, and whom, I hope and believe, many girls excel." I asked Mrs. Stanley's permission to attend the young ladies in one of their benevolent rounds. "When I have leisure to be one of the party," replied she, smiling, "you shall accompany us. I am afraid to trust your warm feelings. Your good-nature would perhaps lead you to commend as a merit, what in fact deserves no praise at all, the duly being so obvious, and so indispensable. I have often heard it regretted that ladies have no stated employment, no profession. It is a mistake. _Charity is the calling of a lady; the care of the poor is her profession._ Men have little time or taste for details. Women of fortune have 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.