an objector will ask, cannot a matron practise these expedients? and if so, where is the use or propriety of such a class as men-midwives? I reply, doubtless a matron may practise many of the expedients referred to, if they have been taught her. It is of the value of midwifery as a science, originating with and practised by men, compared with matron or uncultivated midwifery, of which I have been speaking. A certain proportion of instructed female midwives in a community may, for aught I know, be a benefit." Let the reader mark, learn, and inwardly digest these words! Here is the admission of an accoucheur of the present day, confirming the words of Roussel, and the many other authorities whom we have quoted, as to the fitness of women for the practice of the expedients necessary in midwifery, and, further, a most important acknowledgment, as coming from one of his class, that females, properly instructed as midwives, would be a benefit to society. To be sure they would! Who doubts it? And is there not enough of wealth, and energy, and right feeling in England to say--We will that there shall be in every community properly instructed midwives; we will that there shall be organized, in all our great towns, schools of midwifery for the instruction of women,[62] who shall go forth from them fully competent in "nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand," to perform that office which is now, from their sex, so indecently performed by men. The instruction of midwives has nothing of novelty in it: women are so instructed in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, at this day, and we believe[63] that they are so instructed at Manchester and in London; they "walk the hospital," as the term is, for six months, and at the end of that time they receive a "diploma;" but there is a jealousy on the part of the accoucheurs, who fear, naturally enough, that their trade (a very lucrative one[64]) might be injured if these women should assume too much responsibility, and the consequences of this jealousy[65] are injurious to the full and complete instruction and competency of the "nurses."[66]