Forced inside a motor-omnibus one evening, for lack of room outside, I found myself opposite a woman, poorly-clothed, with a wedding-ring upon her finger and a baby in her arms. The child was covered with a black shawl and its face could not be seen. It was evidently asleep. It should have been in its cot at that hour. The mother's face roused feelings which a sonnet of Wordsworth's might have expressed, or a painting by some artist with a soul, a Rembrandt or a Watts, such as we may look for in vain amongst the be-lettered to-day. Here was the spectacle of mother and child, which all the great historic religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, have rightly worshipped; the spectacle which more nearly symbolises the sublime than any other upon which the eye of a man, himself once such a child, can rest; the spectacle which alone epitomises the life of mankind and the unalterable conditions of all human life and all human societies, reminding us at once of our individual mortality, and the immortality of our race-- “While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise, We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The Elements, must vanish;--be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour:” --the spectacle which alone, if any can, may reconcile us to death; the spectacle of that which alone can sanctify the love of the sexes; the spectacle of motherhood in being, the supreme duty and supreme privilege of womanhood--“a mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.” This woman, utterly unconscious of the dignity of her attitude and of the contrast between herself and the imitation of a woman, elegantly clothed, who sat next her, giving her not a thought nor a glance, nor yet room for the elbow bent in its divine office, was probably some thirty-two or three years old, as time is measured by the revolutions of the earth around the sun. Measured by some more relevant gauge, she was evidently aged, her face grey and drawn, desperately tired, yet placid--not with due exultation but with the calm of one who has no hope. She was too weary to draw the child to her bosom, and her arms lay upon her knees; but instead she bent her body downwards to her baby. She looked straight out in front of her, not at me nor at the passing phantasms beyond, but at nothing. The eyes were open but they were too tired to see. The face had no beauty of feature nor of colour nor of intelligence, but it was wholly beautiful, made so by motherhood; and I think she must have held some faith. The tint of her skin and of her eyeballs spoke of the impoverishment of her blood, her need of sleep and rest and ease of mind. She will probably be killed by consumption within five years and will certainly never hold a grand-child in her arms. The pathologist may lay this crime at the door of the tubercle bacillus; but a prophet would lay it at the reader's door and mine.