laity to our appeal," wrote another. When in May 1899 the Archbishops were playing at a Court for the trial of Ritualism, Episcopal ladies sat knitting by the judgment-seat, and stared at the incriminated clergymen, as the _tricoteuses_ of the French Revolution may have stared at the victims of the guillotine, or as Miss Squeers peered through the keyhole at the flagellation of Smike. Or again, on a lowlier rung of the Ecclesiastical ladder, I might have drawn the Parochial Worker--the woman of waterproof and gingham, the distributor of tracts, the disciplinarian of the Sunday School, the presiding spirit of Mothers' Meetings. At a General Election this type of lady varies her activities--canvasses for the Conservative candidate, and tells the gaping washerwomen that Mr. Lloyd-George wishes to convert the Welsh cathedrals into music-halls for the Eisteddfod. Of all Parochial Workers the highest type is the Deaconess; and not long ago, in a parish with which I am conversant, the Deaconess and the Curate used to do their parochial rounds on a double bicycle, to the infinite amusement of the gutter-children and the serious perturbation of the severely orthodox. There was a picture worthy of the pen and pencil of Thackeray, but it faded all too soon into the blurred commonplace of matrimony. The Deaconess may be called the Marine of the Church's army, with one foot on sea and one on shore--only half a Worldling, yet not quite a Nun. With ladies of the last-named type, my acquaintance has been prolonged and intimate. Of their excellence and devotion it would be impertinent to speak; but I may say without offence that some of the ablest, most agreeable, and most amusing women I have known I have encountered in the Cloister. But, alas! even into the Cloister the serpent of political guile will wend his sinuous way; nor could I, though her friend, commend the action of Sister G---- M---- when, in order to prevent a patient in a Convalescent Home from voting for a Radical candidate, she kept his trousers under lock and key till the poll was over. "Old age," it has been bitterly said, "when it can no longer set a bad example, gives good advice;" and when, as sometimes happens, I am asked to hortate my younger fellow-citizens, one of my most emphatic lessons is a Reverence for Womanhood, even in its least ideal aspects. This, I declare to be an essential attribute of the ideal character--of that manhood, at once beautiful and good, to which the philosophers have taught us to aspire; and, lest I should seem to be violating my own oft-repeated precept, I tear myself from a fascinating theme. V DOCTORS AND DOCTORING