Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel also,—no morbid passion of pity such as would turn you into a black Sister of Charity, but the steady fire of perpetual kindness which will make you a bright one. I speak in no disparagement of them; I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe to them; but all these professional pieties (except so far as distinction or association may be necessary for effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought never to have been permitted to exist; encouraging at the same time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think that they must either be good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one; and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. As I pause, before ending my preface—thinking of one or two more points that are difficult to write of—I find a letter in ‘The Times,’ from a French lady, which says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just as it stands:— SIR,—It is often said that one example is worth many sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, which seems to me so striking just now, that, however painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it? It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. If our _ménagères_ can be cited as an example to English housewives, so, alas! can other classes of our society be set up as an example—_not_ to be followed. Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose bills of bygone splendour lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her purse! With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but too successfully. Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, its delicacy. More and more were _monde_ and _demi-monde_ associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in _premières représentations_, in imitation of each other’s costumes, _mobiliers_ and slang. Living beyond one’s means became habitual—almost necessary—for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, every one else. What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brightest and highest.