Christ be the old man's protest against a pride in which all true nobleness and effort had ceased to live, and which was hurrying to so shameful a fall? THE DISTRICT VISITOR. It would be hard to define exactly the office and duties of the District Visitor. Historically she is the direct result of the Evangelical movement which marked the beginning of this century; the descendant of the "devout women not a few" who played, like Hannah More, the part of mothers in Israel to the Simeons and Wilberforces of the time. But the mere tract-distributor of fifty years ago has grown into a parochial and ecclesiastical force of far greater magnitude. The District Visitor of to-day is parson and almoner in one; the parochial censor of popular morals, the parochial instructor in domestic economy. She claims the same right as the vicar to knock at every door and obtain admission into every house. But once within it her scope of action is far larger than the parson's. To the spiritual influence of the tract or "the chapter" she adds the more secular and effective power of the bread-ticket. "The way to the heart of the poor," as she pithily puts it, "lies through their stomachs." Her religious exhortations are backed by scoldings and fussiness. She is eloquent upon rags and tatters, and severe upon dirty floors. She flings open the window and lectures her flock on the advantages of fresh air. She hurries little Johnny off to school and gets Sally out to service. She has a keen nose for drains and a passion for clean hands and faces. What worries her most is the fatalism and improvidence of the poor. She is full of exhortations to "lay by" for the rainy day, and seductive in her praises of the Penny Bank. The whole life of the family falls within her supervision. She knows the wages of the husband and the occasional jobs of the wife. She inquires what there is for dinner and gives wise counsels on economical cookery. She has her theory as to the hour when children ought to be in bed, and fetches in Tommy, much weeping, from the last mud-pie of sunset. Only "the master" himself lies outside of her rule. Between the husband and the District Visitor there exists a sort of armed neutrality. Her visits are generally paid when he is at work. If she arrives when he happens to be at home, he calls for "missus," and retires sheepishly to the 'Blue Boar.' The energetic Dorcas who fixes him in a corner gets little for her pains. He "supposes" that "missus" knows where and when the children go to school, and that "missus" may some day or other be induced to go to church. But the theory of the British labourer is that with his home or his family, their religion or their education, he has nothing personally to do. And so he has nothing to do with the District Visitor. His only demand is that she should let him alone, and the wise District Visitor soon learns, as parson and curate have long learnt, to let him alone.