"SUNSHINE IN A SHADY PLACE."

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complete exclusion from the sight of God and His works—a position in which the villager never is, and freedom from which ought to give him a higher moral starting-point than the Gibeonite of a large town." He carried on his weekly lectures with increased enthusiasm as he perceived that they grew in popularity. He visited the sick, he organised schools, he taught the children, he "interviewed" the local authorities, he promoted the sanitary improvements of the neighbourhood. All this was good and useful work; but no doubt the best work was done by the mere fact of his presence—the presence of a refined, cultivated, Godfearing gentleman-in such a district. In Spenserian phrase

he made a sunshine in a shady place. He was an example, of which everybody could recognise the significance and beauty; an ideal to which many, we can well believe, were fain to make their little efforts to rise. If there is anything of good in the practice of the Christian virtues, his self-denial, his active benevolence, his generous devotion, his purity of life and speech, could not but exercise a happy influence. We can well believe that if his chivalrous conduct found any considerable number of imitators, the gulf of which we have spoken as separating almost hopelessly the rich and the poor would soon be bridged.

It was not possible, perhaps, that a man of Mr. Denison's social position, with his many duties and responsibilities, should always be able to isolate himself among the poor of East London; and yet we can hardly help regretting that his singular and beautiful experiment was not of longer duration. But his friends and relatives, and among them his uncle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, were urgent that he should enter into Parliamentary life, and he at length consented to become a candidate for Newark. He was elected; but he made no conspicuous figure in the House of Commons, notwithstanding his unquestionable mental power. And this because his interest in political questions was merely speculative, while in social questions it was active. "The problems of the time," he wrote, "are social, and to social problems must the mind of the Legislature be bent for some time to come." It was to these his own mind was given. He cared very little for the strife of parties, for the fierce contentions between the "ins" and the "outs." He had no political ambition; what he wanted was to see the condition of

the

poor ameliorated, and the national life of England made purer and happier.

Into what special channel his activity would have finally been directed it is impossible to say. With his large views and broad sympathies, his abilities, force of character, and wide experience, we cannot doubt but that he would have made his mark in his time had he lived long enough. One would have supposed that for a man of such exceptional gifts God would have had some exceptional work to do; but His ways are not as our ways, and for all we know, Denison's work was, by his life in that East-End London district, to set an example and a pattern. However this may be, his physical strength gave way beneath repeated attacks of congestion of the lungs, and in the autumn of 1869 his illness assumed so serious a character that he was ordered to winter at Cannes, or take a voyage to Australia. As the latter alternative seemed to offer the fuller opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge, it was accepted. But during the outward voyage he sank very rapidly, and on January 26th, 1878, within a fortnight of his landing at Melbourne, he passed away, in his thirtieth year. To a man of such brilliant promise, so prema

turely cut short, we may say—

"Thy leaf has perished in the green,

And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world, which credits what is done,
Is cold to all that might have been."

At the village of Hauxwell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, was born, on the 16th of January, 1832, Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison, the daughter of the Rev. Mark Pattison, rector of Hauxwell. As a child she was very delicate, but was distinguished by the sweet equableness of her temper, and by her love of fun and mischief. Her faculty of observation was very fully developed, and in her tenacious memory she accumulated a constantly increasing number of facts and particulars to be made use of in after life. There seemed no reason to suppose at that time that her career would have in it anything extraordinary; yet a judge of character, taking note of her strong will, her fortitude, her self-control, her quiet reserve of power, would have seen that for an extraordinary career she was in every way fitted. Her devotion of herself to others

"SISTER DORA'S" STRENGTH of purpose.

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was early manifested. As she grew in years, she grew in strength; became a good and daring horsewoman, riding across country and following the hounds with true Yorkshire zest; and gradually developed into a tall, strong, and very handsome creature, with a great capacity for humour, a merry laugh, and an incessant activity. In height she was about five feet seven inches; she was beautifully proportioned, with small and finely-formed hands. Her features were almost Greek in their regularity; the forehead was wide and high; the mouth small, with exquisite red lips, which, when they parted, disclosed a perfect set of pearly teeth; her dark-brown eyes, somewhat widely apart, shone with eloquent expression; and her hair, of the same colour as her eyes, waved all over her head in crisp curls. A more fascinating woman one seldom meets with; for in addition to this rare personal beauty, she possessed a wonderful charm of manner,--that almost magnetic influence which is virtually irresistible.

The finer faculties of her nature seem to have been first awakened by Miss Florence Nightingale's work during the Crimean War; and if her father had consented, she would have joined the band of devoted women who went out as nurses. Her longing, however, for a more stirring and more useful career than the home-life afforded did not subside; and after her mother's death, in 1861, she was left free to gratify it, Mr. Pattison refraining from further opposition. The first essay was as a village schoolmistress at Little Woolston, near Bletchley, where she remained for three years. But the post did not bring out all her capabilities; she felt, to use her own expression, that she was not doing her utmost, and on her recovery from a severe illness, induced by daily toil and night nursing, she entered the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritans, whose head quarters were at Coatham. near Redcar, in Yorkshire. This was in the autumn of 1864. The training to which she was immediately subjected tested with sufficient harshness her sincerity of purpose. She made beds cleaned and scoured floors and grates, swept and dusted, and finally "did the cooking" in the kitchen at Coatham. But it was coarse work, and, as it seems to us, useless work, which could have been done as well, or perhaps better, by a hired "help"; and was, at all events, wholly unworthy of Dorothy Pattison's fine intellect and many gifts. We rejoice when she was finally esta