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.

Like theirs, her work lies with wife and children, and as we have seen it is of far wider scope even here than the work of the clergy. But, fussy and dictatorial as she is, the District Visitor is as a rule more popular than the clergyman. In the first place, the parson is only doing a duty he is bound to do while the District Visitor is a volunteer. The parson, as the poor roughly say, is paid for it. Again, however simple-hearted and courteous he may be, he never gets very close home to the poor. Their life is not his life, nor their ways his ways. They do not understand his refinement, his delicacy about interference, his gentlemanly reticence, his abhorrence of gossip and scandal. They are accustomed to be ordered about, to rough words, to gossip over their neighbours. And so the District Visitor is "more in their way," as they tell her. She is profuse of questions, routing out a thousand little details that no parson would ever know. She has little of the sensitive pride that hinders the vicar from listening to scandal, or of the manly objection to "telling tales" which hurries him out of the room when neighbour brings charges against neighbour. She is entirely unaffected by his scruples against interference with the conscience or religion of the poor. "Where do you go to church?" and "Why don't you go to church?" are her first stock questions in her cross-examination of every family. Her exhortations at the sick-bed have a somewhat startling peremptoriness about them. We can hardly wonder at the wish of a poor patient that she were a rich one, because then she could "die in peace, and have nobody to come in and pray over her." What irritates the District Visitor in cases where she has bestowed special religious attention is that people when so effectively prepared for death "won't die." But hard, practical action such as this does not jostle against the feelings of the poor as it would against our own. Women especially forgive all because the District Visitor listens as well as talks. They could no more pour out their little budget of domestic troubles to the parson than to a being from another world. But the District Visitor is the recipient of all. The washerwoman stops her mangle to talk about the hard times and the rise of a halfpenny on the loaf. The matron next door turns up her sleeve to show the bruise her husband bestowed on her on his return from the 'Chequers.' She enters largely and minutely into the merits and defects of her partner's character, and protests with a subtle discrimination that "he's a good father when he ain't bothered with the children, and a good husband when he's off the drink." The old widow down the lane is waiting for "the lady" to write a letter for her to her son in Australia, and to see the "pictur," the cheap photograph of the grandchildren she has never seen or will see, that John has sent home. A girl home from her "place" wants the District Visitor to intercede with her mistress, and listens in all humility to a lecture on her giddiness and love of finery.The society in fact of the little alley is very much held together by the District Visitor. In her love of goody gossip she fulfils the office which in an Italian town is filled by the barber. She retails tittle-tattle for the highest ends. She relates Mrs. A.'s misdemeanour for the edification and correction of Mrs. B. She has the true version of the quarrel between Smith and his employer. She is the one person to whom the lane looks for accurate information as to the domestic relations of the two Browns, whose quarrels are the scandal of the neighbourhood. Her influence in fact over the poor is a strange mixture of good and evil, of real benevolence with an interference that saps all sense of self-respect, of real sympathy and womanly feeling with a good deal of womanly meddling, curiosity, and babble.

But her influence on the parish at large is a far more delicate question. To the outer world a parish seems a sheer despotism. The parson prays, preaches, changes the order of service, distributes the parochial charities at his simple discretion. One of the great cries of the Church reformer is generally for the substitution of some constitutional system, some congregational council, some lay co-operation, for this clerical tyranny. But no one in fact feels the narrow limits of his power more keenly than the parson himself. As the old French monarchy was a despotism tempered by epigrams, so the rule of a parish is a despotism tempered by parochial traditions, by the observation of neighbouring clergymen, by the suggestions of the squire, by the opposition of churchwardens, by the hints and regrets of "Constant Attendants," by the state of the pew-letting or the ups and downs of the offertory, by the influences of local opinion, by the censorship of the District Visitor. What the assembly of his "elders" is to a Scotch minister, the District Visitors' meeting is to the English clergyman. He has to prove in the face of a standing jealousy that his alms have been equally distributed between district and district. His selection of tracts is freely criticised. Mrs. A. regrets that her poor people have seen so little of their vicar lately. Mrs. B. is sorry to report the failure of her attempts to get her sheep to church, in face of the new Ritualistic developement, the processions, and the surplices. Mrs. C., whose forte is education, declines any longer to induce mothers to send their children to "such" a master. The curates shudder as Mrs. D. laments their frequent absence from the Penny Bank, not that they can do any good there, but "we are always glad of the presence and sympathy of our clergy." The curates promise amendment of life. The vicar engages to look out for another schoolmaster, and be more diligent in his attentions to Muck Lane. A surreptitious supply of extra tickets to the ultra-Protestant appeases for the moment her wrath against the choir surplices. But the occasional screw of the monthly meeting is as nothing to the daily pressure applied by the individual District Visitor. At the bottom of every alley the vicar runs up against a parochial censor. The "five minutes' conversation" which the District Visitor expects as the reward of her benevolence becomes a perpetual trickle of advice, remonstrance, and even reproof. A strong-minded parson of course soon makes himself master of his District Visitors, but the ordinary vicar generally feels that his District Visitors are masters of him. The harm that comes of this feminine despotism is the feminine impress it leaves on the whole aspect of the parish. Manly preaching disappears before the disappointed faces the preacher encounters on Monday. A policy of expedients and evasions takes the place of any straightforward attempt to meet or denounce local evils. The vicar's time and energy are frittered away on a thousand little jealousies and envyings, his temper is tried in humouring one person and conciliating another, he learns to be cautious and reserved and diplomatic, to drop hints and suggestions, to become in a word the first District Visitor of his parish. He flies to his wife for protection, and finds in her the most effective buffer against parochial collisions. Greek meets Greek when the vicar's wife meets the District Visitor. But the vicar himself sinks into a parochial nobody, a being as sacred and as powerless as the Lama of Thibet.

It was hardly to be expected that the progress of religion and charitable feeling should fail to raise up formidable rivals to the District Visitor. To the more ecclesiastical mind she is hardly ecclesiastical enough for the prominent part she claims in the parochial system. Her lace and Parisian bonnet are an abomination. She has a trick of being terribly Protestant, and her Protestantism is somewhat dictatorial. On the other hand, to the energetic organizer whose ideal of a parish is a well-oiled machine turning out piety and charity without hitches or friction she is simply a parochial impediment. She has no system. Her visiting days are determined by somewhat eccentric considerations. Her almsgiving is regulated by no principle whatever. She carries silly likes and dislikes into her work among the poor. She rustles into wrath at any attempt to introduce order into her efforts, and regards it as a piece of ungrateful interference. She is always ready with threats of resignation, with petty suspicions of ill-treatment, with jealousies of her fellow-workers. We can hardly wonder that in ecclesiastical quarters she is retreating before the Sister of Mercy, while in the more organized parishes she is being superseded by the Deaconess. The Deaconess has nothing but contempt for the mere "volunteer" movement in charity. She has a strong sense of order and discipline, and a hatred of "francs-tireurs." Above all she is a woman of business. She is without home or child, and her time and labour are arranged with military precision. She has her theory of the poor and of what can be done for the poor, and she rides her hobby from morning to night with an equal contempt for the sentimental almsgiving of the District Visitor and for the warnings of the political economist. No doubt an amazing deal of good is done, but it is done in a methodical fashion that is a little trying to ordinary flesh and blood. The parish is elaborately tabulated. The poor are grouped and ticketed. The charitable agencies of the parish are put in connection with the hospital and the workhouse. This case is referred to the dispensary, that to the overseer. The Deaconess prides herself on not being "taken in." The washerwoman finds that her "outdoor allowance" has been ascertained and set off against her share in the distribution of alms. The pious old woman who has played off the charity of the church against the charity of the chapel is struck off the list. The miserable creature who drags out existence on a bit of bread and a cup of tea is kindly but firmly advised to try "the house." Nothing can be wiser, nothing more really beneficial to the poor, than the work of the Deaconess, but it is a little dry and mechanical. The ill-used wife of the drunkard sighs after the garrulous sympathy of the District Visitor. The old gossip and dawdle have disappeared from the parochial charity, but with them has gone a good deal of the social contact, the sympathy of rich with poor, in which its chief virtue lay. The very vicar sighs after a little human imperfection and irregularity as he reads the list of sick cases "to be visited this morning."

The one lingering touch of feminine weakness in the Deaconess comes out in her relations with the clergy. The Deaconess is not a "Sister"—she is most precise in enforcing the distinction—but she is a woman with a difference. She has not retired from the world, but a faint flavour of the nun hangs about her. She has left behind all thought of coquetry, but she prefers to work with a married clergyman. Her delicacy can just endure a celibate curate, but it shrinks aghast from a bachelor incumbent. We know a case where a bishop, anxious to retain a Deaconess in a poor parish, was privately informed that her stay would depend on the appointment of a married clergyman to the vacant living. On the other hand, a married clergyman is as great a trial to the Sister of Mercy as an unmarried one to the Deaconess. The "Sister" idealizes the priesthood as she idealizes the poor. Their poverty is a misfortune; their improvidence an act of faith; their superstition the last ray of poetic religion lingering in this world of scepticism and commonplace. All the regularity and sense of order which exists in the Sister's mind is concentrated on her own life in the sisterhood; she is punctilious about her "hours," and lives in a perpetual tinkle of little bells. But in her work among the poor she revolts from system or organization. She hates the workhouse. She looks upon a guardian or an overseer as an oppressor of the poor. She regards theories of pauperism as something very wicked and irreligious, and lavishes her alms with a perfect faith that good must come of it. In a word, she is absolutely unwise, but there is a poetry in her unwisdom that contrasts strangely with the sensible prose of the Deaconess. While the one enters in her book of statistics the number of uneducated children, the other is trotting along the street with little Tommy in one hand and little Polly in the other on their way to the school. She has washed their faces and tidied their hair, and believes she has done service to little angels. Tommy and Polly are very far from being angels, but both sides are the happier for the romantic hypothesis. There is a good deal of romance and sentiment in the Sister's view of her work among the poor; but it is a romance that nerves her to a certain grandeur of soul. A London clergyman in whose district the black fever had broken out could get no nurses among the panic-stricken neighbours. He telegraphed to a "Home," and next morning he found a ladylike girl on her knees on the floor of the infected house, scrubbing, cleaning, putting the worn-out mother to bed, hushing the children, nursing quietly and thoroughly as few nurses could do. The fever was beaten, and the little heroine went off at the call of another telegram to charge another battery of death. It is this chivalrous poetic side that atones for the many follies of Sisterhoods; for the pauperism they introduce among the poor, the cliqueism of their inner life, the absurdities of their "holy obedience." Each of these charitable agencies in fact has its work to do, and does it in its own way. On paper there can be no doubt that the Sister of Mercy is the more attractive figure of the three. The incumbent of a heavy parish will probably turn with a smile to the more methodical labours of the Deaconess. But those who shrink alike from the idealism of one and the system of the other, who feel that the poor are neither angels nor wheels in a machine, and that the chief work to be done among them is the diffusion of kindly feeling and the drawing of class nearer to class, will probably prefer to either the old-fashioned District Visitor.