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institutions of all kinds; especially houses for the education of male and female workers in the sphere of philanthropy (deacons and deaconesses), houses of refuge, Magdalen asylums, asylums for drunkards, colonies for workingmen, hospitals, infirmaries, institutions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, epileptics, and others. The Innere Mission reports for 1907 18,200 deaconesses of the Kaiserswerth Federation and others, and in all 25,000 sisters engaged in charitable relief; and likewise German brotherhoods with a membership of 2,645. There are no statistics for philanthropical institutions in Germany. Those for Prussia contained in Statistisches Handbuch fur den preussischen Staat, i. 409 (1893), indicate 1,441 general institutions for the sick alone, with 75,224 beds, besides equally numerous institutions covering the other departments of philanthropy. A surprising feature of philanthropy in Germany is the preponderance of municipal institutions over those of the State, the Church, and private foundations. Here the idea of the Reformation is fully realized. The importance which philanthropical institutions on the whole have for the care of the poor is shown by the statistics of the German Empire for 1885 (Statistik des Deutsehen Reichs, xxix.), according to which 270,038 persons in institutions and 616,533 persons outside of institutions were supported. Thus almost one-third of all the beneficiaries in the empire was supported in institutions, which warrants the inference that the philanthropic institution has become the permanent basis for public charity and is destined to advance along this line.

(A. HAucs.)

II. Philanthrophy in Great Britain: The history of the relation of Christianity toward eleemosynary activities in England and the other portions of the

United Kingdom extends over a i. To Down- period of thirteen centuries divisible infall of to three distinct epochs. The first of Monasteries. these covers the interval between the introduction of Christianity into England in 597 A.D., and the dissolution of the monasteries in that country which was practically completed by 1540. In Scotland they were put down, and in many cases destroyed by the mob, about twenty years later. More than, perhaps, in any Portion of western and southern Europe, Christianity had appeared in England as a civilizing as well as a moralizing agency, and its functions resembled those of modern missions to the barbarous tribes of Africa and Polynesia rather than those of missions planted in the midst of the venerable civilizations of India and China. Throughout this

Period of nearly one thousand years, the framework of society was predominantly military. In such an atmosphere of continual contention the care of the sick, the relief of the needy, and even the instruction of youth, were possible only under the supernatural sanction claimed by the Church, and for the most Part all three were in the hands of the moAastic orders. The transition from paganism to Christianity among the masses of the Population was a far slower process than was the nominal acceptance of that faith by the chiefs of the Petty kingdoms forming the Saxon Octarehy. Speaking particu-

larly of the Northumbrians, J. R. Green observes, " With Teutonic indifference, they yielded to their thegns in nominally accepting the new Christianity as these had yielded to the king. But they retained their old superstitions side by side with the new worship." With this view E. A. Freeman agrees. Such religious zeal and humane impulses as the Dark Ages produced found their expression mainly in the cloistered life. When, in the comparative enlightenment of the thirteenth century, the great preaching orders of itinerant friars sprang up, those who adopted the rule of Francis of Assisi (q.v.) were charged by their great founder to minister to the sick in the lazar-houses whose occupants leprosy and kindred diseases had doomed to isolation from their fellows. The oldest existing hospital in London, St. Bartholomew's, originated in a monastery dating from the twelfth century. Institutions set apart for the treatment of the sick as such were hardly known until the sixteenth century.

With the downfall of the monasteries ends the first period. The next century and a half constitutes the second epoch. During it, philanthropy was dependent on the means and conscience of the individual citizen, except so far as the State supervened under the Elizabethan poor law. Toward the end of the seventeenth century forms of associated benevolence begin to appear. This phase constitutes the third stage in its evolution.

It is easy to understand why the abrupt suppression of these ecclesiastical institutions in both Eng-

land and Scotland should leave a z. To End chasm in the lives of the poor. The

teenth eye in the following passage from a Century. report by the commissioners charged

with receiving the surrender of Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire (the original spelling is retained):

" Ther be Sayntuary men here for dett, felony, and murder, xxxii; many of them aged some very seke. They have all, within (except?) iiii wyves and childem, and dwellynge houses and ground wherby the lyve with their famylies, whiche beynge all assembled before hus, and the Kinges Highnes pleasure opened to them, they have verye lamentable declared that if they be nowe send to other Saynturyes, not onlie they but their wyves and childern also shal be utterly undon."

The law which dissolved the monasteries did indeed transfer the liability to perform the accustomed services for the poor to the shoulders of the new owners of the confiscated property, but it was a duty easily evaded. Though not the only cause, the alienation of monastic property-and there were 645 monasteries whose aggregate revenues were estimated at $8,000,000-was one of the principal causes of the great distress chronicled by Bishop Latimer and other contemporary writers. Himself no friend of the old order, that prelate breaks forth against the lax morality of the new in the following vehement passage from one of his sermons: " In times past men were full of Pity and compassion, but now there is no pity . . . . Now charity is waxen cold, none helpeth the scholar nor yet the poor." For two generations there appears to have