SOCIAL STUDIES BY LADY WILDE AUTHOR OF ' NOTES ON MEN, WOMEN AND BOOKS,' ETC, WARD & DOWNEY 12 York Street Covent Garden London I 893 (All Rights reser-jcd). Ha 33 CONTENTS. THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN, GENIUS AND MARRIAGE, SOCIAL GRACES, VENUS VICTRIX, SPIRITUAL AFFINITY, . SUITABILITY OF DRESS, AMERICAN WOMEN, THE world's NEW PHASES, THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY, AUSTRALIA (a Plea for Emigration), THE VISION OF THE VATICAN, IRISH LEADERS AND MARTYRS, THE POET AS TEACHER, THE TWO ARTISTS: A SKETCH (from the Spanish), 'tertia MORS est' (from the German,) I 28 53 78 97 108 123 154 175 210 249 266 273 301 321 905260 WORKS BY LADY WILDE. Ancient Irish Legends. Crown 8vo, 6s. Ancient Irish Cures and Charms. Crown 8vo, 6s. Driftwood from Scandinavia, Notes on Men, Women and Books. Crown 8vo, 6s. Eritis Sicut Deus. 3 vols. [From the Germati.) Sidonia the Sorceress. {Fro/ii the Gerinan.) The Glacier Land. (Dmnas.) The Wanderer and liis Home. (Lamartine.) Pictm-es from the First French Revolution. The Future Life. (Swedenborg.) Poems, Original, and Translated from the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, and Danish Languages. SOCIAL STUDIES. THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. For six thousand years the history of woman has been a mournful record of helpless resig- nation to social prejudice and legal tyranny. A doom of expiation laid on the sex, perhaps, for having been first in the transgression. Yet, tradition teaches also that through woman comes the redemption of humanity, and many earnest souls are even now waiting for some diviner revelation of the mission of woman than the world has yet seen. ' Earth waits for her Queen,' is the epigraph of Margaret Fuller's great essay, entitled, ' Woman in the Nine- teenth Century.' As yet, however, the expia- tory sacrifice goes on unchanged, and women still weep and toil, as they have ever done, that man, the lord of the world, may find A 2 SOCIAL STUDIES. existence made easier and pleasanter by the ceaseless devotion and patient self-sacrifice of the inferior, at least, the weaker sex. In the early ages, while men were warring or hunting, the women of the family per- formed all the servile duties ; drawing water from the well, like Rebecca ; tending the flocks, like Rachel ; or cooking the food, like Sara, who was dismissed to knead cakes while angels were conversing with her husband. Polygamy and slavery began even before Adam's death. ' Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech,' exclaimed the dictatorial Antediluvian to his two wives, Adah and Zillah, who, no doubt, obeyed in silence, for their answers are not recorded in the sacred history. Everywhere bondage was the portion of women. In the East they were considered as articles of traffic simply. A man acquired his rights over them just in proportion to his ability to purchase. Thus, Solomon had a thousand wives in his harem. In Africa, women have ever been the hard- worked drudges of their barbarian masters. The three thousand and thirty-three wives of the King of Dahomey — to which mystic num- ber he is limited — are but so many meni als ; and other African chiefs have a bodygu ard THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 3 formed of their young wives, to run beside their horses on state occasions. But even in England, Christian England, the doom of the bond-slave is on the fated sex. For a true knowledge of the condition of women of the lower classes here, the reve- lations made by the Brothers Mayhew may be studied with profit ; even in this splendid, wealthy London, the record is one long dread- ful tragedy of toil and suffering, starvation and sin, under the sway and rule of their brutal masters. Yet, occasionally women have risen by force of genius to stations of power and dignity, and proved themselves equal to the position, like Deborah, judge and prophet in Israel ; or Semiramis, who built Babylon in one year ; or the learned and beautiful Zenobia, who could be conquered only by an Aurelian ; or the Carian Artemisia, whose statue was erected at Lacedemon. But though rarely admitted to the Royal dignity, the office of the priesthood was often shared by women. For a very general belief existed as to their susceptibility to inspiration, and their peculiar relations with the spiritual world was part of the popular creed. All the great diviners of old were women — the Pythias 4 SOCIAL STUDIES. at Delphi ; the Sybils ; the Druidesses ; the Valkyria, and others ; and this acknowledged mysticism of woman was perhaps the origin of the sacred respect shown to her in the East, though politically she had no position. A woman was required to be the symbol of stain- less purity, and the nuptial rites were all framed as types of this great virtue of chastity, which was considered the basis of all others in the female character. The bath, whither the bride was conducted in solemn procession, was the emblem of purifica- tion. The perfumes and jewels symbolised the inner grace of the spirit ; while the rose- coloured bridal veil heightened and repre- sented the blush of modesty ; but the Jewish writers say that the veil was worn because of the angels ; for it was the beauty of woman's hair that tempted them down to love the daughters of men. And St Paul is supposed to allude to this tradition when he says, * A woman should have a covering on her head, because of the angels.^ A crown also was worn at the marriage, in sign of the consecration to a higher life ; hence the Jews call a bride the * The Crowned.' And she was lifted over the threshold of her husband's THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 5 dwelling to signify that she entered it without stain. In Syria the bride sits with closed eyes the first day of her arrival ; and a Bedouin girl remains blindfolded a week, to show that her husband is now a covering to her eyes. Purity is the one supreme virtue demanded of a woman, and if she fail in this, her husband has the power over her of life or death. All exercise of intellect is discouraged in the East, except by performers for hire, and no man, even of the lowest class or caste, would marry a public dancer or singer, so degrading is held the exhibition of a woman's person or gifts, except for the one to whom she is consecrated. The Buddhists, especially, maintain the divine right of the man over the woman ; for, accord- ing to the Hindu Shaster, the husband may divorce his wife if she scolds, or presumes to eat before he has finished his meal ; while in China a divorce can be obtained for loquacity, a tendency in women very prevalent amongst the Celestials ; for, says the Chinese proverb, ' What women have lost in their feet they have gained in their tongues.' Submission and in- dustry are the chief virtues required of a Chin- ese wife. Even the Empress superintends the 6 SOCIAL STUDIES. silk-winding and weaving, and the title of the chief court lady is 'The Mother of the Worms.' But female children are not allowed to over- crowd the Empire, so that it is customary to send round a cart every morning through the streets of Pekin to pick up dead babies of the baser sex. Between the Black Sea and the Caspian, where the Aryan race had its origin, the per- fection of human beauty is still to be found. Southward, from that centre, the type de- generates to the Ethiopian, and eastward to the Mongolian variety ; while northward the type still further degenerates to the flat-faced, square-headed, small - eyed Calmuch ; a mean and sinister-looking people, yet with intellect enough to hold women in bondage ; for the bride must pull off the husband's boots in token of submission, and a whip is given to him, which he scruples not to use. In some tribes the bride is conveyed to her destined spouse with the touching rubric — ' Here, wolf, take thy lamb,' and baking uten- sils are buried with a woman, as bows and arrows with a man, so intensely allied do they consider the female soul and cookery. The Javanese are a better specimen of the Mongolian race, for they permit women to THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 7 divorce husbands at will ; so that some women may even count up twenty husbands without having discovered one worth retaining. Still the fatal sign of degradation is exacted, for a bride is expected to wash her husband's feet as the first symbol of submission. One heroine, however, stands out in the Javanese annals an honour- able example to her sex, for, having performed her portion of the ritual, she flung the water in the gentleman's face, and refused to accept him as her lord and master. In Sumatra the taste in beauty is peculiar, and to please her lover a girl is required to flatten her nose, stretch her ears, and blacken her teeth ; otherwise she would not be accepted as a wife. If she is unfaithful to her marriage vows, the punishment is to shave off her hair, while the lover, with summary justice, is eaten by the tribe. In Borneo courage is supposed to win the heart of a woman ; for no man takes a wife till he has cut off the head of an enemy. If he wishes a second wife he cuts off another head, and so on ; wives and heads always equal. If we now pass to New Holland, we find a frightful, ash-coloured race, greased, tattooed and scared ; so hideous in appearance that 8 SOCIAL STUDIES. ethnologists fail to trace their affinity to any of the existing human species. Still these hideous and degraded beings have attained, in one point at least, to the philosophy of civilis- ation, and fully uphold the supremacy of man over the woman. The marriage rites are sim- ple, yet even more than symbolic, for the bride's front teeth are knocked out as a pre- liminary ; then the husband flings a kangaroo skin over her shoulders, and drives her before him to his hut with blows and hideous cries. Ancient Egypt, however, combined, in a sin- gular degree, the sensuous and the intellectual in the national treatment of women, for his- tory records the names of many women who reigned and ruled there by learning and spiritual influence even more than by beauty. The prin- cipal deity was a woman, and the chief priestess of the Mysteries of Isis ranked next to the throne. Still, the worship of women was exceeded in sacred intensity by that of cats, for whom, if one happened to die, the whole family shaved the head in token of honour. But modern Egyptian women have now sunk into the usual routine of feminine life — love, dress and em- broidery, and claim notice only by the exces- sive beauty of their eyes. One grows weary of the woeful uniformity THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 9 of female life and bondage all over the world. Bought or sold for a handful of money at the Equator, or for a bottle of train oil at the Poles ; everywhere degraded as slaves yet ex- pected to have the virtue of saints, and to be the ministering angels of man's life. In Madagascar, wives salute the husband by passing the tongue over his feet ; and amongst the Moors, the wives stand and serve while their masters eat. Even the Esquimaux, who live upon tallow, and drink the blood of seals — a creature, half fish, and only half human — employs the small gleam of intellect vouch- safed to him in forcing his wife to become his bond-slave. Nothing, indeed, but the hypo- thesis that the fallen angels of Heaven are expiating their rebellion in the form of woman, can account for the universal humiliation of the fated race. In Europe, although women have never had any proper political recognition, yet they have always exercised great social influence. In early times the Greek women were allowed to vote in the public assemblies, and, though masculine jealousy still denied them equality as citizens, yet they had a permitted rivalry in all that evidenced the supremacy of mind. Corinna would compete with Pindar in verse lO SOCIAL STUDIES. and the daughter of Pythagoras lectured in his classes ; Aspasia, the spirit queen of Pericles, discoursed philosophy to a listening Socrates ; while maidens with that old desire for knowledge, for which Eve perilled Paradise, were known to disguise themselves as students to attend the lectures of Plato, although the ban of political inferiority was still resting on this sex. In a land where the human form was a revelation of beauty, the religion, poetry ; the rites, festivals ; the language, music ; where art had its noblest types, genius its brightest illustrations, and patriotism its immortal heroes, it is not strange that woman rose, through inspiration and sympathy, to be the priestess of intellect. Therefore we find that the Greeks, above all, seem to have comprehended the true signifi- cance of women as the highest spiritual expres- sion of humanity. The lofty and the beautiful, wisdom and grace, the secret harmonies of the universe, and the divine minor principle of nature were all symbolised under female forms, and their mythology was a true apotheosis of womanhood, free, however, from the bondage of marriage, for the muses and the divine Athene of the Parthenon were never married. The Greeks evidently held that genius raises THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. II woman to a lonely elevation. The priestess cannot at once tend the fire on the domestic hearth, and watch by the sacred flame on the Altar of God. It is singular that although marriage is the only institution brought from Paradise, and dates its ritual from before the Fall, yet in no mythology is the idea of divine inspiration connected with it. Muse or sybil, priestess or pythoness, all on whom rested the spirit of prophecy or divination, belonged to the virgin class ; and the vestals were honoured above all other women, as if by their mystic consecration to virginity, they became endowed with holier and higher powers. At Rome the praetors and consuls lowered their fasces to them on the public way ; a Hctor attended them in the streets ; they rode in chariots, and sat in the chief seats at spectacles in their white robes edged with purple, and the priestly fillet bound upon the brow, like the calm guardian genii of the empire, above and apart from all mere individual sympathies. The position of women during the early period of European civilisation was not without dignity. The Gothic nations believed that amongst women many were endowed with the spirit of prophecy and mysterious powers over 12 SOCIAL STUDIES. nature for good and evil. They were admitted to the priestly and legal offices, and sat at the war councils, and headed armies. Christianity developed this sense of woman's mystical nature into the chivalrous worship of the middle ages, where, through all the frenzied excesses of a courtesy gone mad, one can yet recognise the prevalent idea of woman's significance in the world as the inspirer, the spiritualiser, and the rewarder of the brave. The love of woman then ennobled like the love of glory. She was the high priestess of that religion of sentiment, honour and courage, that was the beautiful fanaticism of the creed of chivalry. But the Pagan belief of her prophetic powers, and her half-deification by Christian chivalry, received further and fatal devolopment, till the notion finally gained ground that woman in some mysterious manner could form a league with Satan himself, and through his potent power exercise a terrible and malific influence over all things that excited her envy or her hatred. Then began the horrible persecutions that lasted throughout two centuries, when women, stigma- tised as witches, were tortured, reviled, hunted down, burned alive, and stamped out of creation, if they had the fatal gift of more beauty, or more brains than other women. THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. I3 After this terrible era the pretensions to supernatural power lay dormant for a long while until revived by the mesmerists, who brought forward startling proofs that women really had affinities with the spiritual world much stronger than exist in the other sex. And the strange, mystic power they evidently possess has now be- come an acknowledged fact in occult philosophy. We have now traced the history of women •from Paradise to the nineteenth century, and have heard nothing through the long roll of the ages but the clank of their fetters, some of iron, like the gyves of the African bond-slave ; others perhaps of gold, like those of the captive Zenobia; or heavy with jewels, as the anklets of Odalisque ; still fetters and manacles are on all ; for law, prejudice and custom have com- bined to hold women in abject bondage for six thousand years. One must regard, therefore, with genuine admiration the efforts of those brave-hearted heroines who, from time to time, have come forth from the ranks of the oppressed, and striven to interpret the true significance of woman in the idea of humanity, and to lift her from the bondage and low level of a narrow conventional code to the full perfection of a magnificent womanhood. 14 SOCIAL STUDIES. Yet there is still a mystery about woman's destiny which casts its shadow even over eternity. Here, the existence of woman is chiefly manifested by love and sacrifice, and patient self-abnegation, that others may rejoice ; heedless of herself, so as she can bring light to the life of those beloved. Thus she per- meates all existence with sanctifying power, assuming all tenderest names and holiest rela- tions — wife, mother, sister, daughter — so that under every form she may still — angel-like — stand beside man from the cradle to the grave, lavishing all that is beautiful in her nature with a silent devotion that exacts no return ; the heart her kingdom, the affections her ministers. This is her apparent mission on earth, but in the life beyond, when these earthly ministrations are not needed, what will be the aim and mean- ing of her existence ? The position of the sex in the beatified universe is a sealed vision. Will male and female angels exist to all eternity, where there is no marrying or giving in marriage, or Cherubim and Seraphim, Knowledge and Love, are they, perchance, the male and female principle made eternally objective ; or is there a rotation for each soul by successive incarna- tions in male and female forms, until, at last, humanity attains some glorified, full-developed THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 1 5 organisation, in which the special quahties of each sex will be united, the intellect and the love, the tenderness and the strength, or, least probable hypothesis of all, will our wondrous humanity, made higher even than the angels, be for ever divided into two races, one eternally lower than the other, so that, from first to last, the doom of woman may be read — subjection to man on earth, degradation beneath man in Heaven ? After all, perhaps, Swedenborg's visionary glance beheld the truth when he asserts that souls change sex at every moment in the spiritual world. Feminine when they aspire, masculine to the soul that has not yet reached an equal spiritual elevation, or as Emerson explains, ' You love the worth in me, then I am your husband ; meanwhile, I adore the greater worth in another, and so become his wife. Do you love me, means, do you see the same truth? If so, we are happy, our souls blend in harmony ; but, presently, one of us passes into the perception of higher truth, then we are divorced, no tension can hold us longer.' This theory is confirmed by the fact that the love of woman is generally aspiration — hero- worship ; while man receives homage more readily than he gives it. l6 SOCIAL STUDIES. It explains also the inconstancy of all-gifted, progressive natures ; for such souls are for ever seeking new and loftier sympathies ; therefore, the highest love is never mutual ; the lower nature worships, but the higher still ascends and aspires. Lastly, it explains the isolation of all genius ; for the soul that yearns for the perfect, the infinite, the divine, cannot rest contented within the narrow limitations of one frail human heart inferior to it in all things. But justice to the women of earth is of more importance to us here than the destiny of women in Heaven, or speculations as to the rank they may hold in the future life. Enough if we demand and can obtain in this present span of time from law and usage, government and society, that woman hall have full privilege and freedom to develop all the powers of her intellect, as well as all the soft graces of her tender nature. ' What woman needs,' as Margaret Fuller observes, ' is not as a woman to rule, but as a nature to grow ; as an intellect to discern ; as a soul to lead the higher life, and unfold such power as were given her with the living breath of God on the day of creation.' Hitherto, the chief dogma of woman's educa- tion has been simply husband-worship. She THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 1/ was taught that if she studied it was simply to qualify herself as a companion to her husband ; if she talked, it should be just enough to show that she appreciated his profounder wisdom. She was to resign all individual taste, to dress only as he pleased, obey meekly as he ordered, and, whatever might be his faults, to give him un- qualified homage as to a visible God. It is time, surely, for this Dalai Lama re- ligion to be somewhat modified ; and already women are finding higher motives and nobler incentives for their life-work. Strong, redemp- tive souls have arisen amongst them to lead the crusade against custom and cant ; and soon some Jael may appear to break the political bondage, or a Judith the sensuous bondage in which the sex has been held, and through their efforts a new era m.ay be given to the world of equal rights, equal culture, and equal honours for men and women. It is remarkable that Christianity at once accepted woman as co-worker with man in the great mission of human elevation ; and with what tenderness our Lord always treated the sex ! His first miracle was in honour of a marriage, and it was performed at the request of a woman. Twice for woman's tears He raised the dead to life ; His last human thoughts B 1 8 SOCIAL STUDIES. were for a woman, and His first utterance from the grave was to a woman. Even the humbled sinner at His feet He raised from the dead with the pardoning fiat, — ' Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more.' Yet the elevation that began by Christianity- has been only imperfectly carried out. In all penal enactments, certainly, a stern equality prevails, but all the social privileges of rank, title, wealth, honours and position, are still exclusively reserved for men. Two moral codes even are framed for man and woman, one permitting the widest latitude, the other exacting the most rigid obedience, under the penalty of being cast out into the wilderness. Yet, while women are expected to be strong against all temptation, no means are provided to save them from the helpless poverty that so often drags souls downward to despair. Nothing is done by laws, government or society towards giving women an honourable status and ade- quate reward for their gifts and work. Yet many official positions might be selected for which women would be fully competent. Female professorships might be founded, lec- turers appointed, each with a definite income, and other and various paths of work and move- ment opened out to give women, not only the THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 19 means to live, but also a vivid interest in life by the honourable recognition of their gifts and powers. For this, too, is wanting to them, and the blank deprivation of all stimulants to exertion is fatal chiefly to women of genius ; and the atrophy of the soul that comes to them is often an agony harder to bear than even poverty with its bitter privations. If men, destined for all the honours the world can give, yet often sink down weary under the burden of their work, how can womdn keep up a brave spirit without any prospect whatever of honour or reward. They who have to fight their way through closing icebergs of social prejudice, cant and sophisms, until, too often, the languor of hopeless effort succeeds the fitful and transient manifestations of the higher nature, and genius dies out in despair for want of a definite sphere of action and a suitable reward. Recognition in some visible form is a health- ful and natural stimulant to exertion ; for wherever there is talent there is ambition. Glory is the sympathy of the masses, and genius demands a shrine in the empire of humanity as well as an altar in the heart of one. But in the freezing atmosphere of society what place have these consecrated souls of high 20 SOCIAL STUDIES. intellect and impassioned sensibilities, mostly uncomprehended, always misunderstood. They cannot rest contented in the dull monotony of daily cares, while every avenue to wealth and rank is carefully reserved by man for his own benefit, along with those symbols of honour which the crowd reverence, because significant of merit. Men who fight, lawyers who plead, poets who sing, may receive the often well-earned title that lifts them to nobility, and symbolises the intellect that raised them above it ; but there is no peerage of talent for the gifted amongst women. They may run their chariots in the dust of a stadium, but never hope to wear the laurel crown. The Queen has already founded an order for distinguished bravery, and even another order to reward the faithful services of her household servants ; would it not then be worthy of her sex and station to institute a royal order of merit for women eminent in literature and art, with title and life-income, after the ecclesias- tical model — a peerage, in fact, without being hereditary. Genius in man or woman deserves national recognition, of which rank and wealth are the outward and visible signs, and it is an injus- THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 21 tice to deprive half the nation of all chance or hope of national honours, while equal tax- ation is imposed on all alike. At present women assist in supporting every institution of the empire, yet the Imperial taxes never come back to them in any form of benefit, and they are not even represented in the legislature. \yith men it is different, every station and every honour is open for their competition, and, if they are taxed, they benefit. But even if re- presentation in Parliament be denied to women, there might, surely, be an elective council of representative women, to organise measures for the advancement of the sex, and to formulate their timid pleadings for justice into a resolute demand. The importance of special female universi- ties should, above all, be advocated. Every office to be held by women — as President, Professors, and Lecturers — and each office to be endowed with a certain definite rank and income suitable to the attainments of the recipient. Female education at present is mere dilet- tanteism. It does not give what women really need so much, an assured status, and an hon- ourable independence. They are allowed, cer- 22 SOCIAL STUDIES. tainly, at present, a limited access to the great universities, but all the profit and emoluments are still exclusively reserved for men. Women, of course, if they have genius, can force their way in*-o literature, but authorship is a very precarious profession, and seldom brings in an income on which life can be adequately supported ; besides, all may not have the gift. Many minds have capabilities for other manifestations of mental power, and a suitable sphere should be found for all. Action for some, reflective work for another. Some souls speak best in deeds, in a life of rule and influence. Let such women be given stations of power and dignity — colonial govern- ment, for instance. Why not vice-queens as well as queens ? Any station where intellect can be evidenced by a life of energetic good might be given to women thus gifted. To others leave the symbol of speech, and let the lonely spirit fashion it Into a lever to move the world's great heart. The passionate pleadings of women for a due share of the rank and honours of the empire cannot always be stifled with the phrase : — ' Independent women, learned women, thinking women, are not liked ; society only wants pretty, well-dressed women to attract and amuse.' And so, many a fine intellect amongst THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 23 women lies buried under the dessicating social system, like some grand statue of a god beneath the Libyan sands. Yet, there is no greater fallacy than the doc- trine that women should be mere negations if they desire to charm and please in society ; for ignorance and shallow vanity soon weary, even though aided by the the glamour of beauty. And no woman without intellect ever yet gained permanent influence over a man's life. ' If women,' says Addison, ' would but think as much of the adornment of their minds as of their persons earth would soon recognise her queen.' As the old Greek mythus teaches — It is the Cestus of Venus that confers the real power of fascination, for it means spiritual grace ; and without it even Venus herself failed to captivate. Genius never yet unsexed a woman, or learn- ing or culture ever so extended ; but the mean- ness of her ordinary social, routine life, with all its petty duties and claims, and ritual of small observances, degrades and humiliates her, for it deprives her of all dignity, and leaves her without any meaning in God's great universe. Hear how a modern poet mourns over female inanity and woman's 'drossy chat' with the silly homage of silly lovers : — 24 SOCIAL STUDIES. ' Still as before and as now, balls, dances, and even- ing parties, Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing ; Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves at the dreary piano ; Utter divorcement from sense, mother earth, and object of living.' While with rude eloquence he denounces the indolent vanity of woman's purposeless life :— ' Ye unhappy statuettes, ye miserable trinkets. Poor alabaster chimney-piece ornaments under glass cover; Come in God's name, come down. The very French clock by you Puts you to shame with its ticking; the fire-irons deride you ; Come in God's name, come down ! Do anything ; be but something!^ This is the true gospel needed for women, — ' Be but something ! ' A life of noble aims is a life of truest beauty — a music manifested. For the whole being then moves harmoniously for- ward in an ascension toward the highest and the divine. Women of intellect, especially, cannot accept the routine life of ordinary society and be happy. They revolt against the claims on time and THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. 25 thought of our petty conventional usages ; they refuse to accept the limitations imposed by society on freedom of action ; they chafe in the fetters of prejudice ; and their strong, passionate natures spring up elastic against the injustice of laws and the bondage of social fictions. There are some brows that will not bend to be seared with the brand of inferiority, some souls that will not be fused into the uniform conglomerate demanded of mediocrity, like rocks in the lava stream its fires even cannot calcine. They de- mand a higher platform on which to plant the banner of the rights of women, with all the aids that society, the world, the universe can give to ensure the intellectual advancement of their sex. Meanwhile woman need not be taken from the circle of her womanly duties, which are also her holiest joys ; for all the triumphs of intellect fail to give her perfect happiness unless she is centered likewise in a strong, loving heart. The praise of crowds, the glare of applause, never yet adequately compensated for the low, approving voice of one, and human love must thrill through every fibre of her being, or life, even in the splendour of success, would be to her but a twilight Urania without sunshine or glow. 26 SOCIAL STUDIES. Love is truly the sacrament of life by which consecrated souls rise into a diviner strength ; yet it is still but a type of the higher aspirations for which the soul was created, and which alone can fill the spirit's infinite capacity for ascension and adoration. Human relations, however, will adjust them- selves without intervention of preachers or laws. They are the palm trees in the wil- derness, beneath which the soul rests in- stinctively a space in its onward journey, a transient shadow, not an abiding home, while around rolls the cycle of eternity, and above is God, the true Bridegroom of the Soul. Yet, surely, the sanctifying influences of human love will not be lessened because nobler existences meet within the limit of its many blessings. The highest minds are ever the holiest lovers. Wisdom and knowledge will not annihilate human passion, but rather bring down on it a diviner spirituality to sublimate and purify the earthly and the sensuous. But some women, perhaps, may still pine in the mere limits guarded by the penates ; proud, inspired souls, who need the world for a sphere, humanity for an object, and the glory of sacrifice for some great cause more than all the soft pleasures of domestic love. These, too, THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN. Ij will find their place at last, when every portal is opened to woman's intellect. They will become spiritual leaders of light and progress, and need no longer stand lonely in life, like a star rent from its system. Some noble purpose, some grand sphere, where passionate energy can work along with duty, will ensure for these lofty missionary natures the only happiness of which such exalted organisations are susceptible. Thus, every grade and class, thinkers and doers, apostles of freedom or ministrants of mercy, will manifest after their ability the divine uses of existence, and claim their right as women to a recognised place amongst the workers for humanity. GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. Alphonse Daudet, the brilliant French novelist, maintains in his clever work, ' Les Femmes dArtistes,' that the marriage state is quite detrimental to the highest intellectual life, and mars its development. Not that he speaks from the experience of his own home, for his wife is a brilliant, handsome woman, holds her station with distinguished success, and is quite worthy to be the wife of a celebrity; while Daudet himself has none of that severe dogmatism which makes nervous people tremble in the presence of intellect ; he is handsome and fas(?inating, with beautiful eyes and perfect manners. But such marriages, where life glides on in graceful calm without a discord or the crash of opposing temper, are rare and excep- tional. The rule remains that complete isolation from small domestic cares, perfect freedom from all social routine, is absolutaly necessary for those peculiar natures in which the tumultuous 28 GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 29 elements of genius are always striving toward some visible organic expression. ' No solitude, no glory/ should be the epigraph over the sacred adytum where the priesthood of intellect celebrate their mysteries. And, with this passion for solitude strong in him, Daudet, when first entering on the literary career, fled from the glare of Paris pleasures and took up his abode for months in the weird solitude of a lighthouse, on an island rock off the coast of Corsica, holding communion only with the winds and the waves and the rushing tempest of his own emotions. It is from his own knowledge of the artist nature that he draws his arguments against marriage, while his illustrations are taken from the intellectual circles of Paris which he knows so well, and where many a man of genius has had his nerves shattered and his life ruined by the mistake of an ill-assorted union. A poet friend, with whom he discusses the subject one evening at the hour des effusions et des confidences^ maintains the contrary opinion, and gives Victor Hugo as an example of the highest genius, whose life was made still more radiant by the soft charm of domestic ties. Precisely, replies his opponent, because he is the highest type. Victor Hugo is not a man, but humanity — a nature made up of all natures. 30 SOCIAL STUDIES. He is never led ; he dominates all influences, and bends them into pliant instruments, from which his soul draws music. But the artist who is not superhuman like Victor Hugo, should beware of bondage to the emotions. He should stand apart from all human ties in order that he may more calmly analyse the workings of passion. His mission is to reveal the hidden mysteries of the soul, and, for the furtherance of philosophical analysis, he may even break a heart, but should never allow his own to be weakened by combat with inferior natures. All writers who have studied life teach the same doctrine. Edmond About says that a man of genius should close the book of love after the prologue ; for, if he gives his heart wholly to a woman, she returns it to him broken. For true spiritual natures pine in bondage. All routine of law and conventionalism is hate- ful and revolting to them. Their lives have no fixed orbit. They alternate in phases of ecstasy and agony, in storms and whirlwinds, or the gloom of a midnight despair ; and for these beings of nerves and caprices a special type of women should be created ; but the world seldom affords an example of such a type. GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 3 1 JThe daughters of men who wed with the sons of the gods, should have courage to face the Hghtnings and the thunders, if they dare to stand on the mountain height with an immortal husband. For such a man, and to insure his happiness, a woman should be ready to give her life with sublime self-immolation. At once an angel and a victim, sensitive to every chord of his nature, yet with a smile forever on the lip, no matter what anxieties may corrode the heart. Genius is an exotic that requires to be nursed in sunshine, but the ordinary, common-place wife too often chills and blights the divine spirit through her shallow egotism, forever exacting, never giving ; estimating work only, as Daudet says, by its money value ; therefore she teases her husband to make busts of medio- crities, because they generally pay well, and to paint the faded, affected women of society, because it may bring him into fashion. And she insists on his going out with her, as she likes to be noticed as the wife of a celebrity. To all this the husband generally consents in a meek, submissive way ; for, except in moments of passionate inspiration when the god descends on him, the artist is the weakest creature under heaven, so easily led and duped by a woman tyrant. 32 SOCIAL STUDIES. But some day he violently breaks the bonds, and a scene, a fracas, a separation is the result. Alphonse Daudet draws such a picture from life. The world says of the husband, ' How wicked of him to leave his wife, such an ex- cellent woman, so active in her house, everything so orderly, and she never left him for a moment.' Exactly, there was the horror of it. She never left him. He pined for solitude in those precious moments of intellectual excitement, when thought is organised to form only in divine stillness ; but he never could attain it. She was there, always there, arranging and settling, methodical and punctual and orderly ; abounding in all those virtues that kill great thoughts ; incapable of sympathy, and entirely failing to comprehend the needs and peculiari- ties of the sensitive temperament of genius. So he fled. His life was wrecked, but his soul was liberated, and he was content. Solitude and liberty are for artists and gods. Ill-assorted marriages torture the gifted in many other ways. The musician finds that his wife has no ear for music, and she always begins to chat with her friends, or declaim loudly to her refractory servants, when his soul is going forth into the infinite, and his hand ' loosens the notes in a golden shower.' GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 33 The poet's wife generally hates poetry, calls it ' stuff,' and laments that her husband cannot write, like other people, paragraphs and acrostics or prize parodies that bring in such quantities of money. Even love marriages have no sure foundation in the intellectual temperament. To see, love and wed in a moment is ecstatic ; but to live and not love for the whole after-term of human existence is a fearful reality, too often experi- enced, in all its dull depression, when unrelated souls are bound together by the irrefragable marriage chain. A young writer of promise and rising fame sees a pretty shop-girl, a jeweller's daughter, and is fascinated at once. She was so gentle and insinuating, so charming, with her little curled head and her little white hands, daintily fingering the glittering trinkets, and her placid smile that always beamed a welcome. He fancies that under her rule the disorder of his bachelor home will be changed to a paradise of comfort, and they are married. But the sunshine came not ; only a grey, watery atmosphere of fog seemed to envelop his life. When his clever friends came as usual, and thought flashed as at a Platonic symposium, the wife sat by and smiled her placid smile, C 34 SOCIAL STUDIES. and uttered the small platitudes of mediocre natures, the set colloquial phrases of commerce, with the most exasperating unconsciousness that she was a bore and wearisome to them all. On the contrary, she fancied she was quite an addition to the circle, so nice, lady- like and well bred. Then the horror of a dreadful truth fell upon the husband's heart. He became conscious that he would have to sit opposite to this woman and look at her vapid smile, and listen to her flimsy talk, for, perhaps, half a century. There was no help for him. No release. Sometimes the tumult of his feelings raged in open war, and then she wept and lamented that she had not married one or other of the young shopmen who were dying about her, and were now so well off. But after a time matters grew worse. She began to assume airs as the wife of an author, to give her opinion, and interrupt the conver- sation with her affected gush of praise. The husband could see the suppressed laughter on the lips of the Platonists, and their contempt for the little fool he had made his wife. This finished his agony. He gave up his friends. He gave up writing, fell into a state of morbid melancholy, and finally died, leaving all his pre- cious manuscripts confused and incomplete. The GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 35 widow crammed them all into the fire, smiled as before, and eventually married one, or, perhaps, both of the admiring shopmen. And she still utters her little platitudes of commerce, and refers, as to a martyrdom, to her first marriage with that poor scribbler who never could earn enough by anything he wrote to keep her in proper style. But if the small common-place mind is ex- asperating, perhaps the untamed freedom of the half savage, the fearless passions of a daughter of the people, would suit the require- ments of the exceptional soul of genius. So thought a young French artist as he looked on the massive figure, the heavy coils of black hair, the grand limbs of a superb Tranteverine, as she stood in the mud of the shallows fishing for eels. How splendid she was in the flashing sunlight, with her great eyes, her scarlet bodice, her white chemisette tucked up high over the great sculptural arms, and then her mad, merry laughter that stirred the air like a rush of the breeze through the pine woods. He made a picture of her at once, which excited immense admiration at the Exposition. A glorious study of sky and air, and the full rich life of youth, in a flush of colour and a glow of light. 36 SOCIAL STUDIES. At last he had found an ideal to take into his life. He hated the false affected woman of society, but here was a beautiful savage, a child of the sun and the storms and the flowers ; she would give his artist life eternal youth — so he married her. She had no possession save a big red cat, and he carried her and the cat to Paris. But when she put on the Paris dress like other people, what a mournful transformation of the daughter of the sun. A great splendid animal in a little Paris bonnet, always tilting to one side over the heavy masses of hair was a failure, and the great Roman feet, made for splashing in the reeds and the rushes, limped sadly in the little Paris boots, and the effect of a Paris mantle on the great broad shoulders was altogether deplorable. Even her beauty seemed to have disappeared with the loss of her native picturesque surroundings. Then her coarse language, her large gestures, her bad French, all these things agonised him at every moment. A savage veneered is an artistic mistake. He saw it all and sighed, and withdrew from the world where he could never bring a wife who talked as loud in society as if she were hailing a boat across the Tiber, and whose laugh shook the room like an earthquake. GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 37 However, they have got over ten years of married Hfe. The heavy chin, the broad shoulders, the vulgar mouth, have become accentuated ; still the eyes are splendid, and the artist - husband has learned to endure a good deal. She is so good-hearted and kind though when she claps him on the back, and presses him to eat some dish which she has spent all the morning preparing, he shudders, and a silent aspiration rises to his lips that he had left her on her own soil amid the reeds and the rushes, with her cat and the eels and the fishermen of the Tiber. Other experiences in married life have proved equally uncongenial to the strange, sensitive, artistic nature. A young dramatist, with eyes of fire and soul of flame, fancies he will find his ideal in the first love of a pure young heart — a simple, docile girl, that he can mould as he chooses by his strong will, and breathe, as it were, a divine spirit into the clay. ' Yes,' he said to his friend, ' I liked her clear innocent eyes, her calm expression that no passions had ever disturbed ; even her little provincial accent and ways I liked, for they suggested the pure innocence of the country life. ' And now to say that I hate her accent ; I 38 SOCIAL STUDIES. hate her ways ; I hate this torpid soul that no effort of mine can wake to life or sensibility. I read my poem to her — my great, noble poem. " How pretty," she said, and yawned. ' I could have killed her. But I was calm, and explained to her that poetry was the highest expression of the divine, and that she ought to strive to comprehend its depth and meaning. She smiled as if I were an idiot, and said she liked common sense, but what I read seemed all nonsense. Common sense, the in- stinct of common brains and cold hearts. ' She cared nothing for music, nor for art, nor even for dress, only for good solid house- hold work, and economies above all. When our clever circle discussed art and literature with their usual fervent vehemence, she sat silent, stuck up in a corner at her eternal needlework, and looked on with such a con- temptuous sneer that my friends began to hate the sight of her, and gave up their visits. Then she brought in her own set. Oh, heavens ! The bathos of these mediocre souls, the tor- ture of listening to the shallow talk of common- place women. Can you wonder that I left her? The influence of a nature like hers on a man's intellect is like a slow poison. And why should I allow my soul to be slowly mur- GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 39 dered by a woman, merely because she is called my wife? No, I tried honestly to lift her to my level, but she would not be lifted. ' So the horrible dream is over, and I am free. These obstinate, self-opinionated women, without sympathy or the power to appreciate, are a dull leaden weight on life; besides, she was not happy with me, and we are better parted.' It is quite true that the temperament and ways of literary men are often very irritating to a woman, their disorder and recklessness, their utter want of a law of life, sometimes sit- ting up all night, or lying in bed all day or for days together, .to finish an essay or a drama undisturbed, the atmosphere of cigars they live in, the fever and the fret, the sleeplessness and the stimulants, and their intense, ingrained, though unconscious selfishness, these things none but a woman nobly resolved to be a victim can endure. Yet the temperament only is to blame, the man never means to be un- kind, or to make his wife walk on plough- shares. The artisan can work at all times with perfect freedom, but genius can only work in moments, in fits and spasms, when the idea must be caught flying, or it will come no more, and in these tempestuous moments of cerebral 40 SOCIAL STUDIES. excitation the path must be left free for the rush of the chariot wheels, and all the home life must be hushed into a fearful silence lest the inspiration should be disturbed before the word of power has been uttered. Then there are days of weird, wordless gloom, when a large parcel lies on the table, ' Declined with thanks,' and the wife knows it is there, like the corpse of a murdered innocent, but cares not to allude to it, only its presence is felt by the sombre silence that pervades the house, and the fitful temper at the dinner-table of the husband. To some women the reflected glory of being the wife of a celebrity compensates for the actual discomfort, but unless a woman can accept immolation cheerfully, she becomes miserable herself, and a hindrance in place of a helpmeet to her husband. There is also the constant difficulty of getting money when there is no regular income, and one has to live on capital evolved from the brain in some happy fit of working power. And when money comes in, how recklessly it is spent ! What ceaseless subscriptions for statues, tombs and memorials to the deceased brotherhood of genius. And what endless efforts to found a new ' literary review ' which is to take the world by storm, GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 4I always the craze of a young band of writers, though generally ending in failure, bitterness and bankruptcy. Naturally, and by instinct, a woman has a strong tendency to look on a man of genius as a god, and to offer him worship as well as love; but in the fatal intimacy of daily life illusions soon vanish, and she finds that, ex- cept in moments of inspiration, her divinity is even weaker than an ordinary mortal, less able to guide or strengthen others ; so she resents the knowledge that her idol is only made of clay, and her feelings alternate between con- tempt and dislike, especially if she is of a passionate, impulsive temperament. An excellent man, an horticulturist, the head of a nursery garden, had a wife of this de- scription — handsome, ardent, and about ten years his junior. Amidst her beautiful flowers in the silent garden she dreamed of the Paris world of splendour and celebrities, where even she also might reign as a queen, and be ad- mired and flattered, were she only seen and known. Then the dream would vanish, and she saw only the bowed down back of her respectable husband over his flowers, and heard only the snipping of the hedges and the eternal drip of the watering-pot ; and she wearied sadly 42 SOCIAL STUDIES. over the gravel walks, the mathematical beds, the geometrical exercise, and the life regulated by the barometer. So the years passed till she reached the trente ans — the fatal age when passion be- comes reckless in the despair of vanishing youth. Just then a poet arrives in the little provin- cial town, and is provincially lionised. A true poet of the salojts, with cavernous eyes, float- ing hair, and a pale, sombre, fatal face. He is always perfectly dressed. No lyric disorder apparent, save in the somewhat careless tie of his cravat. Everyone invited him ; he always came late, between ten and midnight, and it was an im- pressive thing to see him as he leaned upon the mantelpiece, tossed back his long hair, and spoke, as if in a melancholy dream, of the soul of the poet tortured by passion and despair. But the excitement was at its height when he declaimed his celebrated poem, ' The Creed of Love,' beginning with the stupendous line, — * I believe in Love as I believe in God.' And all the pretty women in their full evening dress gathered round, and gazed at him with earnest, humid eyes. GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 43 Of course, the wife of the respectable horti- culturist was vanquished at once. What woman of unfulfilled aspirations, whose husband only snipped and planted and watered, could resist the magic influence of this Orphic revelation ? After a few interviews she flung herself at the poet's feet, and declared that life was no longer endurable with ' this man ' (on these occasions the husband is always 'this man,' even though he is a scientific gardener). The poet was rather embarrassed by the gift of her devotion, but he could not refuse, so they departed together for Paris. Now, she thought, the reign of intellectual splendour will begin ; but how different was the reality. A mean apartment, a moody, irritable companion ; no brilliant world waiting to receive her with homage and admiration. On the con- trary, society treated her with the most super- cilious impertinence, and she was left to an ignoble solitude, while the poet, faultlessly dressed, went out every evening and declaimed * The Creed of Love ' to other women, the ele- gant and fashionable women of society, who disdained to notice her existence. But even this might have been borne could she still have wor- shipped ; but she found her idol querulous and fretful, hypochondriacal and abominably selfish. 44 SOCIAL STUDIES. He was always imagining he was ill, and the table was covered with vials and powders, and the room kept at stove heat. What a change after her garden and the flowers and the pure air! After a month or so of broken illusions, life became insupportable to her. She was stifled in the atmosphere of the close room, wearied with his temper, and she began to hate ' The Creed of Love.' How to escape was now her only thought. At length she wrote to her hus- band, told him all, entreated him to come for her. She had outlived her dreams, and would now be a good wife to him henceforth and for ever. He was a philosopher ; he forgave, and he came. One evening, while the poet was de- claiming ' The Creed of Love ' at an assembly of worshipping women, she left the house, found her excellent husband waiting with a carriage at the end of the street, and the midnight train whirled her back to peace, order, her beautiful gardens, and a happy, rational life. For, after all, a rational husband is the best companion for the life-long marriage state. The poet lover, with his moods and caprices, was only endur- able when a glamour of glory covered him like a silver veil; and the veil, we know, is thrown GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 45 on merely for society, and is never worn in the dull routine of common every-day life. But it must be confessed that women have often many and grievous faults in married life, very irritating to a literary husband and a man of genius. And the philosopher of antiquity, who would not raise his eyes for three years, lest they should rest upon a woman, had, no doubt, suffered from some woman's aggravat- ing ways while he was trying to devote him- self to the abstractions of philosophy. Their chief fault is a childish jealousy of a man's life work, manifested in overt acts of ill- temper, and other modes of annoyance. This is the common failing of common minds. A woman has torn the canvas from the easel where her husband was at work in a fit of jealous rage. Another, with grim determination, always chose the time when the author sat down to write to practise her scales or pound at some terrible sonata. And one (though such cruel malignity is scarcely credible) has been even known to hum a tune in the very room where her poet husband was striving to finish a beauti- ful and elaborate sonnet. And all this out of spite and jealousy for some fancied neglect. The best chance, perhaps, of domestic felicity is when all the family are Bohemians, and all 46 SOCIAL STUDIES. clever, and all enjoy thoroughly the erratic, impulsive, reckless life of work and glory, in- different to everything save the intense moments of popular applause. Such a family may be met in the art circles of Paris. The mother had been a model and a beauty, and still posed as Hebe when she handed a cup of tea to a visitor. The daughters, handsome, brilliant and clever, as the children of artists always are, sing, act, recite, dance, dress better than anyone else. Everything looks picturesque on them. Fashionable ladies vainly desire the pattern of that flowing train, that lifted robe, that classic sleeve ; but no pattern is to be had. All was arranged by the aid of a few pins in the caprice of the moment as the handsome girls chatted and laughed before the mirror in their little room. Youth, beauty, and artistic taste can work wonders with the most chaotic materials. People asked how they managed to pay for everything; but they never paid. That was their magic secret. Bills, of course, were endless ; but when some particularly severe creditor appeared, one of the splendid daughters pleaded with such a bewitch- ing smile that he would ' call next Monday ' (it was the family formula), that he retired humbled GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 47 and abashed from the glorious presence, as if his claim had been an impertinence. There was no regular dinner hour. A kind of gipsy camp was held behind the screen, and nourishment was taken with lawless haste dur- ingf the transition intervals of the drama of life. When a good sum came in for a picture by the father, they spent it right royally ; not, indeed, paying the School Board or the water rate, or the consolidated house taxes — such things depress genius — but in some splendid outlay of extravagant revelry, which kept them in high spirits for a week after, and they worked all the better for it. The State, surely, ought to consider the im- portance of preserving genius from low cares ; and Parliament might pass a bill to exempt the race of the gifted from taxation. For these brilliant beings are necessary to the world ; they supply the life, the phosphorus, the divine fire, the grace, beauty, and charm of existence, and the nation in return should relieve them from all the mean burdens of prosaic and parochial claims. The true joy of the artist is in work; and when every member of the family has a special gift, which is repaid by the world's praise, then 48 SOCIAL STUDIES. everyone is happy. There is no idleness, no enmii. No one throws the burden of his life on another, no one needs a victim ; all work and all triumph, and learn to live and reign alone. Even when youth has passed, artistic instincts still give grace and joy to life, and the world still continues its homage to the abdicated royalties of genius. The more independent of each other each member of the household is, the greater the chance of happiness. If every wife had a de- finite employment, she would be less given to those little jealousies and watchings and pry- ings that fill up the time of vacant minds. An American writer has said, ' The great mistake in female education is making the possession of a husband the first consideration in place of only the second.' The life-work should be the first ; and the life-work need not hinder the beautiful ministrations of love, but it will make a woman stronger and nobler, more ready to pardon and help in moments of trial. Unhappily, it is seldom that two equal and eternally related souls meet in the marriage state ; but this age has given an example of at least one such divine marriage, when the great poet wedded the great poetess of England in bonds of mutual love and honour. No jealousy GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. 49 was possible, for each stood on the supreme height of fame, and no cares or troubles marred the flow of genius in a married life, made radiant by fortune, luxury, art, culture, travel, high social position, and the world's applause. Death made the memory of this union sad and sacred, but the love remained to the last ; and the poet's genius gave it life and light. The most beautiful verses in Mr Browning's latest volume are consecrated to a thought of her who shared the glory of his life, and to an aspiration for their reunion. Mrs Carlyle failed to reach happiness because she had ambition without fame, and intellect without a career, and was too self-conscious and proud to be content with a subordinate part in life. She ought to have considered that her existence was really of no importance to the universe; but, her husband's words and works had power to send the world on its path of progress with mighty tangential force, and to drive a current of new life into the heart of the century. He was necessary to humanity ; but she was only necessary to smooth the path his soul travelled. In this line of duty lay the beautiful mission of a loving wife, and in this she ought to have found happiness; but she only thought of the small annoyances that lay D so SOCIAL STUDIES. in her own path, and pronounced herself * miser- able' — though holding the proud position of wife to the greatest man of the age ! Yet she loved him as well as her nature would permit ; but egotism can never nobly worship nor see the glory through the mist, and all the trials that made her ' miserable ' resulted more from faults in her own disposition than from her husband's temper. Had she married the village schoolmaster she might have been happier. A keen, clever, homely Scotchwoman, with her sharp tongue and her broad Scotch accent, she would have ruled the parish admirably. And this should have been her destiny ; but Carlyle raised her to eminence as his wife, gave her station and dignity in the great capital of the world ; and in return she darkened his fame, gave his name to the scoffers, and chilled the enthusiasm that would have raised memorials to his honour. From the woman that stands beside the man of genius in life much is demanded. She is the angel of his destiny, and accountable to the world for the treasure committed to her care — the peace and serenity of his soul. Some men work, and the world crowns them — they have their recompense ; others work and die in their youth, and the world weeps for them ; but some GENIUS AND MARRIAGE. $1 work and suffer, and the world neither crowns nor weeps. For them, at least, let a woman live, or, if need be, let a woman die. The one supreme grace for the wife of a man of genius is the grace of immolation and self-sacrifice. A woman is so easily replaced in the vast working world of life, but a great man's throne is vacant for evermore. Yet it must be remem- bered that under no circumstances can genius be made happy. The artist nature burns with an infinite desire for the infinite that nothing earthly can satisfy. Happiness is for the com- monplace only — for the mechanical workers to whom success means wages, not glory, A victim upon whom can be laid all the burden of existence is needed by the high priest of genius, and a wife may not have the sacrificial vocation. Herice the sum of all experience is apparently rather against marriage for the race of the gifted ; but the question still remains undecided. No new arguments have been adduced, and nothing stronger has been said on the subject by any modern writer than what Milton uttered two hundred years ago, when he wrote his celebrated treatise to prove that the loneliest life was better than an unsuited marriage, when two persons without any spiritual affinity were bound to- gether in irrevocable bondage by the words of 52 SOCIAL STUDIES. a ritual, * to their unspeakable weariness and despair,' and life became to them, in Milton's expressive words, ' a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemp- tion.' SOCIAL GRACES. Beauty is generally considered as the most seductive and irresistible of social graces. Yet even beyond the fascination of beauty may be ranked the charm of manner, and the brilliant interchange of thought between refined and cultivated intellects. Manner may indeed take the first place amongst social gifts, for it has an ethical value as a refining influence in all grades of life. It promotes harmony, softens ascerbity of temper, and diffuses a calm joy over the home circle ; while in society it dominates as no other gift or grace can do. Beauty may often have fatal power to draw souls earthward, and con- versation, with all its wit and brilliancy, may be used to vitiate the moral sense ; but manner is ever noble and ennobling, because based on the two great moral principles, respect for oneself and respect for others. Christianity has formulated this harmonising principle in the words, • As ye would that men should do to you, 54 SOCIAL STUDIES. do ye also to them,' and the positivist philosophy calls it * Altruism/ as opposed to selfishness and egotism, the very qualities most atagonistic to fine and noble manners. Manner exists as an heirloom amongst some races, as the Celt, the Slav and the Arab. The courtesy of the Celt approaches reverence, and the Bedouins have the calm majesty of desert kings. All the Latin races generally have singular grace of idiom and gesture, but the Teuton is naturally uncouth and rough. Mr John Bright, in one of his eloquent addresses to working men, said with truth, that ' manners, far more than pomp and luxury, form the chief difference between high and low, rich and poor, the noble and ignoble, and if the working classes could be trained into habits of mutual courtesy and politeness, if they were made sensible of the moral beauty of good, ness, forbearance, self-respect and reverence, there would be less of the hideousness of coarse language and brutal self-assertion in their ordinary intercourse.' Manner is a royal grace that we are accustomed to associate with high rank and high breeding, but it may dwell in the cottage as in the palace, and it has this advan- tage, that, while it can beautify all life, it costs nothing, and never generated an evil thought or word. The true science of manner is in the SOCIAL GRACES. 55 nature and heart, in the sensitive insight into another's feelings, and the instinct which avoids all that could hurt or wound, combined with the readiness to give honour where honour is due. But training and cultivation are still very neces- sary to bring the outward gesture into accord- ance and harmony with the inward grace. The voice must be taught modulation, the intonation brought to the perfection of clear and sonorous music, and the eyes, the lips, the hands, all made to express emotion with dignity and grace. Mr Matthew Arnold says that the proper training of the muscles of the mouth would alone be sufficient to make a people beautiful, and redeem the lowest type from utter ugliness, for the sin of a vulgar face lies chiefly in the helpless, inexpressive mouth. It is the charm of the French mouth, with its ever-varying curves, that gives such intelligence and expression to the French face. Then the language is labial, and that in itself helps to form a fine expressive mouth, with full command over the muscles, hence, le sourire spirituelle de France has become celebrated. There is therefore a deep truth un- derlying the very amusing * prunes, prism and poetry,' recommended to young ladies entering a room, for in reality labial sounds should be selected and adopted in conversation in pre- S6 SOCIAL STUDIES. ference to the sibilant and guttural, which distort the mouth and destroy facial harmony. The French look so well talking that they are fond of it ; indeed, Balzac assures us that in Paris alone is found the spontaneous, graceful intelligence of manner from which springs all good conversation. There is, in truth, a won- derfully seductive grace in voice, tone, intonation and movement, yet how little are they cultivated. These exquisite charms are almost wholly left to the professional artists, who consequently rule mankind by their fascination. Yet it would be quite possible to make every woman as perfect in tone and gesture as a trained actress. Everyone cannot be taught to sing or paint, but they all may be taught to speak clearly, intonate musically, and to move with dignity and grace. A year's training at the Dramatic College should be considered indispensable to every girl's educa- tion. Why, asks a French writer, cannot Les gestes gracietix^ la tourmire elegante of the stage, the noble movements of the head, the hands and arms, and the cultivated voice, be brought into our ordinary social life. The voice alone has an infinite power to charm ; yet of all graces it is the most neglected. The Greeks fully recog- nised the importance of manner and voice, and their children were early trained in habits of SOCIAL GRACES. 57 politeness and graceful courtesy. The youths were made to recite Homer, to gain command of sonorous language and rhythmical cadence ; they were taught to move to music, to maintain a noble dignity of bearing, easy grace, a low and level tone, and never to degenerate to laughter. Their great philosophers, Pericles, Plato, and Aristotle, were models of fine manners ; and the noble description given by Aristotle of the demeanour suited to a perfect gentleman, might be studied with advantage in the highest circles of nineteenth century civilisation. St Paul, who was deeply versed in Greek philosophy, had no doubt also studied the Greek code of manner. Coleridge notices the perfect courtesy and high breeding of St Paul, of which a notable instance is his reply to King Agrippa, ' I would that thou and all who hear me were even as I am, except these bonds! Here was the courage of his creed skilfully combined with the deference due to royal rank. The perfect grace and noble dignity of this answer could not be surpassed. In the rush of modern life the old elaborate forms of social etiquette are rapidly dying out. Visiting is carried on through the penny post, correspondence by the telegraph, and conversa- tion by the telephone. Science is killing all the stately grace of life, and flings so many treasures 58 SOCIAL STUDIES. to society, that the Beautiful, like Tarpeia, is crushed to death under the weight of the offer- ings. Machinery, railroads, telegraphs and cheap literature have destroyed beauty, grace, style, dignity and the art of conversation. Aristotle's high-bred gentleman, with his stately manners, slow movements and measured speech, would be soon hustled aside at a railway station, and probably lose his place and his ticket. Neither has society any longer the time to listen, as it did half a century ago, to the learned disquisitions of Macaulay, the inspired monologues of Coleridge, or the fierce-rolling iconoclastic thunders of Carlyle. The art of conversation has been gradually falling into decadence, and now barely exists ; though man- ner, or the mode of saying things well, still helps to keep it alive and even to give to com- mon-places the semblance of gold. In Shake- speare's time conversation was perhaps at its best in England. The Court set the example ; Queen Elizabeth had wit and learning, and round her circled some of the most re- markable men that England or Europe ever produced. Culture had reached a high level, and everyone aimed at being clever and brilliant, and above all, learned. It was the golden age of England when the national intellect reached' SOCIAL GRACES. 59 its supreme height in philosophy, poetry, the drama, and the splendour and depth of thought in social life. Queen Anne, though the dullest of good women herself, was fortunate also in having her reign illustrated by a great race of intellectual celebrities, all of them eminently distinguished for conversational power, as Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, Lady Mary Wortley Mon- tagu, and others. And there were great and brilliant women talkers even in the heavy Georgian era, whose wit and wisdom are pre- served to us in the bright pages of Horace Walpole, like dried rose-leaves, with the per- fumes still fragrant as in life. Dr Johnson is the high priest of the last century, and we fling a wreath to the memory of the fascinating Thrale, and 'little Burney,' and the wonderful and learned Mrs Delany, and the stately Han- nah More, and others who proved woman's right to be a social queen. After them comes a whirlwind of intellect, male and female, rushing down the dark unknown of the opening nine- teenth century. Immortal names of immortal men illustrate this great era, and a whole host of brilliant women light it with the radiance of their intellect, their wit, their beauty, and the sparkling splendour of their conversational gifts. Maria Edgeworth held the sceptre of intellect, 60 SOCIAL STUDIES. Lady Morgan ruled London by her wit, and Lady Blessington reigned at Gore House by her grace and brilliancy, while Lady Dufferin and Mrs Norton (of that wondrous Sheridan race) claimed and gaJned the world's homage by right of wit, beauty, and genius all combined, Mrs Jameson also, and the Brontes held their place right sovereignly, and Mrs S. C. Hall was a social power both in Ireland and England. Here was a splendid band of gifted women (all Irish by the way) who were as brilliant and interesting in conversation as they were power- ful with the pen. Later on we find the female intellect supremely illustrated only by the name of one woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She stands alone without a rival in the century, but then she stands alone amidst the women of all centuries. After the death of the great poetess of England, the royal race of women who reign by right divine of intellect disappears, and the Professional Beauty seized the vacated throne as a social power. The women of genius retreated into solitude, and are now never heard of but on a title-page. They no longer cast their influence on society as brilliant thinkers and talkers ; and a literary salon, ruled over by some dazzHng queen of intellect, some splendid women of wit and learning, exists in London SOCIAL GRACES. 6 1 no more ; for, while the rush of life is tending to destroy all the forms of social etiquette, the diffusion of knowledge is sapping the founda- tions of the conversational art which former generations almost raised to the perfection of a science. There is nothing now left in the outer world to talk about. Penny newspapers and shilling cram satiate all curiosity, and the pro- fessional reviewers kindly crumble up for us all the current poems and novels to save society the trouble of selection or mastica- tion. We are all fed on the same food, and have no new and strange interests to impart to each other. There are no more mysteries left. The whole world lies on our breakfast table, with all its fashions and follies, and by ten o'clock in the morning everyone knows everything that has happened throughout the universe, from the last spot on the sun to the last scandal and the latest crime. And then we glance over the society papers, where the whole thing is turned into a jest, and life is made to seem but one immense burlesque. But as con- versation dies out the silent pleasures of society are gaining strength and importance. Brilliant professional genius is summoned to do all the singing, playing, talking, reciting, while society merely sits still and listens. There is music 62 SOCIAL STUDIES. when none dare even to whisper to his neigh- bour a casual remark ; recitations when the room must be hushed to perfect silence ; while at the theatres society sits patiently, cramped and silent, for four hours or so, and is happy that no demand is made on it for talk. The whole mental activity of life has become vicarious. We lay our weariness on the head of some sub- stitute ; and so all personal responsibility ends for the exercise of intellect. We leave all that to professional talent, and. except that we eat and drink, we might as well be gods of stone, ranged, with rigid features, round the walls of a drawing-room, or massed in the centre like pins in a pincushion. There is no place any more for brilliant individuality or the small amateur accomplishments. Trained talent has seized the brain of the world, and grown rich on the monopoly ; as the merchants have seized the commerce and transmuted all they touch to gold. Society is frozen into a mere aggregate of pas- sive recipients and listeners, much depressed by the consciousness of their own insignificance and inferiority ; while the professionals receive the plaudits and the pay, and exult, with justi- fiable pride, in triumphs fairly won by genius, talent and earnest study. No chance or opening then is left to society to manifest that it has a SOCIAL GRACES. 6^ human soul and the gift of speech, except the grand old national institution of a dinner party. There at last the long-suppressed individual may gain confidence in his own actual and separate existence, and joyfully exclaim, Cogito ergo sum. And there is no better mode of stimulating the slumbering fires of intellectual life ; but it must be limited in number, and organised with a due regard to spiritual affinity. Much thought and study are required before we place the human individualities side by side for three mortal hours, without the power of change of place or the privilege of silence. All things in nature are under the influence of attraction and repulsion. It is the law of all that exists, and acts with as much force on the organisms of a dinner party as on the molecules that compose a world. Yet we too often arrange our social atoms in a reckless, incoherent propinquity, without the slightest attention to this great universal law. And what can be sadder than a three hours' bondage to an atom with which we have no affinity ; while our eternally-related atom is, perhaps, placed far down at the other end of the festive board, and a Zahara of table-cloth lies between us. That delightful humorist, Charles Lever, has described with pathetic fun the de- pression that fell on him when he found himself 64 SOCIAL STUDIES. at a large dinner-party, closely wedged in be- tween two severe looking dowagers of the solid rank that permits no trifling, and the grave per- sistence in eating which gave no opportunity for any light skirmish through the fairy realms of poetry and imagination ; and he knew that his term of penal servitude must last for the eternity of a fashionable dinner, and that there was no hope of escape. Lady Morgan had clearer philosophical views ; she understood per- fectly the eclectic mode and the selection of the fittest. When a celebrity arrived in Dublin whom she was desirous of entertaining, she sent out no formal notes of invitation, but simply stood at her open window in Kildare Street, just opposite to the fashionable club, watched the passers-by, beckoned over the suitable atoms, stepped out on the balcony, and called down the name and the hour, and received the ready adhesion. All was settled in a moment, and her parties, thus selected, were the most brilliant and successful ever known in the city, par excellence, of brilliant talkers. The debit-and- credit mode of dinner reciprocity, when people are asked merely as a return duty, husband and wife, father, mother and daughter, son and mother-in-law, is fatal to the excitement and variety of social intercourse. A clever woman SOCIAL GRACES. 6$ once denounced this system of every man com- ing to dinner with his female, two and two, as if they were going into the Ark. Intellectual celebrities have often very dull wives. Excellent women, no doubt, in the domestic relation, but no ornament or aid to society. Clever men bring with them the gold and jewels of wit and learning, but the homely wives are generally weighted with lead, and might, with much ad- vantage to everyone, be left at home. An immense charm, however, is added to the social circle by the presence of a brilliant, cul- tivated woman, with the tact and grace that can encourage grave and learned men to speak on the subjects they know best, and, fortunately, the human heart has inexhaustible yearnings, and we can still descend into the depths of the inner life and find something of interest, un- known, untried and unreviewed, or we can soar to the infinite in speculation on the unfathomed mysteries of the spiritual world, and it is pre- cisely in this direction that society is striving to find new subjects of discussion. People are growing weary of the flippant grotesque which debases every high thought and fine feeling, and are haunted by a desire for some nobler communion of souls, and more elevating and purer direction of thought. E 66 SOCIAL STUDIES. It is then that women's influence and her special graces in refining and raising the tone of conversation are most keenly felt. Men do not require information, but inspira tion, and may find its fullest affluence in the warm glow of a woman's appreciation and her beautiful sympathy. The sneers of jealous rivals and adverse critics often freeze to death the sensitive or- ganisation of the artist, the poet or the writer. They pine to bask in the radiance of praise, and find the eternal sunshine only in a woman's eyes. And much knowledge is not wanted on her part. Appreciation is more in the manner than in the words. Sometimes even a single adjective, judiciously selected, is enough. She has but to lift her expressive face to the speaker and murmur — beautiful ! This one word would conquer the heart of any timid sage or aspiring poet. He is understood at last, and the most seductive of all flatteries to a clever man is the sympathy that listens and comprehends. Women live so apart from practical life that their opinion on any grave, deep subject is really worth nothing, but the sympathy of a woman is worth everything to a cause or a human heart, and has a power that never can be aroused even by the accurate logic and best SOCIAL GRACES. 6/ ordered facts of the better-informed sex. And there is no hypocrisy in this feminine homage to a great mind or a great idea. Women de- h'ght in being led up out of their narrow sphere of thought and action into the larger life of political excitement and wider human inter- ests, in which men work and triumph, and if they brought their garlands to the Temple of ' Fame they would probably crown the statue of Genius even before that of Love. A man crowds so much into his life, he sees all, knows all, exhausts all so rapidly, that in- terest and impulse soon die. He is blase siir tout, ennuye de tout, but women know little of the satiety of exhausted emotion, or of the cynicism and weariness of all things to which men are prone who have drained the cup of life to the dregs. Hence women are ever ready to be disciples and worshippers, and have the supreme faculty of giving praise freely and generously and lovingly. They look only at the head of gold, and never see the feet of clay. Some one remarks that the sun had his cultus and worshippers till he was found out, but a true woman never finds out the shortcomings of her sun-god. She still believes in her idol and her ideal through all temptations to scepticism. 68 SOCIAL STUDIES. Hero-worship never dies out in the heart of a woman. She glorifies by her praise, and sends the warm tide of human life through the heart and brain of the weary worker, who had become almost a stony abstraction by solitude and thought. Rich argosies of feeling lie be- neath the surface of such natures that only a woman can bring to light, wrecks of passion and ambition, and high aims unfulfilled. A woman will raise them up and make them live again. Lord Beaconsfield's estimate of women's re- demptive power over a human soul almost raised her to divinity in his mind. * No cause,' he says, ' is won, no man is great but through a woman. No man is per- fect till he has learned of a woman.' But the qualities are rare and beautiful that can make a woman not only a divine guide to a human heart, but also a splendid power in social life. A loving woman may have only love to offer, but a brilliant woman, a queen of intellect, must be able to flash lightly over every subject and illuminate them all. She must take a run through the sciences and all literature, and understand many languages, that illustra- tions from every source may gleam like golden threads through the warp and woof of her con- versation. She must have studied the art SOCIAL GRACES. 69 treasures of many capitals, and number amongst her friends the leading intellects of the age ; then she may take her place as a social queen, and lead in conversation, and draw the hearts of all men to her by chords of spiritual attrac- tion. Yet she must not converse too much. Be- yond even the grace of speech there is the grace of listening and the tact of silence, even of entire self-effacement at times, which is the homage of love rather than of worship. Lady Byron was entirely deficient in this subtle tact that can guide and soothe the way- ward, turbulent and terrible temperament of genius. ' Am I in your way, Byron ? ' she asked one day, entering the poet's study while he was at immortal work. ' Damnably ! ' was the answer of the poet - husband. And she deserved it. She had no tact, no fine instincts. She ought to have known intuitively that she was in the way, and effaced herself. Many writers have given suggestions for well- ordered conversation, but of the moderns, Emer- son, Bulwer and D'Israeli are the best worth study. Aphorisms that suit both sexes equally, abound in their writings, like these, — Never prose or dogmatise ; avoid laughter and the grotesque. 70 SOCIAL STUDIES. and mimicry above all; it disturbs the facial harmony. Never condescend to amuse. Good talk is wasted on most people, sympathy never ; beware of too much energy, shun noise and glare. The Aryan in ' Lothair ' would not dine where gas was burned, and hated the screams of hired singers when he wanted to talk. All agree that veiled light is indispensable to con- versation, no one could be fascinating with a gas furnace over the head ; and people should study the nervous susceptibilities of their guests. Never arrive too early, it exhausts the system ; never be malicious, it is so vulgar — this is an axiom of D'Israeli's. Santa Teresa, that great- souled woman, never would permit detraction in her presence, ' and so,' she says, ' it came to pass that where I was, the absent were never evil spoken of Epigram is always better than argument in conversation, and paradox is the very essence of social wit and brilliancy; the unexpected, the strange combination of oppo- sites ; the daring subversion of some ancient platitude are all keen social weapons ; but only assured celebrity makes society pardon orgin- ality, for people generally resent being suddenly lifted out of their old groove by the intellectual dynamite of some audacious thinker and talker, who has no respect for the laws of social routine. SOCIAL GRACES. 71 Women, especially, must beware of orginality. There is always a coalition of society against it, for it is the daring self-assertion of the individual over the many, and calls down implacable revenge. Unless, therefore, with their equals, clever women should be vigilant to tone down their conversation to the regula- tion pattern. It is always safer to begin with common-places, they are soothing and disarm fear. Besides, women of tact can colour the common-place with a little emotional intensity, and then society says they are ' very nice,' and they even become exceedingly popular. As for insignificant people, they should only say what they are expected to say, and never talk of themselves, their children, servants, domestic cares, or their ailments, except to the doctor, who is paid for listening, simply because society does not in the least care for the insignificant. If gossip is introduced it should be about great men, for they belong to history, but the sayings and doings of lesser people only concern the parish. Anecdotes are best avoided in society. D'Israeli hated people 'in their anecdotage,' for the constraint of listening to a long story makes the face dull and heavy. Nor should conversation be allowed to condense into dialogue at a dinner- 72 SOCIAL STUDIES. party, wliile what is called 'chaff' is fatal to all brilliant effort, and debases every subject, though playful humour is always charming, kindly and pleasant, and is like a golden fringe to the solemn draperies of conventional life ; but the vulgar grotesque, so bitterly denounced by Ruskin, 'whose only weapon is malice, and whose only object is to offend,' must never be permitted, or all dignity and mutual respect would vanish from social life. Clever men may assert boldly and demolish ruthlessly with half-playful dogmatism and half- earnest faith ; and they may bewilder, astonish and instruct, but at the same time disarm the rancour of opposition by the light grace of the skirmish, which claims only to be a tour- nament, not a battle. Women, on the contrary, do not talk for victory, but for insight. They should not dwell on facts which are always dull and heavy, but glide into generalisations which are always brilliant and never very ac- curate, therefore suit the unfettered fancy of a woman ; while they open out wide new paths of thought where the guidance of a clever man is indispensable. Intellectual women find their chief in- terest in high and lofty themes and specula- tions, and in grand and noble ideas ; their SOCIAL GRACES. 73 true place and home is in the infinite and the eternal. Woman of this nature are recognised in society by a Phidian head, a majesty of Olym- pian repose, and a low, penetrating voice that at once attracts and enforces attention. The chattering, pert, flippant woman, with a sharp manner, a silly laugh, and a ready mock- ing retort, is insufferable to a man of culture ; but a coquette, though vain and versatile, may still be charming, for she has the wish to please, which is the Grundbegriff of woman's fascina- tion. Then there are other women, who, with many high mental qualities, yet seem to take a strange pleasure in making themselves disagreeable, even to the man they love, by a hard, cynical un- womanly manner, unlovely caprices, mean sus- picions, harsh judgments, and disdainful return for kindness. Cold and heartless natures ; that exert their power principally to show how keenly they can torture, and who, consequently, are as irritating to sensative organisations as a sharp-cutting east wind. The true crown of womanhood is a loving, trusting, believing, sympathetic womanly woman. She is the angel of a man's destiny, and no time 74 SOCIAL STUDIES. can destroy her influence, for it is based on the supreme beauty of that charm of manner which is the outward expression of the inward grace. Such women radiate light and joy, and have the secret of perpetual youth. Society is the best teacher of manners, and the best tonic for nerves ; and society should be cultivated at all times, with intervals of solitude. The intellect is a delicate-stringed instrument that rusts if not played on, and it is by the collision of mind with mind that we learn our own value, or the need of progress ; what we are and what we might be. The gold is passed through the essaying fire of competition and comparison, and is brightened by the process. It is monotony that kills, not excitement. Dull people fail in the will to live, and so they soon lose their hold on life. Excellent good women, who give up society and devote them- selves exclusively to home and homely duties, grow old so soon. ' Nothing ages like domestic . happiness,' Bulwer says ; and Balzac affirms, clearly and coldly, that if a woman persists in giving up society, and with it all pretensions to be attractive, she ought to expiate the sin by being sent to the country for the rest of her life. SOCIAL GRACES. 75 Domestic life should be made beautiful and happy, but it must be fed with many streams like Paradise, each perpetually bringing new thoughts and ideas, like golden sands. The weary man, returning from the daily profes- sional treadmill, has an instinctive desire for brightness, softness, grace and charm after the dingy surroundings of the day ; and he finds them all in the radiance of a woman's love and converse. But the converse must be nourished by constant intercourse with the best minds and the best social influences, new books, and new people, and the ever-changing phases of social progression, or it will degenerate into a wail over household cares, and a chorus of complaint rising up from the kitchen to the nursery. And it is especially as hostess, when she reigns supreme at her own table, that a woman requires most tact, experience and varied know- ledge of life and literature. Then it is her privilege to lead and guide the conversation ; with swift tact to turn the course if rocks are ahead — to evade skilfully, encourage sweetly, repress gravely. And it is only a woman that can touch the curb with so light a hand that she checks without wounding. She allows no freezing ice to form and obstruct the full, free 'j6 SOCIAL STUDIES. sail of thought ; but by kindh'ness and grace stimulates to exertion all the latent mental powers that may be around her. Then everyone looks happy ; and good talk flows like wine from a golden chalice ; the mutual pleasure of giving and receiving, the consciousness of heightened fascination, the triumph of success, all combine to give radi- ance to the countenance, intelligence to the eyes, and eloquence to the lips. Thought flashes like light from the facets of a well-cut gem ; while animation and the swift changes of ever-varying expression make all faces interest- ing, and some beautiful. There is no heat or vehemence in discussion, for manner is a wall of defence against aggressive over self-assertion ; and the presence of a high-bred woman insures decorum and refinement. By dignity, grace and tact she claims and re- ceives her queenly right to the homage of courte- ous deference and purity of conversation ; and the supreme social sovereignty of woman is never more evidenced than when she touches into harmony all the diverse and conflicting elements of social intercourse. At such times, when all the rich spiritual splendours of intellect are manifested, there is no need of any adventi- tious aid from other sources of enjoyment. SOCIAL GRACES. yj There is talk far above singing, and the soft ripple of Ionian mirth struck from the converse of related souls is a music worthy of a sym- posium of the gods. A woman, therefore, should never resign her place as a social power. She may lose the attractions of youth, but the fascination and charm of manner and conversation still remain ; and her presence will always tend to keep up the dignity of social life, and the courtly tradi- tions of a stately age. VENUS V I C T R I X. Woman lies at the base of all life, whether for good or evil. From Eden to Olympus, woman is the first word written on the page of every history and of every religion, and is the illumin- ated initial of every man's life. The true Venus Victrix of creation, her influence is infinite and illimitable, and the world has bowed, and will for ever bow, before the sceptre of womanhood. Through her beauty she reigns a queen, and through her sympathy she is the mediating priestess of human destiny ; and her power over man, whether through beauty or love, through purity or sin, is the crown or the tor- ture, the glory or the perdition, of almost every human career. ' Beware of women ! ' exclaims a brilliant French writer ; ' if they do not crown you, they will strangle you.' Yet reason can do little against the force of beauty ; the first impulse, the irresistible instinct of a man's nature is the 78 VENUS VICTRIX. 79 homage to physical beauty. It has a mystic power that sweeps down all before it, the strongest and wisest. A French writer says, with the eloquent extravagance of his nation and idiom, ' What can equal a woman's beauty ? Nature made the planets and the stars — well enough in their way — and the flowers and the waving trees, and the red sunsets crimsoning the ocean — very praiseworthy effects all of them, and evidences of a soul endowed with fine sensibilities ; but to have invented woman, with the rose-tinted white of her complexion, her hair, her lips, her eyes, her hand, the marble roundness of her arm — this was beyond the power of Nature, with all her skies and sunsets and suns and stars. To create woman required the genius of a God.' Beauty reigns without effort, charms without trouble, fascinates without art. She simply lifts her veil, and male humanity falls at her feet. This is an unfair advantage, certainly, over the rest of the sex ; but it is inevitable — a fixed decree of nature. Not with all the re- sources of wealth and intellect, of art and science, can less-favoured woman ever hope to achieve the triumphs which beauty obtains by a single glance. Yet nature gives compensation and has her 80 SOCIAL STUDIES. revenges. Beauty may have her priesthood of poets and artists ; still there are other gifts and graces by which woman can reign over hearts, and often with a more lasting power than even beauty can command. A beautiful woman is too often vain and selfish. She seldom loves ; yet she is charming in her momentary fancies that seem like passion, but are only caprices. She is a cruel goddess, and demands victims, for her heart is stone. She worships nothing except her own lovli- ness. A man will die for such a woman ; but she remains calm, and drinks the spirit of his life without remorse. The whole world seems all too little for her insatiable greed of conquest and adulation. She is the sorceress, the Lamia, that fascinates and kills. She is terrible and must be propitiated, as the Egyptians hung gorgeous bracelets on the captive crocodile. Insolent when loved, implacable if slighted, her influence wraps a man round like a poisoned garment, and the fire of it consumes his life and soul. Then it sometimes happens that, wearied and exhausted with vain idol worship, man feels the need of a redemptive force, and it is a woman's hand that draws him up to the light. It is a woman that keeps watch by the sepulchre for VENUS VICTRIX. 8l the uprising of a slain and buried soul ; and thus she triumphs, also a Venus Victrix, through the sublime and holy power of sympathy, which is a glorified form of love. She pours out the wine of life for the one beloved, and asks no- thing in return from earth or heaven, only the divine joy of sacrifice, the ecstatic sense of self- annihilation for true love's sake. This homage rendered to another — this life lavished without dream or hope of recompense — this worship given freely and disinterestedly as to a god — is the true essence of woman- hood. A strange fascination lies in this passionate sympathy; and the power which through its subtle influence a noble-hearted woman can exercise over a man's life is not by any means dependent on youth or beauty, or fashion, or dress, or even brilliant gifts. It has a moral grace higher than all these things — a diviner beauty, which is of the soul. The women gifted with this mystic charm are unfettered by chronology. They are ever young, with the eternal youth of the spiritual nature. To sensitive and clever men they are peculiarly attractive, for they seem to give them a second soul, a fuller life. They alone can in- tensify the aspirations of a man of genius ; F 82 SOCIAL STUDIES. sustain his noblest instincts ; and appreciate and comprehend his diviner nature, with that perfect knowledge which in a woman always travels along the line of sympathy with swift electric vitality. As Benjamin Constant said of Madame de Stael when under the influence of her marvellous powers of intellectual fascination, ' Such a woman shuts out the universe for you.' It is impossible almost to formulate in words the full mystery of this highest love, which, in its grandest manifestation, only genius gives, and only genius can worthily appreciate. But even less gifted natures gain from it a glory that illuminates all life. It has no element of the morbid selfish passion that first fevers and then painfully wearies. The holy and beautiful love of sympathy ' thinketh no evil.' It is the sunshine under whose influence all the finest impulses flourish and expand. As the Persian poet has said, ' It is like the purple in the gar- ment of a king, splendid in itself, and splendid in the light it radiates.' Women capable of this exalted feeling would rather love than be loved, for love in its highest meaning is aspiration, the instinct of ascension towards the Divine. To love, therefore, is the VENUS VICTRIX. 83 highest joy of the noblest soul, and lifts the woman to the angel nature. Still, all women, when they first open their eyes on life, have the dream of being loved ; and to all, perhaps, is given one moment of supreme joy — one hour to believe that love is eternal, but a whole life to find out that it is an illusion. Yet, standing on the ruin of her own dreams, as on a pedestal, woman rises to the height of a diviner life, and can still reign a Vemis Victrix through the holy beauty of sympathy and sacrifice. It is remarkable that throughout all epochs of history we find this feminine instinct to aid the work of men, and intensify the spirit and tendency of the age which he leads and domin- ates, symbolised by the woman in her dress. Greek life was a glad ritual to heroes and gods, and the Greek women in their free, beautiful chiton, chlamys and himation, seemed like a procession of priestesses to a temple, or like the band at a choric festival, wreathed and garlanded, moving to the Doric or the Lydian measure, to celebrate the triumphs and victories of kings and heroes. Then came the Church which denounced human nature as vile and sinful, and at once the lovely form of woman was hidden under 84 SOCIAL STUDIES. the shrouding garments of sanctity. The long, lovely hair was sacrificed, and in time the cord and the cross, emblems of pain and suffering and humiliation, replaced the glittering orna- ments of youth and the radiant raiment of the vain world's fashion. The anchorite spirit of the Church, which drove men into the lonely rock-caves of the desert, and taught the sub- limity of renunciation, impelled beautiful women also to desire death rather than life. They went to martyrdom as to a bridal, and dreamed of no other lover save the mystic Bridegroom of the Soul. Thus it has been ever with women, they adopt these feminine hieroglyphs of dress to show their union with the ideal of a man's life, even when they are debarred from sharing the action. In the fierce middle ages, when society was a camp and a battle-ground — when warrior knights, iron-souled and iron-handed, fought and died at the tournament for a lady's smile — then women also became warriors in their dress, and the stiff brocaded corslet and robe of the proud chatelaine simulated in its rigid outline the steel-linked cuirass of her haughty lord. But the fierce feudal ages passed away in the ceaseless mutation of all things, and gave place VENUS VICTRIX. 85 to the dissolute splendours of the monarchies of Europe, when luxury and pomp, tyranny and cruelty, the mirth and madness of sin, reigned supreme in the brilliant poisoned atmosphere of courts, and women ' fairer than heaven, more terrible than hell,' sat by their crowned lovers, and drained the wine of pleasure from jewelled cups, with their foot on the neck of the prostrate people. It was an age of vain voluptuous pleasure and affected mannerism, and the dress was the expression of the life, gorgeous and haughty, vain, luxurious and artificial. The influence of women tended to evil alone, and the retribution was dreadful in its vengeance. An hour came when the people, indignant at their degradation, threw off the bondage of kings, princes, nobles and courtesans, and a torrent of blood swept over the splendour and sins of the false and fatal eighteenth century. On its ruins arose the serene majesty of the Republic, and the women of that era at once strove to preach the new doctrines of liberty by the symbolism of dress. A return to the antique simplicity of manner and true dignity of life was illustrated by classic drapery, sandalled feet and hair bound with a golden frontlet, as in the days of Socrates and Plato. The second Empire, under the sway of a 86 SOCIAL STUDIES. lovely woman, restored for a time the traditions of courtly magnificence ; but a new machinery' of civilisation had already begun to work, which, impelled by the advance of science, is gradually changing the whole routine of society, levelling and destroying all the old barriers of caste, and form and usage, with all ' the pleasant old con- ventions of our false humanity.' How, indeed, could the grand and stately dignity of queenly symbolism be any longer possible in a world where the breathless, ceaseless, restless work of life is carried on, even by women ? The march of civilisation has therefore neces- sitated the toilette of progression, and the queens of society now demand not only political and educational equality with man, but also identity with the free and formless fashion of male costume. The model woman of the nineteenth century inclines towards a divided skirt, a Newmarket coat, a jockey cap ; she carries a cigarette in her mouth, a whip at the end of her parasol, a stiletto in her fan, and in her hand is the roll of resolu- tions she is to enforce at the next public meeting upon a crowd of men. She no longer glides — the emphasis of decision is in her very footfall, and the feverish energy of action in the swing of her arms or the plunge VENUS VICTRIX. 8/ of her hands into the depths of her coat-tail pockets. She tramples on the old social traditions of artificial life, and, free and fearless, upholds health and nature above all things. Horace Walpole maintained that it was fatal to one's reputation- to appear at breakfast, and that no one should be fascinating before five o'clock ; but the modern woman has organised an ' early-rising society.' Byron declared that no woman should be seen to eat ; but she dis- claims this weak pretence of fragile health, and, proud of her youth and strength, the new type of woman (according to Mr Mallock) eats like a sacred chicken — and we know the sacred chickens were vigorous and voracious. Life used to be a temple where woman was priestess, or a court where woman was queen, borne along in her gorgeous litter on the shoulders of slaves. Now life is a school board, where woman takes the chair, and adapts her- self successfully to her new position and duties. One mourns over the long hair snipped, the flowing train abridged to a bunch or diminished to a bow ; vain and futile endeavour to simu- late what once had noble amplitude and royal significance. Yet, after all, the latter-half-nine- teenth-century women is a fine, high-spirited 88 SOCIAL STUDIES. creature, advanced in politics and philosophy, cultured, learned and independent, resolute in will, and fearless in her efforts to break all bondage for herself and others, as a Jael or a Judith, or a Madame Roland, who dies for liberty on the scaffold. We must, therefore, accept the modern dress, short, hard, concise as a telegram, as best suited to the modern life of energetic work and cease- less unrest ; where there is no place for splen- dour, no time for variety of costume, and no room by steamer or rail for the luggage of luxury of the travelling millions who circulate round the world in endless vortices. According to the latest decree, therefore, of the strong-minded, all that is now required by a lady if she takes a Cook's ticket to Jericho and the Pyramids, is a costume of black calico and an umbrella. The age of splendour has passed, and a dread- ful uniformity of homeliness and utility per- vades all classes. Everyone seems turned out by machinery, and no one has leisure to study the individual requirements of face and figure ; the symphonies of colour, the cadence of lines, the rhythm of accord and contrast, with all the subtle harmonies that make perfect dress like a full chord of music. VENUS VICTRIX. 89 Women aim now only at being intelligent and intellectual, and the toilette of work has replaced the charming fascination of luxury and idleness. So in our modern world we seek in vain for living representatives of the stately for- mality of Holbein, the regal grace of Sir Peter Lely, the high-bred courtly coquette of Gains- borough's era, or the exquisite elegance of Sir Joshua Reynolds. These types have gone for ever. The realism of ulsters and newmarkets, the democracy of dress, is making all our social life colourless and unpicturesque ; con- sequently this age will not, perhaps, add any immortal female portraits to the picture gal- leries of England. M. Taine complains of the cold callousness of English women to beautiful effects in dress. Their clothes, he says, seem fitted as if on a wooden frame, without art, without visible in- tention ; whereas the object should be to enhance beauty where it exists, or to create it if necessary by the laws of art. Variety, above all, is attractive ; if possible, a woman should never appear twice in the same dress, except, of course, at lectures on primary molecules or the revolution of atoms, or the Unknowable, and subjects of that grave and 90 SOCIAL STUDIES. awful kind ; for professors and philosophers and learned men generally never know what a woman wears. But poets and artists, and others of sensitive human organisation require the charm of varying light and colour. Humanity is distinguished from the ape by two things — laughter and dress. Women, therefore, should assert their humanity by triumphs in dress, to prove their advanced position in the scale of beings. Besides, dress charms at all ages. The beauty of form and feature passes away ; the coquette dies with youth ; even accomplish- ments weary ; but style lasts for life, and never fails to please. It confers a patent of nobility on a woman, and gives her a distin- guished and eminent status in social circles. Yet, woman seem growing careless as to this great source of female power, with all its mystic and subtle fascinations, and the stage is now the only exponent of beauty of design in form and colour. Lady Martin — Helen Faucit — was the first to raise theatrical costume to the dignity of artistic expression by the perfect grace in fall and flow of lines and draperies ; not by the endeavour to pile up fabrics remarkable only for reckless cost, but by producing pictures in VENUS VICTRIX. 91 form and colour such as painters and sculptors love to contemplate. Helen Faucit, however, had the brow of a Greek muse, and a form lithe and undulating as the graceful figures on a Greek vase ; and thus was able to realise effectively her own ideal of classic grace and beauty. Recently, also some admirable and pictur- esque effects in theatrical costume were pro- duced from designs by Mr Godwin, the archi- tect, and Lewis Wingfield, artist and novelist, which harmonised admirably with the delicate, ethereal, wayward grace of Madame Modjeska, and the superb dramatic beauty of Genevieve Ward, while the charming Grace Hawthorne, always perfectly illustrates the dramatic idea, by the artistic accuracy of her beautiful cos- tumes. At the Lyceum, under Mr Irving's manage- ment, one is always certain of a series of perfect pictures, the result of deep artistic study and profound knowledge of pictorial and scenic effect. And in Mr Gilbert's bright operetta of ' Patience ' the piece, though meant to satirise the cultus of beauty, actually gained prose- lytes to the aesthetic movement, so infinitely charming were the 'love-sick maidens in their Greek dresses of flowing lines and beautiful 92 SOCIAL STUDIES. combination of colour, while the modern style which they afterwards assume is quite repel- lent to the nerves from its rude and crude angularity and rigid outline. Without this pictorial teaching, now brought to such perfection on the stage, one might almost forget the power of tones and form and colour to enhance female beauty ; for an ordinary crowd in the daily life of this great Babylon of London seems but a heavy mass of opaque obscurity thrown upon the back- ground of a sunless sky, blackness above, around, and beneath. Can we wonder, then, if depression or ill-temper is the result ? for nothing generates a morbid discontent like sombre, monotonous, ineffective costume, with- out any illuminating point of colour to break the uniformity of that national gloom of dress which in England is considered for a woman the vrai cachet du comvie il faut. Uniformity of style is also equally depressing, when all women look as if they were cut after the same paper pattern, and all interesting attractive distinctions of individuality are de- stroyed. A woman, on the contrary, should first study her own personality, and consider well what she means to be, desires to be, and can be — either a VENUS VICTRIX. 93 superb Juno, or a seductive Aphrodite, or a Hebe, blooming and coquette, or a Pallas Athene, grand, majestic and awe-inspiring. And, when the style is discovered that bests suits her — it may be for homage or for love — let her keep to it as the symbol of her higher self, unchanged by the frivolous mutations of fashion. For dress thus attains a moral significance, and becomes the exoteric expression of the esoteric spiritual nature. Now, for the first time in the history of the world, a path is opening to female intellect, energy and talent, and, henceforth, women, per- haps, may lead in the learned professions, take their part in home government, form ministries to organise the code of female rights, and claim the highest university honours, in rivalry with men. Will they be happier ? Will it be lost in the coming time, the grace of indolent luxury, the supreme fascination of beauty, when the career of severe study and training begins in earnest, if women are to compete successfully with men in the great chariot race of progress in the arena of life? Who can say? A wider sphere of action and higher aims certainly will make their life nobler, and therefore, perhaps, happier. Woman may gain even truer claims to ad- 94 SOCIAL STUDIES. miration through the life of work which gives her dignity and honour, than she has yet attained by all her petty accomplishments, the feeble efforts of a prisoned intellect. The race of the gifted — the artists and poets and thinkers — have rarely a definite law of life : they are simply masses of emotional force, alter- nations of violent impulses and silent despair. Their genius is a lava stream, that often devas- tates the life, though it may turn the rudest stones to gems, as it rushes onward. It is a woman's mission to guide, control, direct and calm these storms of passionate emotion, and she will better comprehend the mystic and way- ward nature of the intellectual temperament through her own experience of its trials and claims. Manners even may become nobler because not so artificial, and the earnestness of thought and feeling will replace the mere coquetry of vanity and display. It is only shallow natures, accord- to D'Israeli, that mistake noise for gaiety and persiflage for wit. Dress also will be more beautiful because simpler and freer from the tortuous elaborations for which earnestness and intellect have no time or inclination. The woman of the future will never again be the mere idol of a vain worship, the petted VENUS VICTRIX. 95 toy of a passing hour. She takes her place now in the world on higher grounds than physical beauty, and will gain nobler triumphs ; for it is impossible to believe that woman will be less attractive because educated, less tender and devoted because learned, less loving because she can attain the high station, honour, dignity and wealth, which hitherto only marriage could con- fer, by her own unfettered intellect and genius. But, through all modes and moods of chang- ing life, the woman's heart will still reign para- mount over the woman's brain. In the ceaseless strife against ignorance and sin and fate, woman will ever be on the side of mercy, helping the weak, the wronged, the suffering, and giving light to darkened lives — the true angel of humanity; while the power she gains from intellect and knowledge will but give her a stronger redemptive force, a sublimer zeal in the cause of right and truth. All that is noblest and most beautiful in a woman's nature is eternal. No time changes, no trials w^eaken, no ingratitude even chills, the warm impulse of a woman's heart. Priestess and paraclete she will ever be, as she has ever been ; and now, as a queen also, in the new and wider sphere of intellectual power and social dignity, she will stand beside man, his equal and 96 SOCIAL STUDIES. co-worker, giving her aid to the great cause of light and freedom, with all that uplifts human souls from ignorance and degradation ; but claiming still her proud title of Venus Victrix through the divine grace and sacred mystery of sympathy, that holiest sacrament of life, which binds the destiny of woman to man. Thus, a nobler humanity will be the revela- tion of the coming age, brought to a more splendid perfectness by woman's influence in that divine life of love and work and intellect, which finds men human, but which leaves them gods. SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. William Von Humboldt, brother of the great Alexander, and eminent himseh* as a profound and scientific philologist, seems to have been one of the few men to whom it was given to realise the charm of a true, tender and spiritual affection existing between man and woman, quite apart from all physical attrac- tion, if only their souls were eternally re- lated. His thoughts on the subject, expressed with all the lofty serenity of the philosophic temperament, may be studied with interest in his volume, entitled Letters to a Lady. Humboldt and the lady to whom they aie addressed met only for a few days' intercourse, when both were young. Many years passed, and they held no communication, yet a mutual and ineffaceable impression had been made, and a spiritual relationship was established, entirely unlit by any glow of human sensuous love. Then a correspondence began that lasted over ten years, during which time they seem never to have met. G 98 SOCIAL STUDIES. Humboldt's letters during this time betray much of the calmness of spirit which is the highest ideal of pagan philosophy. To him this calmness, perhaps, was natural, for he de- scribes himself as all his life singularly free from the fever of the passions. Many of his aphor- isms might pass for extracts from the manual of Epictetus, they are so similar in spirit. He seems almost insensible to pain, error, and all the changes and chances of this mortal life, yet he has no harsh or uncongenial nature, no ' Manfred misanthropy,' having ' no sympathies with breathing flesh,' for he says in one letter, — ' One can never hear or see enough of one's own species : every new aspect in which we behold it is fruitful of ideas. In every man, however insignificant, there is hidden a noble and thoughtful nature, which is the more noble as he is the more virtuous.' But here is Epictetus and his serene philosophy, — ' My endeavours have ever been directed to two objects — one, to attain a perfect knowledge of every phase of life — the other, to be dependent on no one, not even on Fortune herself, but to stand firmly on my own vantage ground, and to rely on my own resources. I am happy beyond other men, because few men have so few wants. The satisfying of a want is but the stilling of a pain. SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. 99 and is opposed to all pure, reposeful enjoyment' Again, — ' I never fear misfortune, even when it stands upon my threshold ; I look on it as an uncheerful, but by no means as an evil com- panion.' Nor can outward affairs disturb the serenity of his mind ; he lives in the essentials, not dependent on the incidents of life, — ' To exchange,' he says, ' for instance, the most agreeable for the most disagreeable abode, would be to me a matter of perfect indifference. I have no wants, except the chair on which I sit, and the table at which I write. Any room is the same to me, and in mine are no luxuries, no mirrors, no sofa.' Speaking of past griefs, he considers the retrospect no evil, ' for it ever possesses for me a certain kind of sweetness, and I love it, moreover, for the assistance which it gives me in gaining that independence of fortune so indispensable to a manly character.* Nor can the weather even relax the strings of his soul. * Be it foul or fair,' he says, ' I receive it with as much indifference as the smiling or terrible scenes in a theatre.' Nor can praise strengthen their tension, — 'Praise is not worth much, and I always receive it as metal which has not been assayed, and which, if I do not use caution, may probably be a souice of injury.' Pain is treated as no evil. He cannot even lOO SOCIAL STUDIES. prevail on himself to call illness one, and the philosopher, suffering from a severe cold and toothache, thus speaks, — ' When sickness ap- proaches me, it ever comes attended with a species of rest and serenity to the soul ; not that I am without those qualities in good health, but that in health man is kept in an atmosphere of zeal and energy which falls away in time of sickness.' The loss of youth, too, has its charms for him. This fleeting away of our Lebens goldne zeit, over which Schiller mourns so exquisitely, sheds no gloom on his spirit. He says, — ' I always looked forward to old age with pecu- liar delight, and now that I am approaching it, I find my expectations surpassed. The greatest gain which springs from it is spiritual freedom — freedom from passion. The disposition is serene and time-softened ; the reflection purer, stronger, better sustained ; the intellectual horizon clearer, and the soul, occupying itself with every kind of knowledge, and every kind of truth, has no other desire. A contemplative, enquiring life is the highest state of existence in the world, and can only be enjoyed perfectly in age. Life is a vast immense of waters, through whose contending currents we must guide our trembling bark, and it is most natural to rejoice when a large portion SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. lOI of the journey is accomplished. The things of the world have no longer any interest for me' — he was then fifty-seven — ' but pass by me as momentary visions, with which neither my mind nor my spirit has any connection. The circle of my acquaintance narrows every day ; my dearest friends are dead, but contemplation is an im- measurable field of knowledge and discovery, which ever offers new charms. I have often passed whole days entirely occupied with my own thoughts. It is an important consideration that men crowded closely together become selfish. We must retreat from the crowd of humanity to the heights of nature ; by such means alone can a man leave the world of sense and live in the universe of thought. The fear of death is diminished ; we learn to look on it but as a mere transformation, as one of the natural consequences of the design of our being. Old age is, in reality, but as youth, an entrance into life ; an exaltation of the thoughts.' Darley, the dramatist, has expressed some- thing of the same idea in one of his plays, — * Youth is sadder than age in its decline, for it is falling to a lower state of existence, but age is rising to a higher! Humboldt has the highest appreciation of the silent beauty of a woman's I02 SOCIAL STUDIES. life, and of that light, like still sunshine, which women cast from their own peculiar sphere of influence upon the stormy waters of man's more troubled existence. ' I love,' he says, ' above all things, the laboriousness of women, and the labours to which they attach themselves permit them, peculiarly, to live a life of feeling and ideas. To this I attribute the deep, beautiful, earnest disposition which most women enjoy so beyond that of men who have even received a higher education.' Dwelling in greater seclusion, their souls hold more frequent and earnest com- munion with themselves, and the very solitude to which social laws banish her he thinks of ' great value to a woman, elevating her soul, so tender and earnest in itself, purifying and with- drawing it from all those little, mean and dis- tracting pursuits into which women fall so much more easily than men. There are women, also, who love solitude instinctively and naturally, and are drawn to it by the higher aid it gives to the exalted moods of the soul. But they are exceptional natures, the women of genius, who realise the idea that joy comes not from outer things, but from the depths of their own inner being. And the love given to such women by a man, who can appreciate high qualities, is unchangeable, and knows no diminution from SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. 103 the passing years, or the fading tints of youthful beauty. In every position, Humboldt maintains, woman's life is insulated, therefore more spiritual than that of man, and to draw her into the fierce arena and battle-ground of life, would blight and ruin all that is most beautiful and elevated in her nature. For woman is not made for combat or self-asser- tion, but for sympathy and self-sacrifice, and she can only reach to the higher plane by the annihilation of self Thus, the inner spiritual life is developed more truthfully and purely in woman than in man, for men grow hard and selfish and crabbed by the dull routine necessity of work laid on them, where the toil is not lightened by love. While toil, no matter how arduous, is borne cheerfully by a wife or mother for the sake of those she loves, and often without any recompense. Speaking of his own age to his fair, but no longer youthful, friend, he says,—' This reminds me that I do not know your exact age, and I consider it of great importance to know the ages of my friends, especially of such as are females. I have my own thoughts on women's ages, and prefer those somewhat advanced in years to 104 SOCIAL STUDIES. those who are younger.' He, at least, did not hold to the dogma that — ' There flows through all the dells of Time No stream like youth again.' for in his opinion 'women's personal charms continue to unfold to a much later period than is generally supposed, and that their minds are much improved by years is manifest. I have never cared,' he says, * to form a friendship with a woman much younger than myself, and cer- tainly would not have married one. Similarity in all conditions of the soul is necessary for exalted intercourse, and a man can only find great joy in marriage when his wife agrees, according to the different nature of her intellect,' with all the thought and feeling of his soul. His notions on friendship are peculiarly just and true. It must be free, trusting and spontaneous, demanding tiothing, needing nothings for that would be but an interchange of compassion, which is, 'a distressful feeling,' or of sympathy, which is very beautiful, but only so to a certain extent. The condition of a perfect friendship is, that each should be sufficient of himself for himself. A joyous, sunny, blissful feeling of spontaneous admiration, each walking in his own light, yet SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. IO5 rejoicing in the glory of the mingled radiance. Nor is friendship to come too near, with its microscope examining the small motives that, mayhap, may guide our greatest actions, nor with its smoked glass discovering the spots that may sometimes dim their lustre. A sacred reserve is as necessary to friendship as to love. ' Even to my wife,' he says, ' I do not impart my joys and sorrows, nor the accidents of life that jostle me about ; there are nobler subjects of discourse. Friendship and love demand the most entire confidence, and with mquisitive souls there is no confidence.' How true is that ! Friendship (particularly between two beings of opposite sexes) he calls ' a wonderful relation.' ' They share in common that Inner Life of the soul, wherein each yields up their own peculiar existence to the other, yet preserves it in a state of greater clearness and purity by the contact' Deux dines qici se toiichent sans se confondre, as a Frenchman has defined the ' wonderful rela- tion.' Love has a sensuous element in it, and there is earthliness in all passion, it is common to all natures, the lowest as the highest ; but the feeling of friendship is the peculiar prerogative of only the highest, tenderest and most gifted souls. Speaking of spring, he says, and many minds will echo the thought, — ' Your sorrowful I06 SOCIAL STUDIES. emotions at this, the period of Nature's resur- rection, are common to all who think deeply and carefully, without, by any means, injuring the pleasure with which they greet her after her long sleep. The sadness of these emotions is the result of their earnestness, for all the earnest emotions of humanity are sad. The instability of all life is never so manifest to us as at the change of the seasons ; the sight of the joyous life of the world of leaves and flowers, so free from any trace of winter, is as deeply moving as the sight of a child who knows not care, whom care knows not' All poets have found the strings of their harp to sound more mourn- fully when touched by the spring winds. How beautifully, says the Italian lyrist, comparing the glowing, hopeful life of beauty in the external world around, with the desolate winter reigning, perhaps, in the soul that contemplates it — ' O primavera, gioventu de I'anno, Tu torni ben, lu torni, Ma teco altro non torni Che la rimembranza misera, e dolente. Tu quella se, tu quella, Ch' eri pur dianzi si vezzosa e bella, Ma non son io gia quel ch'un tempo fui ! ' And the great Spaniard Cervantes not less pathetically exclaims, — 'La primavera sigue al SPIRITUAL AFFINITY. IO7 verano, el verano al estio, sola la vida humana corre al su fin, sin esperar renovarse sino es en la otra vida/ Yet saddest of all is that tearful line where Schiller says of the brief spring of his own suffering existence : — *Doch Thranen gab der kurze Lenz mir nun' So the correspondence between Humboldt and the lady went on for years, and their friend- ship remained unchilled, for influences that touch the soul are eternal, and spiritual affinity is a deathless passion, unlike the more transient delirium of the senses. It rests ever calmly on the serene heights of the psychical life, and is never touched or tortured by the exactions of jealousy, or the irritation of waning temper ; and not even the sad evidences of fading youth and beauty can mar or kill the affection which is based, not upon sensuous and, therefore, evan- escent attraction, but on the eternal harmony of related souls. SUITABILITY OF DRESS. Nothing, in general, bewilders or tortures the female mind more than the endeavour to establish some kind of harmonic relation be- tween the law of the fashion book and the law of life, the one being for the idler, the other for the worker. Yet with some resolute self-assertion and heroic defiance of conven- tional prejudice, a compromise might be effected, the result being increased comfort to the workers in life's thorny paths without even the sacrifice of beauty. Rather would a fresh beauty be added to woman by the fit- ness and propriety of costume, always so pleasant to the wearer, and so agreeable to the eye of the artistic spectator. The Roman Catholic Church, that so well understands the working of the innermost wheels of our complex human nature, at once recognised the truth that dress and vocation should be in harmony, and that besides being loS SUITABILITY OF DRESS. lOp a symbol, dress should be a help. Hence the soft, simple, shrouding robes of the holy sisterhoods, where nothing is permitted of showy material or marked delineation of form to jar upon penitent humility, or to irritate the sad and sick, the weary-hearted or world- worn but everything in the costume is grave, calm and noiseless, to soothe and lull like low music. Loud dressing, the glare of colour, the rustle of starch, the frou-frou of silk, are all such cruel discords, when mind and body are lying faint and weak and low, while the soft woollen robes that glide and float with soundless motion are entirely sym- pathetic and soothing. Even Protestantism — stern, cold and logical — is beginning to find out the value of those subtle influences that act on the nerves, and excite or calm emotion through other agents than logic and reason, so the Protestant sister- hoods have adopted almost universally the robes suitable to works of mercy and charity, of soothing and healing. All the reckless experiments of vanity are being replaced by the grace and harmony that lie in fitness and suitability. In another large class of workers the study of dress as influencing nerve power is of no SOCIAL STUDIES. vast importance. It has been computed that about sixteen thousand women in London live by literature, that is, there are amongst us sixteen thousand bundles of abnormal nerves and sensibilities and quivering emo- tions, fiery fancies, tumultuous passions, and throbbing brains, all working day and night to formulate themselves into words. Now, it is well known that to aid the process of com- position, all literary people require a peculiar diet — light, cool and simple — so do they require a peculiar style of dress — cool and simple also. Fashion is an idol they can never worship. To them whatever impedes the continuity of thought is suicidal. While weaving garments for the children of their brain, they must fling aside all care for the garments of the body. Time is to them a golden sand that cannot be wasted, and the process of an elaborate toilette might utterly efface from the mind all the thick-coming fancies that must be caught flying, or they will come no more. For this reason Georges Sand, the great French authoress, never wore but one style of dress, a black silk. She said that she could neither waste her time on fashion, nor SUITABILITY OF DRESS. Ill her temper on rivalry, with other women in the matter of dress, so when she accepted invitations to large assemblies, she stipulated for a separate boudoir where she could re- ceive a select circle of brilliant thinkers and friends without the necessity of clothing her- self in any unusual paraphernalia. The literary dress should, in fact, be free, untrammelled and unswathed. As simple and as easily adjusted as Greek drapery, and fastened only with a girdle or a brooch. No stiff corselet should depress the full impulses of a passionate heart. There should be no false coils upon the head to weigh upon the brain, no fuzzy furze bush on the brow to heat the temples and mar the cool logic of some grand, deep thought. And the fewer frills, cuffs and cascades of lace the better, for ink-spots do not improve Venetian point, and in moments of divine fury or feverish excitement the authoress is often prone to overturn her ink-bottle. Nothing to mind, nothing to care about, no bondage through fashion or vanity either on soul or body should be the law of dress for literary women. The comfort of an easy, well-known gar- ment to the literary worker is amusingly 112 SOCIAL STUDIES. illustrated by Diderot in one of his letters. A grand new scarlet dressing-gown had been given to him, but bitterly he laments the loss of the old one it replaced. * What induced me to part with it ? ' he exclaims. ' It was made for me, and I for it. It moulded itself to all the turns of my body without fretting me. It was picturesque and beautiful. There was no want to which its complaisance did not lend itself, for indi- gence is very obsequious. Were a book covered with dust, one of the lappets was ready to wipe the dust away. If the ink re- fused to flow freely from my pen, it proffered a fold. You saw traced on it in long black lines the man of letters, the writer, the worker, and now — I only look like a rich idler. I was the absolute master of my old robe. I am now the slave of my new one. Care wraps me about. I do not weep or sigh, but I say, cursed be the costly robe that I stand in awe of. Alas ! Where is my old, my humble, my obliging piece of homespun ? ' and so on, with much humour but real truth, he laments in a right pleasant way the bondage of fine clothes that kills thought and tames the spirit. Freedom from all petty social observances and fashions is also SUITABILITY OF DRESS. II 3 one of the chief instincts of all mental workers, hence the tendency amongst male writers to long hair and loose necktie ; and certainly no inspiration could have come to the Pythia had she worn a corselet and hoop. But it is comparatively easy to theorise on the fitting dress for saints or authors ; their line of life and work is so distinctly marked. It is not so easy to lay down a law suitable to ordin- ary daily life. Wives and mothers will always find it difficult to dress suitably for visits of in- spection to the nursery and the kitchen, and at the same time elegantly enough to receive chance visitors in the drawing-room. Balzac had the worst opinion of a woman who came down to him from the nursery fashion-finished, with cost and care. It gave him the idea that she was vain and heartless, and not attending to her duties. He would have preferred hair tossed by baby fingers, dress crumpled by baby caresses. As a rule, for the domestic employments, something light and inexpensive, yet bright and gay, should be selected ; if easily spoiled as easily replaced. Something to poetise by colour and glow the prosaic monotony and ugliness of daily cares. And as to visitors, they must be left to a fixed reception day. No lady who has H 114 SOCIAL STUDIES. any regard for time or study or employment should permit the disintegration of her day by casual visitors, who come in, probably, because they were passing, or because they were too early for the train, or because, in fact, they were idle and idling, and had no remorse in wasting moments very precious to thinkers and doers. For afternoon receptions black should be sedulously avoided, either for the receiving or received. Black is unlovely and unbecoming to everyone, especially to English women, with the delicate half tints of their colouring, and the murky grey of the atmosphere. Besides it absorbs the light and spoils the effect of rooms, making it difficult to light them. Nothing can be more dreary at afternoon teas than rows of opaque, black bundles along the walls of a drawing-room, like masses of hummocky ice, particularly when black bonnets and black veils are added. White bonnets and white veils, on the contrary, are bright and pleasant, and give a soft cloud-like atmosphere to the rooms by which all faces are beautified, and whatever colouring may be in eyes, lips, cheek, and hair is heightened and intensified. Englishwomen seem to have a fatal predis- position towards black, and having reached the middle term, the mezzo-cammm' of life, generally SUITABILITY OF DRESS. II 5 retire into a black alpaca for the remainder of their days. This voluntary adoption of the symbol of doom is very sad ; they ought to remember that variety of dress and the refresh- ing brightness of colour is charming at all ages, and fills house and home with a flush of glad- ness and joy which almost replaces the loss of youth. One of the great beauties of the Court of Louis Quatorze, as she grew old, adopted all the delicate shades of colour for her dress, but never black. Age, she said, was sombre enough ; why make it more so by dress ? And, coquette to the last, she gave loveliness even to the shadows of advancing years by the exquisite pale greys and lilacs of her costume that changed darkness to light and made every room more beautiful in which she moved. Per- haps the influence of Her Majesty has led to this general adoption of black in London as the national dress. For the Queen has never been seen by her subjects since her widowhood but as a mass of black ; dress, bonnet, gloves, para- sol, all shrouded in the same deep and mysterious gloom. The Queen is probably too intellectual to pay much attention to dress, else she would have effected many desirable changes in her long reign, and abolished many absurd Court usages. For instance, could anything be more Il6 SOCIAL STUDIES. dreadful than the custom of low dresses and bare arms at a day drawing-room in the chill air of a freezing February or in the remorseless glare of a noonday sun ? Yet, Court etiquette cannot be broken even for delicate girls or asthmatic dowagers. The Chinese Ambassador, commenting on this in his published journal, expresses surprise at seeing Court ladies almost nude, yet adds that they did not seem to mind it, even when talking to persons of the opposite sex. The love of external embellishment seems the most universal characteristic of humanity, and should not be discouraged. The South American Indians, with their delicate features and magnificent hair, sweeping the ground like a shadow when one faces the sun ; the rude hunters of the Prairies ; the graceful Poly- nesians, with their soft, beautiful eyes, superb hair, and elegant forms, pliant as their own fern palms ; the wild Californian, with the long plugs of wood, tipped with feathers, exuding from his ears and nose ; or the African prin- cess, in her severely natural costume, consisting of a girdle of wampum, ornaments, fishbones — all alike are under the influence of this master passion ; and out of paint, feathers, beads, mat- ting tattooing, shells and brass buttons, vanity SUITABILITY OF DRESS. II7 contrives to build up the primary strata of all human emotions. Russian genius has even proved that, with an instinct of adaptation, all things may be turned to beautifiers, as all dis- cords to harmony, by a skilful hand. Every one knows Kohl's story of the girl of St Peters- burg, who was dressed up by her mother for the Bride's Fair on Easter Monday, with a row of tablespoons set round her girdle, a necklace of teaspoons and a couple of fish-trowels placed crosswise on her back. Neither did the Greek women, with all their intellect, nor the Romans, with all their heroism, neglect the fine arts of the toilet. Jewels, gor- geous robes and costly perfumes helped ' the poisoning of the dart, too apt before to kill.' The Greeks painted their eyes like the Easterns, and stained the fingers rose colour and the lips vermilion. The Roman dress resembled the Oriental, flowing robes of silk and jewels of enormous value ; a Toga, or ample robe, clasped on the shoulders, and falling in rich folds to the ground ; and a stola, a robe, with a long train appended to a bodice made to fit the figure ; probably the rudiment of our truly ansesthetic modern costume, which violates every principle of artistic beauty in the formation of the figure, and annihilates, as far as possible, all the grace- Il8 SOCIAL STUDIES. ful folds and curves which drapery naturally assumes. Veils were not as indispensable as in the East, but some enhanced their beauty with a shading of rose-coloured gauze, and both men and women of the higher ranks powdered their hair with gold dust ; but this only in the days of the empire, and when Rome was falling, con- quered by luxury. Grecian women wore a flow- ing robe without sleeves, girdled at the waist, the hair braided, and sometimes crowned with flowers and sandals on the feet. Art had only to imitate — it could not improve this costume, where grace, beauty and harmony were made visible to the eye. A history of dress would be a history of minds ; for dress expresses a moral idea ; it symbolises the intellect and disposition of a nation. The Saxon women, in their bodice and short petticoat, with a mantle thrown over the head and shoulders, expressed admirably the stern, useful, homely virtues of their race. The Normans introduced corsets, and the high tight bodice like a corslet, embroidered with the family arms on each side, while a veil floated from beneath a coronet to the feet, suit- ing well with their proud, haughty, formal, brocaded manners. Between the Tudor and Stuart era, dress, like the literature of the time. SUITABILITY OF DRESS. II9 was a ponderous but gorgeous composite ; the Puritans, however, restored it to a simplicity of which Quakerism still remains the symbol. The analogy between the dress and morals of the Restoration is too evident to need comment ; while in the high heels, wigs and whalebone of Queen Anne's reign we find the truest ex- ponent of the stilted, false, stiff, artificialised mind and literature of the day. Flour for the hair was introduced by the Hanoverian Georges ; for, having little in their heads, they probably thought it the more necessary to put something on them. The great French Revolution restored dress to the Republican simplicity of the tunic, san- dals, and braided hair ; and now when minds and states are trembling with vibrations that foreshadow a speedy breaking up of all old, outworn modes of life and thought, dress will. no doubt, become the symbol of the higher cultivation and increased graces of the spirit. For women, as a rule, are always trying to show their sympathy with the movement and ten- dencies of the age, by the symbolism of dress, since they are prohibited from taking any part in the actual work of life. Besides, personal adornment is the natural language of female humanity, and by it she 120 SOCIAL STUDIES. evinces her desire to charm, which is the strongest instinct of woman's nature. The adornment of the head, especially, has always been a matter of much importance amongst the nations, the principal aim and object being to give dignity to the figure by increasing the apparent height. The circlet of feathers worn by the savage chief, and the golden crown of the mighty monarchs of the world were adopted to produce this effect, and thus became symbols of sovereignty and power, and inspired awe and reverence, whereas a low, flat head is expressive only of submission and serv^itude. A French writer on dress observes, with reference to this subject, that a parting down the middle of the head destroys in a great degree nobility of expression, for it effaces the line of the moral arch, and thus gives the low, depressed outline, so .suggestive of the head of the criminal classes. The long train, also, was invented to give dignity to the figure by simulated height, and was at once adopted by all the royal races for their court ceremonials, as it expresses with superb grace the insolent pride of rank and caste, that would keep all lower humanity at a respectful distance. SUITABILITY OF DRESS. 121 But all these distinctive symbols that separate the classes and the masses, will soon be extin- guished and crushed out by the pressure of the crowd, and the ever-increasing claims of social duties upon our time and the very small span of life we have at our command. A century ago visiting was a stately social function. A lady of quality had her own sedan chair, kept in the hall of her spacious mansion, and in this, gorgeously attired, she was carried on her round of visits by her own bearers, while a tall footman, with uplifted stick, walked beside, to aid my lady's exits and entrances. It was a charming era of graceful idleness and pleasure for a woman, and her life was summarised thus : — EUe s'habille, Elle babille, Elle se deshabille. But now the visiting list has increased from hundreds to thousands, and includes all America as well as Europe; and there are 85,000 streets in London to traverse, which, if extended in a straight line, as has been calculated, would exceed the diameter of the earth, while over- head fifty tons of soot suspended in the atmo- sphere materially interferes with all attempts at gorgeous and beautiful apparel. Besides, woman 122 SOCIAL STUDIES. has now a mission, and prefers the platform to the isolation of the sedan chair, and is rapidly taking her place as a leader in action, an inspirer of new thought, and a power and victor in the war of life. Her aims are to reform the laws, to emancipate her sex and revolutionise society ; and with admirable and fluent eloquence she demands the rights due to woman, and de- nounces the wrongs done by man. But the new modes of thought and action, now advocated by the advanced section of existing womanhood, will gradually, no doubt, generate new habits of social usage. There will be more ease and freedom in mutual intercourse, and less bondage to routine and custom. Everything will tend to simplify manners and conventional forms, and the life of civilisation may then, after all, become worth living, a true exponent of social comfort, and, at the same time, of high mental enjoyment. AMERICAN WOMEN. The first question propounded to a traveller on returning from a transatlantic tour is usually, ' What is your opinion of American women ? ' for, in truth, the American woman is by far the most important element in the social machinery of the States. Her reputation for beauty and smartness has spread over the whole earth, and to doubt her fascination would be a heresy even beyond this agnostic age. However, we are, fortunately, not wholly dependent on the crude judgment of awe-struck, startled travellers, saturated as they are with old-world prejudice, and prisoned in its narrow, conventional traditions ; for the Americans, having already interviewed and ex- hausted all Europe, are now laudably engaged in the process of interviewing each other, and that with an acuteness and insight far beyond the observing faculty of the bewildered foreigner. Nothing, in fact, can be more interesting than 123 124 SOCIAL STUDIES. the analytical descriptions of their own people to be found in the pages of the great living novelists of America; and we may certainly accept in perfect faith the clever, clearly out- lined sketches of eminent writers, such as Howells, Henry James, Cable, Aldrich, Edgar Fawcett, and other leaders of the great modern school of fiction, as the fullest expression of that wonderful product of social progress and advanced intelligence — the nineteenth-century American woman. Every type is reproduced in their gallery of contemporary portraits — from the fragile, lux- urious beauty of the South, to the audacious energetic newspaper woman of the North, who scampers through Europe, note-book in hand, interviewing everyone that has a name, and exhausting every subject, after half-an-hour's study, in letters of pungent criticism for her weekly paper, dated generally from ' the ex- press train,' ' the tunnel,' or ' the steamboat.' Every city also has its peculiar characteristics, and with these we are made fully acquainted through the novelists. In Boston, for instance, the women are ' intense ' and transcendental ; it is the city of advanced intellects and the emancipated woman. The celebrated Margaret Fuller, the ' Zenobia ' of Hawthorn's Blithedale AMERICAN WOMEN. 1 25 Romance, gave the first impulse there to psychical progress when she inaugurated the Hterary salon at her own house, selected and announced the subject for the evening's discussion, and brilliantly led the conversation herself. Since then Boston is the accepted exponent of the higher culture ; and the intellectual women who gather there under the shadow of the world-soul, treat life with a lofty and serene philosophy, ■ proudly disdaining the fashion, follies and dress of New York. Philadelphia is the Quaker city — neat, orderly, calm and reserved, where everyone seems to go to bed at ten o'clock, and the ladies make no effort to heighten the charm of their pretty faces by the adventitious aid of rouge or pearl powder. But they cultivate literature, poetry and art ; and society is elegant and refined. Among the celebrities of ' the flowery city ' may be named the late Professor Gross, eminent in medical science, George Boker, one of the lead- ing poets of America, and Mrs Bloomfield Moore, who has earned the gratitude of the citizens by her splendid donations of paintings and artistic works, valued at more than five thousand pounds, to the new Museum of Art established there. Washington is grand and courtly ; a stately 126 SOCIAL STUDIES. city of rank and solemnity. The royal ambas- sadors set the mode, especially the English embassy, which takes the lead in style and splendour that republicans weakly try to emul- ate by a display of liveried servants and heraldic emblazonments. Caste and class strive eagerly there for precedence, and every young lady looks forward, confidently, to being elected to the English peerage. In that clever novel, Democracy, there are capital sketches of life at Washington, where the officials claim to be ultra aristocrats, and Miss Virginia Dare re- solves to become a countess, in which, of course, she succeeds, for what simple English peer could resist her all-compelling energy and smartness ; in fact, the American girl is begin- ning to look on the English peerage as the appanage of her race. Not that she is over- elated at the prospect, for an American woman thinks nothing too good for her that can be had for love or money, no social position too eminent for her merits. If a crowned prince asked her in marriage she would consider it quite right and fitting, and accept her destiny without the least nervous embarrassment. In every recent American novel there is always an English peer, foolishly devoted to one of these fair enslavers, who snubs him or takes AMERICAN WOMEN. 1 27 him, according to caprice, evidently of opinion that the favour is all on her side. In one novel, a peer, with an income of a hundred thousand a year, offers his hand, and is refused because he is only a weak, good-natured person, with- out that strength of intellect required by an American girl in her lover. All women are queens in America, and have no idea of recog- nising any social position as higher than their own. From men they exact the utmost hom- age ; indeed, the worship of women is the national religion, a sacred law and gospel that none dare infringe. Many types of face and feature may be found in the vast extent of America with its varied climate and diverse races, but the South and West are particularly rich in strongly - marked characteristics. The Mexicans are fine and handsome, with a mix- ture of Indian and Spanish blood, from which the women derive their superb hair and eyes and graceful figures, and the men their proud Hidalgo bearing. The miners of the West are strong, bold and picturesque, as the men who may have led the Argonauts or founded Rome, and are worthy of their western land, which is a paradise of beauty, while every woman looks a Penthesilea or a brigand queen. The only one section of 128 SOCIAL STUDIES. America that is wholly deficient in personal beauty is the Mormon settlement. The Mor- mons own a glorious land, and are industrious and orderly, but the women, it is said, are of ideal ugliness of the colourless Saxon type, with white eyes and eyelashes, sandy hair and shapeless features. It is remarkable that not a single Irishwoman is to be found in the Mor- mon city, but the bright-eyed daughters of Erin have no objection to intermarry with the Chinese, who are always anxious to obtain Irish wives. Consequently a great colony of Hiberno- Mongolian origin is spreading along the border of the Pacific, and ethnologist will soon have a new type of humanity to study. In New York there is no distinctive type of race — all races have been fused there into uniformity by the same habits, passions and ambitions, and the influence of Europe on society. The women are dressed by Paris and the men by London, and life is modelled on the English style, but with much more splendour of outlay and effect. New York is the true paradise of women, where they glow and glitter in their gorgeous plumage, while the men toil and work in their dusky offices to amass the wealth that may cover their wives with diamonds to startle Europe — a city AMERICAN WOMEN. 1 29 of splendour, luxury and pleasure ; the third great capital of the world, and equal in wealth to London and Paris put together. Long after America had thrown off the political yoke of England, the bondage to English modes of thought still remained. The awe of England was upon the heads of the people, and social life, in consequence, was provincial and imitative, and wholly wanting in national individuality. America, in fact, was but a suburb of London, an infinite and colourless Bayswater. They did not dare to originate — they copied. They were fed on English ideas, affected English manners, and yearned to find some English ancestor of established lineage to whom they could affiliate themselves. Al- together they were prostrated in humble reverence at the feet of the mighty mother. But steam and the rapid facilities of travel have gradually weakened this awful homage to old social tradition. Modern America now laughs at ' the rusty, antiquated usages of England,' the rigid distinction of classes, the ridiculous ceremonials, the abject servility of the court life, with the bowings and back- slidings of the gold-laced officials, so degrad- ing, in the eyes of a republican, to freeborn humanity. And they mock also at the prosy, I I30 SOCIAL STUDIES, dreary, respectable papers, their petty politics, their Hares and Rabbits Bill, and they weary of the dull routine of society, the vapid talk where no large free ideas are ever circulated, and no recognition is apparent of the great fact that democracy is sweeping down monarchy with all its antiquated ritual, to the moles and the bats. London, says an American writer, has two idols — Science and Royalty, and con- versation fluctuates between the Electric Light and the last Foundation Stone laid by Royal hands. They find the English slow, ponderous, conventional. A people that would never startle (it would be bad form), who repress all individual assertion, and insist that everything should be done and said according to the custom and usage which has the force of law in English society. They notice the languid drawl of the English accent, the half- finished sentences, as if to complete an idea in the utterance would entirely bore the speaker with fatigue. The English, they say, speak nicely, but they do not know how to converse. They have no fluency, are crude and abrupt in expression, and quite infelicitous in smooth transitions. The girls are dull, diffident and monotonous, with their pale eyes, pale hair and sealskin jackets, one might gather a AMERICAN WOMEN. I3r thousand, or fifty thousand of them together, and they would all be found precisely alike. The American woman, on the contrary, dis- dains this colourless uniformity, and revolts against social usages that would limit her bold originality and assertive self-manifestation. She is proud, conscious, strong-souled and self-reliant. * I am an American girl ' is answer enough to any timid old-world bigot. And this phrase expresses at once dignity, courage, self-respect and the in- dependence of the emancipated republican. The English girl, in one of the novels, utters her little harmless platitudes in a soft, low monotone of bro- ken sentences. ' How nice,' she murmurs, ' to have pictures on a rainy day — and it rains so often ! ' and so on, and so on, in a limpid, weak, watery way. Always shy and indistinct with her half- utterances, the stiff conventional attitude never changed, nor the level murmur illustrated by gesture or laughter. But the vigorous, vivacious American girl never omits a syllable; she speaks in a loud, clear voice, as if for the reporters, and as one worth hearing, who demands and extorts attention. She accentuates all she savs with firm purpose and resolute determination to be heard. She is sharp, smart and terrible at re- partee, and may, perhaps, be sometimes fatigu- ing to the English ear with her voluble flow 132 SOCIAL STUDIES. of words. The English girl never stares, nor asks questions with obtrusive curiosity. She is trained to seem and to be a negation — a dormant soul without volition or an opinion on any subject, felt or expressed. Her American cousin, however, has an agressive frankness, based chiefly upon interrogatories and bold personalities. Her gaze is clear and direct ; not ' the stony British stare,' but with the large, truthful eyes of childhood — the eager, inquiring glance of a candid nature. Truth is in all her words. This Puritan virtue has indeed remained an heirloom in the American family. They have none of the subtle evasion and graceful mendacities of high life in Europe — the delicate flatteries, so charming and so false. These are stamped out at once by the frank, fearless can- dour of the American girl. Yet one trembles a little before a candour so uncompromising ; for we all shrink from the downright expression of the actual, and the glare of an unshadowed truth makes one nervous. But the Americans have no mercy. Nature meant them for a nation of interviewers. They generalise, de- scribe and label you after ten minutes' inspec- tion, and send off your portrait across the Atlantic, with all your imperfections on your head, for the amusement of the crowd, who AMERICAN WOMEN. I 33 must be propitiated by a victim, and who applaud and shout, * Bravo, Toro ! ' when a ' special ' has been more than usually successful in tossing the victim from his horns, to be trampled in the dust of the arena. Yet they are by no means an ill-natured or cruel people ; on the contrary, they are kind, generous and charming to the passing stranger who enters within their gates, but the Sovereign Demos has no reverence, and finds a subtle pleasure and sense of power in giving pain to sensitive natures ; so, like Nero, they sometimes light their gardens with live torches for want of better pastime. They seem also to take pleas- ure in showing England that they are no longer held in bondage to English opinion ; they have even suggested that their native language should in future be called American, not English ; and they have already adopted a quite independent system of ortJiografy, from which all the superfluous letters are excluded. It is not improbable, therefore, that a new dialect, which may be called Americanese, will be rapidly formed. Neologism is popular in America ; they are perpetually adding new words to their vocabulary, borrowed, perhaps, from the Indians, or the Mexicans, or the Californian miners, or transmuted from the 134 SOCIAL STUDIES. Chinese dialects blended with Gaelic, which the Chinese colony learn from their Irish wives. So that when all these elements have properly- simmered together for a reasonable time, the result will be a language widely different from the English of Addison and Ruskin. Speech is a passion with the Americans. They orate at all times, and on all subjects, with a copious redundancy of expression that is startling to those accustomed only to the slow - moving, hesitating tongue of English speakers, who always seem painfully seeking for the next word, and finding it only by a happy chance after many efforts. The Americans (men and women alike) are the most voluble of nations, and when trained are the most fluent orators. The women ex- press their ideas with firmness, precision and per- fect self-possession, and are admirable speakers on the platform. While men like Wendell Phillips, Doherty, Lowell, Boyle O'Reilly and others would have made their mark as orators in any assembly in the world. This gift of natural eloquence is due, perhaps, to the strain of Irish blood in their veins — for all men of note in America will be found connected, in some way or other, with the fluent, passionate Celtic race. The Saxon basis is the rough AMERICAN WOMEN. 135 block of the nation ; but it is the Celtic influence that gives it all its artistic value and finish. A recent President of the United States was the son of an Irishman ; the great novelist, Henry- James, is the grandson of an Irish emigrant ; and the late Mayor of New York, also an admirable speaker, was an Irishman. Ireland has added not a little to the triumph of American genius, and America, in return, has often nobly flung her protecting banner over the desolate exiles. The Americans are not remarkable as painters or musicians, but as actors, orators and writers they may take a foremost place in the world's pantheon. The power of expression by verbal symbols has certainly been given to them. Emerson is a study of thought crystallised into the most perfect forms ; and the leading, living writers, in grace and charm of style, need not fear rivalry with the best English writers. We recognise at once in their work the artist touch, the care in composition, the purity of expression and the entire absence of the Zola element of degrading and degraded language, scenes and images. The American style is acute, fresh and exhilarating, full of quaint humour and gentle satire, which amuses without being malignant, and the pictures of social life, of the statesman and the journalist ; the woman of the world, 136 SOCIAL STUDIES. with her perfect grace and superficial culture ; the fashionable girl, with her gossamer chatter ; and the advanced woman, with her trenchant uterances, are all admirably sketched in the new novels. We gather from these clever works the full expression of American life, with its strong desires, fierce rivalries, limitless rage for specu- lation, and energetic will to work, spend, enjoy and make the best of this poor mortal ex- istence, without wasting time on corroding thoughts over transitory pleasures. Americans are not given to brood over the mysteries -of life. They never question the universe for solution of the unknowable ; they have no morbid melancholy, no divine dis- content, and never worry their heads over agnosticism, positivism or pessimism, but accept religion as it comes to them without any ques- tioning analysis, simply as part of the great whirl of work, dress and fashion, that makes up the sum of daily life. They like reading, but not study. Everyone in the cars seems furnished with a sixpenny novel or magazine, while newspapers cover the land like snowflakes in midwinter ; but above all, they like lectures, because they can thus combine easily acquired information with the AMERICAN WOMEN. 1 37 excitement of dress and out-door variety, and a crowded lecture is infinitely more amusing than a solitary magazine ; besides it is of im- portance to them to assimilate knowledge rapidly as they eat and live, for life with them is a feverish rush of excitement and enjoy- ment. They are rapid in speech, in travel, in speculation, in everything. They live, every moment of their lives, an intense, daring, crowded, audacious, reckless and restless life of work, wealth and luxury. The present is enough for them, they take each moment as it comes, and get all the good out of it they can. There is no girlhood or boyhood ; everyone is born grown up, and the life of self-asser- tion and speculation begins from the cradle. The young girls have perfect freedom at an age when Europe would not allow them out of the nursery. They receive gentlemen alone in the evenings, and go to theatres and public places with them, unaccompanied by any duenna ; for the chaperone and lynx - eyed matron of old-world usage and tradition has been quite suppresssed in America, along with the superfluous vowels. In America youth reigns supreme and un- fettered, and there is little reference paid to parental authority. Young girls receive and 138 SOCIAL STUDIES. go out alone or with their male friends, as fancy pleases, without any reference to the unwritten law of tradition, which is of such overwhelming force in Europe that to break it would incur the ban of society. Women in America, whether married or single, rule society, and do not suffer society to rule them. They carry all before them with imperial sway, and are the beautiful des- pots of the land. Fathers, brothers and hus- bands are at work all day in the fierce strife and excitement of the ceaseless speculation, which is the national form of gambling. But the men never interfere with the interior manage- ment of the house ; all the arrangements and expenditure and machinery of social life are left to the taste, judgment and discretion of the wife. The province of the husband is merely to fling down the showers of gold, which the fascinating better half spends right royally. American women, too, are learned as well as being admirable housekeepers. They can extract square roots as well as pickle them, and think no more of encountering the difficulties of Latin, Greek, and all terrific ologies, than our ladies, those of the crewel or Berlin work. What, however, is of more consequence than all these elaborate efforts to make women ugly AMERICAN WOMEN. 1 39 by making them learned — for has not Walter Savage Landor said, that thought adds beauty to a man, but takes it from a woman — is the study of that art in which the beautiful Americanese have attained already to a high perfection, the en touto niko art for a woman, that of dress. Yet, alas! that grace, intellect and French tourniire cannot make youth and beauty im- mortal. These fair and fragile Americans, though possessing all, yet fade as quickly as the night-blowing cereus, reminding one of Goethe's pretty apologue, ' Why am I so evanescent, O Zeus ? ' asked Beauty. ' Because I have only made the evanescent beautiful,' replied the god. And when youth, beauty, the flowers and the spring heard that, they withdrew themselves weeping from before the throne of Jupiter. Early marriages are consequently much more frequent in America than here, for at twenty these fair destroyers are already in the mezzo cammin, or even the selva oscura, and at twenty- five they are but traditions. ' Mais jettons jine voile sur la passee,' as the Frenchman remarked, while placing a shawl upon one of these sad legends of antiquity. But no matter how many decades she may number, woman is always the great ruling power of America, and the American has become the representative I40 SOCIAL STUDIES. woman of the world. Not crushed down as in Europe by old traditions of mental and legal inferiority, but asserting her sovereign right to equality, and to exact and receive the homage of men. Queens of beauty, lavish and extrava- gant in all things, gorgeous in toilette, insatiable of pleasure, surrounded by the costly luxuries of often illimitable wealth, the women of fashion bask in a changeless radiance of show and glitter, for money is easily made, and if also easily lost they care little ; they enjoy while they can, eat, dress, dazzle and delight ; but love is not by any means a leading interest in the life of an American woman, and seldom is scandal heard of in their social circle ; for the very freedom of social intercourse trains woman to habits of self-reliance, and encourages so much self-esteem that they are quite insensible to flattery. They know all their perfections thoroughly, and they accept all praise as only a proper acknowledgment of their merits. Besides, American life is carried on in a per- petual public glare. In their huge hotels and boarding-houses, caravanseries, where hundreds meet and feed and talk together, there is no mystery possible ; nor is it needed, for divorce is so easily obtained that passionate dramas of fatal love and remorse form no element in their AMERICAN WOMEN. 14I lives. If the marriage bond is found too gall- ing, it may be broken at once with very little trouble; no one minds these minor family ar- rangements. Whatever is legal is right ; and the divorced pair meet in society, each supplied with a new partner, and they dance in the same set with cool nonchalance, and sometimes even valse together with all that supreme indifference to harrowing sentiment which is the perfection of good manners. The young girls also, though allowed such entire social freedom, are saved from any com- promising entanglement by a certain conscious- ness of their own value. ' They are not coquettes, and have more pride than vanity — a dignity which permits no shadow of disre- spect ; and their genial camaraderie with the other sex is often much more allied to friend- ship than to love. The passion of the American woman is rather for dress, pleasure and display. She loves to live in public, to lead and reign in society. Notoriety is not displeasing to her, and she attains it easily through the press, for there are hundreds of writing women, though but few really eminent names. Among leading brilliant writers may be named Mrs Julia Ward Howe, whose writings, both in prose and verse, place her in the front rank of gifted women. 142 SOCIAL STUDIES. Her celebrated poem, TJie Battle Hymn of the Republic, is one of the finest lyrics of the age, and deserves a place in the literature of nations. In life and manner she is simple and unaffected. Her brilliancy is all of the intellect. Yet, even in her unpretentious Quaker dress, one can see that she has had remarkable beauty, which her daughter, one of the loveliest girls in America, has inherited. Mrs Hodgson Burnett, though only a natur alised American, yet may be called an American writer. She was first known in England by her admirable novel, That Lass d Lowries, of which thirty thousand copies were sold of the first edition. This was followed by her clever work, TJirough One Administration, a brilliant sketch of social, political and official life at Washington, drawn with sharp and rather satirical touches ; but her popularity was assured by the success of Little Lord Fauntleroy, especially in its dramatic form. An acute American critic remarks of Mrs Burnett, — ' She understands suffering and sin- ning natures, and discovers gracious secrets in forbiding characters.' Mrs Atherton of New York, one of the young band of female writers, has obtained consider- able celebrity by her novels, especially by Los AMERICAN WOMEN. I43 Cerritos, an interestiiii,^ and picturesque picture of rude Californian life amongst the squatters, with their strange idiom and fierce, lawless ways, all most vividly described. Another of the young writers, Amelia Reeves, is chiefly remarkable for a very lovely face, an unbridled imagination, with a total disregard of probability in her stories, and a wild, passionate fervour of eloquent expression. Mrs Piatt, wife of the American Consul at Queenstown, Ireland, takes high rank amongst the poetesses of America. Her verse has great strength and beauty, and is always strikingly original, yet simply tender and sympathetic, es- pecially when touching on the subject of children, or the poor and suffering. While Louise Chandler Moulton — a poet celebrity in London as well as in America — has set all the .soft human emotions to music in her beautiful and cadenced verse. Both Tennyson and Browning extolled her genius, and Mrs Moulton is proud to remember them amongst her best friends. Literary women hold a high place in American society, and receive more social homage, as a tribute to intellect, than is accorded to literary women in London. Their brilliant circles in- clude all that is eminent in genius, and they inspire, and stimulate with generous praise and 144 SOCIAL STUDIES. true enthusiasm, all that is noble in mind or work. Thus they form an important section of society, and use all the immense power Ameri- can women possess as social leaders, to uphold the dignity of intellect by refined and high- toned social intercourse. As social writers, they do not indulge in the grotesque sarcasm which so often disfigures the productions of the male contributors ; and, as a rule, whatever is best and most appreciative in the society journals of comment or criticism may be safely attri- buted to a female pen. The most important and successful journalist in the States is a woman — Mrs Frank Leslie. She owns and edits many journals, and writes with bright vivacity on the social subjects of the day, yet always evinces a high and good purpose ; and, with her many gifts, her brilliant powers of conversation in all the leading tongues of Europe, her splendid residence and immense income, nobly earned and nobly spent, Mrs Frank Leslie may be considered the leader and head of the intellectual circles of New York. In former times the Americans lived almost entirely and piratically on English thought ; but they are now producing a new and independent literature, of which the style, tone and colouring are quite removed and distinct from English AMERICAN WOMEN. I45 models. While, with regard to technical excel- lence, the type, paper, binding, illustrations, woodcuts and etchings, they seem far ahead of the old country. They have also brought to the very highest perfection the photographic art, of which Saroni's portraits are an admirable example. All -the leading continental works, from Paris to Stockholm and St Petersburg, are translated at once, and in the best style ; while works by native writers on science, art, litera- ture, history and archaeology are beginning to appear in copious profusion. To these the current literature of England is added. Everything good is appropriated, though, it must be confessed, seldom paid for ; a serious injustice to English brain-workers. But the system at least spreads the fame of English writers ; while in England scarcely anything is known of the rich and varied literature of America. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter first startled the English mind with a sense of the peculiar intellectual power of America ; but it is only recently that the eminent living novelists are becoming known to the reading public of England. A great deal of the popular writing (especially the journalistic) is certainly grotesque, personal and impertinent, reckless of giving pain, and want- ing in good manners, reverence, reticence and K 146 SOCIAL STUDIES. due consideration for others. It seems as if a people that have ceased to fight for liberty still need blood, and must have the arena and the amphitheatre, the fierce lions of the Press, and the victims who are interviewed and slain. In the capricious chances of popular favour the victim may certainly be sometimes crowned, but is too often rent or stoned. The Americans are fond of travel, though the childlike worship of the Old World no longer exists. They have begun to recognise their own immense advan- tages, and to find out that Europe is ' rather a humbug ' — a mummy, smothered in bandages of old forms and formulas, that are but the cerements of the dead. The tone of American thought is colossal, their country is colossal, their mode of living, expenditure, wealth and specula- tions are all of immense proportion. ' They con- sume twice as much of everything as any other people on earth,' one of their own writers says. It is not surprising, then, that Europe seems so small to them, after the vastness of their own horizon. The mountains, rivers and plains are as nothing to them after their own, and ' the baby-house scenery ' of Europe fails to impress people who have looked on the foam and heard the thunders of Niagara. Even the Atlantic is but a mere ferry in their eyes, and they think AMERICAN WOMEN. I47 no more of a run over to Europe than a Lon- doner of a run down to Brighton, They laugh at the Httle kings and kingdoms, and, in their large, expansive way, speak of ' the Latin countries ' generally, as if quite too insignificant for separate notice. ' The Innocents Abroad ' are, in fact, ruthless iconoclasts, and mock at legends and ruins, rubbish and relics. They do not find the rail cars as comfortable, the hotels as sumptuous, the champagne as good as the American ; nor the women as beautiful as those they left in Baltimore and New York, while to American women, accustomed as they are to admiration and homage, European society seems dull, heavy, monotonous and unappreciative. They do not care to go ' moping about galleries or churches.' They find Venice slow, and stories of the Falieri rather a bore. They want life, variety, fashion, amusement, picnics and pro- menades — enjoyment, in a word ; not guide- books and routine. They are seeking material for a smart letter to the journals, and they find only formality and the police. The female tourist is very amusingly drawn in one of the recent novels. She does not care for Turner's landscapes nor Assyrian bulls ; she wants the present the actual humanity, not 148 SOCIAL STUDIES. fossil bones. Her fervent aspiration is to meet all the celebrities of London at a dinner-party. to note their peculiarities, faces and features, talk and movements, and then dash off a letter to the journals, with accurate descriptions, marked, no doubt, by all the terrible candour of American nature, which is never glamoured by an illusion, but goes right at the fact with fatal precision. Americans are amazed at the blind devotion of Europe to the old grooves and the ancient idols of routine and form, apparently uncon- scious that the pillars of the temple are failing and falling, and that any day a crash may come, bringing down the whole superstructure, built on ceremonial and symbols that have lost their strength since they lost their meaning. Yet the spell of England, ' mystic, mediaeval England,' is upon them still ; and London has a charm for Americans beyond all classic Europe, as the origin of their nation, the founder of their laws, religion and social habits. ' Sombre London, the mighty mother of our mighty race,' as one of their writers finely designates the great capital of the English people, has an irresistible attraction for them. They love its pleasures and social crowds and stately court functions, with all the awful solemnity and the splendour of visible royalty. AMERICAN WOMEN. I49 ' Some even assert a liking for the shrouded atmosphere, the soft, moist air, the veiled skies, and the light, 'the ineffable English light,' so restful and soothing after the lurid glare and cloudless azure heaven of America, And the old homage to England is shown in an effort, which is decidedly in progress, to form an aristocracy after the English model, with titled distinctions. The wives of officials are beginning to arro- gate to themselves the prefix of ' Honourable,' if it belongs by right of office to the husband ; and the wife of the next American Minister at London may, perhaps, require to be called ' Her Excellency.' The movement, however, has no chance of success, for the good sense of the American public is entirely against it ; and already the leading journals have denounced its absurdity, along with the liveries, the fourteen servants, the coat of arms, and the four horses of the Republican imitators of the \-ain glories of a monarchy. An aristocracy is the growth of a thousand years' feudal lordship, when men had the power of life and death over their vassals ; and the English aristos still retain the haughty habits of command, and are treated with traditional I50 SOCIAL STUDIES. reverence, though the power and the feudal rights have passed away. But an aristrocracy cannot be made at once out of men who rise from rude toil or sordid vocations, by dint of fierce competi- tion in trade, or some lucky chance in striking oil. The Americans should be content to remain as they are, the great republican expression of human progress ; where everyone stands on the same level, and is entitled to the same consideration ; where the rail-splitter may be- come the equal of kings, and the daughter of the dry-goods man take her place amid the nobles of Europe, and consider herself quite their equal. . The true dignity of America is in the brain power that has transformed a wild, waste con- tinent into a splendid world of advanced civili- sation by the stupendous energy and intelli- gence of working men. The old - world nations have been for six thousand years painfully toiling from Ararat to the Atlantic to advance the standard of humanity, and still the triumphs of intellect over ignorance, misery and desolation are incom- plete. But in a hundred years the Americans have spread over half the world, furrowed it AMERICAN WOMEN. 151 with iron roads, spanned the mighty rivers, driven paths through the mountains, covered the desolate plains with flourishing cities, and sent the full tide of civilisation from ocean to ocean with a force and power that leaves the old-world kingdoms far behind in the race of progress. The sixty millions of America are made up of a wonderful medley of heterogeneous elements, but they have all the one watchword 'Advance !' They are recruited from the young blood of all nations, for only youth and energy emigrate, and they have the spirit, the courage and the daring of their origin. Thus the process of fusion goes on rapidly, and already America is becoming strong and assertive with the dignity of a united people. There are no oppressed nationalities, all are equal and have the same privileges, and all uphold the republic with pride and affection, and never dream of giving up the advantages it offers to go back to the bondage of old-world limitations and the chilling influence of class prejudice. It is remarkable how soon all races become Americanised. No foreign language takes root among them. In a generation foreigners for- get their native tongue, and English — the 152 SOCIAL STUDIES. wonderful English language that seems made for the universe — remains triumphant and alone. American women are not idle in the war of progress against prejudice. They have taken an advanced position in the strife for right and justice, and demand for their sex perfect equality with men — social, legal, professional and political, the right to vote, and even to be elected to Congress, and as they are always terribly in earnest, and have an indomitable will, no doubt they will gain all they demand. And already the women of Europe are follow- ing their example. English law has recently made vast concessions, and even English society, prisoned as it is in routine, is making praiseworthy efforts to cast aside many of the stupid old conventions of our false humanity. The English girl is not so 'dull and diffi- dent ' as America represents her. She is be- coming inspired with a love of freedom and a consciousness of her own mental power, and claims a social, professional and political equality with the other sex. The ' matron,' hitherto thought so indispensable in society as guide and protector, is becoming an obsolete institution. The English girl is learning inde- pendence, and by earnest study, intellectual AMERICAN WOMEN. I 53 training and serious life work, is fitting herself for a higher and nobler position in the social organisation than she has hitherto held. Thus she will attain to the self-reliance and dignity that make her American sisters so important as a social power, while at the same time they lose none of their fascination as women. There is a powerful electric influence in American nature that draws all other nations into its current, and an amount of overflowing nervous energy that is irresistibly stimulating to all who come into contact with it. The gates of empires cannot be closed against eternal principles, nor can they be warred against by material agencies. The march of ideas is predestined. Especi- ally when ideas mean a free career for talent, equal chances of work and wealth for all men and women alike, and the fall of ignorance and idleness before enlightenment and industry and education, for on these things the well-being of a people is founded, and the happiness of nations and of humanity. THE WORLD'S NEW PHASES. The railroads of the world are fast becoming the truest and most reliable expression of national progress ; and the intellectual advance in art, science and civilisation of any country or region of the earth can be estimated at once, and lead off clearly by a survey of these iron oghams cut deep on the surface of the globe. Along these grooves the thoughtful mind will be led in a thousand directions ; for steam and electricity have transformed the world, and almost annihilated space and time. Europe is joined to America by bands of vapour and a coil of wire, while separate nationalities, once jealous of and hating each other, are becoming merged into one universal brotherhood, who claim the whole earth as their heritage and country ; and all peoples and nations on the face of the globe are tending towards the realisation of the grand formula of an ideal future — Fraternity, Liberty and Equality for all 154 THE world's new PHASES. 1 55 the children of men — a powerful, united, en- lightened humanity. Every child born now is heir to a wonderful heritage of light and knowledge. Science is daily discovering new and infinite sources of wealth — special gifts lying latent in each country, by which a people could become truly prosperous if they only knew how to use them ; so that if poverty and degradation and misery exist, it is man's sin and not God's curse, that has brought these evils on any land. Even in the last twenty years what changes have been effected in the relations of nation with nation, and in our knowledge of the vast treasures awaiting human enterprise in every portion of the globe. And what grand portals are opening everywhere for the onward march of humanity. France has made a path at Suez for the ships of the world to pass from the Mediterranean to the Indian Sea; while America throws a railroad across Panama to connect the two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific ; thus realising the dream of Columbus of a direct path from Europe to Asia by the West ; for it is proved now that the shortest route possible from London to China lies along the great high- way of the Atlantic, across Panama to the East Pacific. 156 SOCIAL STUDIES. English enterprise also is developing a new and unthought-of region of fertility and beauty in the interior of Africa, where even the gentler sex brave all dangers for the sake of knowledge, and a woman's hand has helped to draw back the veil of Isis. Lady Baker, with only the torch of love to guide her across the mighty desolation of an untrodden world, aided to solve the mystery of the Nile; while Mrs Piazzi Smith, taking up her abode and making her habitation for months in an ancient Egyptian tomb, assisted her husband to take the measurement of the Pyramids. Then, America — colossal America — lying within eight days' sail of our Irish shores, sends on the poverty-stricken hordes of over- crowded Europe by its forty thousand miles of railway to regions where land is given them for the asking, and wealth is certain if they work. The human race is as yet but a handful on this magnificent continent, which God seems to have given to Europe just as Europe, effete and exhausted, failed in the resources adequate for the support of her own children. And American energy knows no limits ; railroads have been carried five hundred miles west of the Missouri, and across the Rocky Mountains, discovering illimitable wealth of coal and iron as they advance. Two lines of railway are even THE WORLDS NEW THASES. 1$/ now swiftly running across the buffalo hunting- grounds of the Indians, driving Indians and buffalos before them, and leaving these prairies of the west ready for the planting, peaceful hand of the emigrant to turn them into the greatest pasture plains of the world. Thus every iron line is a symbol and a prophecy of progress, and the exponent of the power, life and energy of a people. On looking over the most recent maps we see at once that England has done her work splendidly with her iron forces. She ex- hibits a dense network of railroads ; France the same ; and Prussia nearly equals them. These black lines tell of the energy of the three great energising nations of Europe. Happy, pros- perous, flourishing little Belgium presents a goodly number of the best organised railways in Europe ; and Italy, under the powerful inspira- tion of her new-found life, is already rivalling her great compeers, and has brought Florence within thirty-six hours of Paris. Spain languidly tries to move on the iron groove, aided by- English hands and brains ; but the nobler nations of the north, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, have already succeeded, notwith- standing the difficulties of the undertaking, in marking several suggestive black lines on the rugged surface of Scandinavia. 158 SOCIAL STUDIES. Russian policy is represented exactly by her railroads. Russia neither desires the stranger to visit her, nor her own children to leave her. Therefore, she has no branch lines running hither and thither over the immense flat surface of her infinite swamp ; but she stretches out one long, menacing arm from St Petersburg to Moscow, thence across a distance of eight hundred miles, and clutches Warsaw in her iron grasp ; and with a branch line to Berlin, and a few offshoots from this one main trunk, Russian enterprise in the matter of railways has an end. But Asia no longer puts her trust alone in elephants for the purpose of locomotion ; the steam engine has dethroned these sagacious monsters, and the scream of the railway-whistle through forest and jungle startles the tiger in his lair. A railroad runs across India from the coast to Madras, and from Bombay to Cal- cutta ; and from Calcutta to Delhi one can travel a thousand miles by rail without even changing carriages. New Zealand also has her railroads and her telegraphs, and by these the ancient land of the cannibal is fast becoming an advanced, civilised, fashionable place, where wealth is plenty as in London, and society almost as brilliant as at Paris. Australia is already an old established country, THE world's new PHASES. 1 59 equal, if not superior to the mother land in all that riches can command and industry achieve. But there are some nations that still persistently refuse the gospel of the Iron Age. China, for instance, denounces railroads ; hates them ; forbids them ; won't have them at any price. She will make no iron grooves for the chariot- wheels of the stranger to run lightly in ; and Pekin trembles at the thought of these great highways for the nations to pass over. Turkey is quite behind the age in these matters also. But the Japanese are wiser ; and as they have already constructed very admirable steamers without any European aid, so they will soon have railroads everywhere made by their own hands to delight their own cunning little eyes. Africa, with all its horrors of burning deserts and brutalised humanity, is yet bounded north and south by bands of civilisation ; and the French at Algiers and the English at the Cape run their railroads and erect their telegraphs, which will one day, no doubt, meet and clash and flash in the very heart of Africa, by the shores, perhaps, of the great Albert Nyanza itself, with a branch line for tourists to the Victoria Falls, which, it is said, equal Niagara in grandeur. But even more than steamships and iron roads,- does the electric wire tend to draw all the nations l6o SOCIAL STUDIES. of the earth into one great unity. The human race, in fact, is becoming like one vast sentient being, surrounded by an invisible but homo- geneous nervous system through which thoughts flash simultaneously with the rapidity of light- ning, and minds separated by whole continents and oceans can vibrate in unison at the same instant, as if men had acquired divine attributes and become omniscient and omnipresent. We pledge our friends in America at our feasts, and the response comes back to us before the sparkles have died upon the wine-cup. An eclipse takes place in India, and the account of it is read in London before the shadow and the darkness have quite passed from the sun. It is impossible for ignorance and isolation to continue much longer under the all-powerful influence of these new-found forces. Every stroke of the piston is the trumpet-note of pro- gress, and the triumph of intelligence, power and knowledge over the foes that keep men prisoned and fettered in mental and physical degradation. In glancing over the maps of the world, even a careless eye must be struck with the re- markable advance of geographical knowledge, which has now named almost every point of the earth's surface from the Poles to the Equator. THE WORLDS NEW PHASES. l6l The great blanks on the face of the globe marked 'unknown,' so pleasant to our child- hood, because thereby we escaped the dire necessity of learning by rote the names of a harrowing list of chief towns, seated upon an aggravating number of rivers, are rapidly filling up. New Zealand has become a second Encf- land, mapped out with homely English names that tell the tale of that wonderful and indomit- able English enterprise which pervades the whole world, diffusing through every clime and region the arts, industry and language of the great nation which rules over one hundred and fifty millions of the people of the earth. The portals of the ice-world have been unbarred by English enterprise and the daring of heroic men, amongst whom none have shown more splendid courage, or achieved more in Arctic exploration, than our own brave Irishmen. The names of Sir Leo- pold M'Clintock, of Kellett, Sherrard Osborne and Maguire are foremost amongst those who flashed light on the polar mystery, making visible every cape and bay and headland along the utmost limits of the earth ; while another gallant Irishman, Sir Robert M'Clure, solved the problem of the North-West Passage, and sailed his ship triumphantly from the Pacific round by the north coast till within sight of L 1 62 SOCIAL STUDIES. the waters of the Atlantic ; but there, blocked up by ghastly walls of impenetrable ice, he seemed destined to add his name to the fatal list of Arctic discoverers, while day by day for a thousand days he and his crew watched the ice closing round their doomed ship,' as in the old Spanish story we read of the prison walls contracting, by some secret mechanism, round the victim within till they crushed him to death. So three years passed, till all hope failed, and they stood face to face with death as only brave men can. They nailed their flag to the mast and resigned themselves to die ; but at that last hour relief came like a miracle — a ship was at hand to rescue them. And the most affect- ing scene ever witnessed perhaps under the polar sky was when the two friends, the two Irishmen, M'Clure and Kellett, one having sailed by the Pacific, and the other by the Atlantic, met and clasped hands on that lonely ice-field, and M'Clure, kneeling down, thanked God for the tidings which saved him and his companions from a horrible death. But his good ship. The Investigator, could not be freed from the ice-fetters, and had to be left to fate. She may be in existence yet, with her flag still floating in the silent polar air, though no human ■eye may ever rest again on the spot named THE world's new PHASES. 163 by Sir Robert M'Clure, in memory of his great deliverance, ' The Bay of xMercy.' But it has taken its place permanently on the map of the world, and in the heroic but terrible annals of Arctic discovery. And science ever follows quickly on the track of the explorer, revealing for mankind the utility and value of the new territories gained from waste and desolation, just as the information is most needed for the purposes of commerce and colonisation. If the rumour goes forth that the resources of the Old World are failing— that the coal of England is nearly exhausted, and her stores of copper and tin are being brought low — then science announces that Australia possesses copper enough to supply the whole world, and that the coal-fields of America are inexhaustible. If the human race is overcrowding this out- worn Europe, then science lifts the veil from the centre of Africa, and shows a lofty table- land fit for all the purposes of life — with green pastures, lakes as large as all Scotland, lofty mountains pouring down eternal cataracts to feed that mighty river, the Nile, which traverses 36 degrees of latitude, or the fifth part of the entire distance from pole to pole — a magnificent new world, containing millions of square miles, 1 64 SOCIAL STUDIES. given over to the despairing European, wha fights through Hfe and death for the possession of one acre of land at home. If the pasture lands of Europe are proving insufficient for the increasing population, then science drives her rail-car through the boundless prairies of the West, clearing a path through regions where millions might live, and feed the whole world besides. London now makes its marketing at New York, and every nation and people will soon be bound together by that strongest bond and pledge of peace and unity, mutual necessity and mutual advantage. But science, though it has revealed many facts, has not yet solved all mysteries, and the early condition of our globe is still one of these mystic problems. It is supposed that the earth was once an immense unbroken plain, with a climate very different from the present, for it is proved that tropical verdure once reigned at the north, and that the present lands of snow- were then fair lands of flowers. Recent ex- plorations of Greenland show that a rich tropical vegetation once existed there ; and Sir Robert M'Clure found traces of petrified forests at the extreme end of the polar world, where not a shrub will live now. This vast elder world was then, it is thought, broken up and dislocated THE WORLDS NEW PHASES. 1 65 into continents ; two oceans separated the earth into two hemispheres ; islands were flung off from the mainland ; the British Isles were rent from Germany ; Ireland was torn from the coast of Spain, where the Bay of Biscay now flows ; New Zealand was hurled by volcanic action from that region of volcanoes, the Pacific coast of America, and remains to this day a volcano itself, or rather an aggregate of volcanoes, with fountains of steam and rivers of boiling water ; and so all other changes went on — by which mountains rose, and lake and river and sea were formed — till the world settled down quietly into its present condition. But, amidst all these changes, Africa — according to Sir Roderick Murchison — suffered no mutations and shows no sign of submersion or dislocation, or of volcanic action, but remains, in the midst of a new order of things, a fragment of an elder primitive granitic world, the oldest portion of our globe ; while America he pronounces to be the latest and newest — a modern alluvial plain — a region of volcanoes and earthquakes, as if scarcely yet settled down into compact solidity. Europe, the most highly-favoured portion of the globe, owes all its wealth, power, commerce and salubrity of climate to this dislocating pro- cess. Every rift of the ocean, every cleft of l66 SOCIAL STUDIES. the mountain, made a path for knowledge, or revealed a source of wealth ; while Africa, which admits the ocean nowhere, has remained till now impervious to all commerce and civilisa- tion, except at the coast. Science has also penetrated the depths of the ocean, and told us of that immense sub- Atlantic plain — perhaps the submerged surface of an elder world — where for a thousand miles a car might run without meeting an obstacle to its progress. And, lifting its glance to the sun, science has analysed its substance, revealed the metals it contains — above all, the abundance of iron, from which the inference may be drawn that life there is not radically dissimilar from our own — that it also has its needs and requirements, and that intellect akin to the human, though probably far loftier and nobler, has the same material objects to work on to supply them. But the history, the orgin, the duration of that early mystic race of man, whose remains are strewn over the surface of the earth, are pro- blems which not even science has yet solved. Who can tell the origin of this great, silent race, that has not left one written sign or symbol of human speech, though its footsteps can be traced from farthest India to the last headland of western Ireland, and from thence across the THE world's new PHASES. 167 great plains of America by that mysterious alphabet of stone which yet none can form into intelligible words to tell us whence they came or whither they went. A mighty race indeed, that has left ineffaceable memorials of its world- wide wanderings. Recent discoveries in the valley of the Mississippi alone show a space of upwards of a hundred miles covered with their grave-mounds, while the soil is rich with quan- tities of their peculiar stone implements, identical in form and fashion with those found in Ireland, specimens of which are exhibited in such pro- fusion in our Royal Irish Academy.^ Many hold the belief that this people of the Stone Age was an antediluvian race which perished in the great catastrophe of the Deluge ; while others have supposed for them a pre-Adamite origin. This theocy of a series of pre-Adamite races, gradually completing the links of the chain between the lower animal and intellectual man, has received additional confirmation from the recent explorations in Central Africa. There we find a race hideous in all respects, morally and physically — revolting to all human senses — without any notions of a God, of a moral law, ' For a full description of these implements see the ' Catalogue of Antiquities ' of the Royal Irish Academy, by .Sir William Wilde, Vice-President, R.I. A. l68 SOCIAL STUDIES. of truth or justice, or any rule of life beyond what cunning teaches — without memory, or history, or traditions, the first link apparently between the gorilla and man — differing only from the brute creation by the gift of speech. And so they have remained for at least six thousand years, fragments of an elder race, as Africa itself is of an elder world ; shut up from all human intercourse or chances of im- provement by bands of desert and a cordon of poison. But for what purpose in God's great providence this horrible destiny was laid on them, none can know. The men of the Stone Age, on the contrary, show a comparatively high organisation ; for they have left evidences of ingenuity and design, of a sense of symmetry and fitness, and proofs of the adaptation of means to ends ; and also of a noble reverence for the dead, which almost proves their belief in immortality. But the most mysterious of all existing races is the Chinese. This people that never knew a childhood — that ever since human history began has exhibited a knowledge of science and a perfection in art which Europe even now cannot equal. A nation that numbers three hundred and fifty millions of people, whose language is more spoken than any other on the face of the THE world's new PHASES. 1 69 globe, and to whom the tenth part of the earth has been given for a possession. Yet, endowed as they are with the keenest intellect, they are morally but half developed. They have never received, and are never likely to receive, the great Gospel of Christianity ; they have never been brought under the law of its blessings, promises or judgments. And so they, too, stand on the earth, a race apart ; and have so stood for six thousand years, strangers to that fold within which alone, we are taught to believe eternal safety and salvation can be found. Some writers, from the peculiar nature of Chinese intellect, so matured yet so unprogres- sive, assume that the Chinese race is the latest of the pre-Adamic races ; while others fancy they have discovered in the Chinese the descendants of Cain, to whom, we know from Scripture, the knowledge of the higher arts, such as architec- ture, metallurgy and music, was first revealed. For the leaders of humanity, however, we must look to Europe. Someone has said, — ' The men of divine instincts are all European ; ' and in Europe we find two races who are pre- eminently the world-leaders — the Gothic or Teutonic race, of which England is the highest representative ; and the Celtic, including the Latin, of which France is now chief and head. I/O SOCIAL STUDIES. These two races — the Teuton, grave, wise and industrious ; the Celt, brilliant, powerful and proud — seem destined to rule the world. The English language, the most perfect form of Teutonic speech, is now spoken by above two hundred millions of people ; English laws, literature, commerce, arts, manufactures and religion, extend over the whole of America, of Australia, of New Zealand, over half of Africa and half of India, and are permeating every seaport and every remotest island and country on the face of earth or ocean. Then to the Celtic race is given the finest portion of Europe — the Mediterranean shore with all its noble kingdoms, France, Italy, the Spanish Peninsula, Greece and the .^gean Isles ; the North of Africa is theirs ; their influence directs Egypt, has overleaped the wall of Chinese prejudice and is even felt in Japan ; whilst the union of the two races has formed, what promises to be the mightiest dominion the world has ever yet seen — the great American Republic. Celt and Teuton have met there in the strength of their united intellect and power, and no other race on earth can now hope to rival or conquer them. They are the great levers of humanity. Other races are stationery or retrogressive ; they alone advance. For them the law of life is THE WORLD'S NEW PHASES. I/I onward. And the result will be to build up a better and a nobler humanity. Light and knowledge must follow in the path of the explorer — in the track of the iron car, and the missionaries of science will become the mission- aries of God. And it is remarkable how rapidly all other tribes and nations that stand in the way of these two great destined races are dis- appearing from the earth — the half-souled Negro, the Red Indian of the prairies, the miserable Gnomes that guard the portals of the gold lands of the Pacific, as well as the luxurious, sensuous Oriental. The world is completing the cycle of its destiny, and travelling back to that era when all the earth was of one family, one speech, and one religion. But through all the whirl of the world's changes and phases, let us see what has been doing for Ireland. Alas ! we have no page to add to the great book of progress — no record of advance, only of decadence or stagnation ! In three decades we lost three millions of our people — that is all we have to tell. Italy in that time has risen to a great, free nation of twenty- four millions ; Greece, with a population of only a million and a half, has become a self-governed, independent State ; Prussia has taken her place almost at the head of Europe ; and Spain has 172 SOCIAL STUDIES. boldly asserted the right of a people to choose their own form of government. We only dream while others act : — ' The sounds we hear of the new Evangels, Rising like incense from Earth's green sod, But we alone, before worshipping Angels, Idly stand in the garden of God.' With a population numbering twice that of Switzerland, nearly four times that of Greece, and equal to all Sweden, Norway and Denmark put together, Ireland is still held in leading-strings by another people ; and after fifteen hundred years of Christian civilisation, and seven hundred of British rule, we are still without commerce, without literature, without a flag, without dignity — in a word, without self-government. The centre of Ireland is as unreclaimed as the centre of Africa ; with a splendid sea-board, we are still without passenger ships to take us to the Continent, and are obliged to traverse the whole breadth of England to find a vessel to convey us to the adjacent coasts of P'rance and Spain — though ages ago, long before England set her foot here, a constant and direct intercourse was kept up between Spain and Ireland ; the mag- nificent West, which should be the great high- way between Europe and America, with ships on the ocean and rail-cars on the land to carry on the traffic of two worlds, is still a silent, THE world's new PHASES. 1 75 solitary waste. Are we not, indeed, the true lotos-eaters, described by Tennyson in a picture he must have meant for Ireland : — In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon ; A land where all things always seemed the same. And round about the keel with faces pale The mild-eyed, melancholy lotos-eaters came ; And deep asleep they seemed, yet all awake. Yet, through all fate and misfortunes, Ireland, as part of the great Celtic race, is fulfilling the great destiny of dispersion, and going forth to possess the world. This little island, scarcely larger than a good - sized American farm, yet which her people allow other hands to rule, is now but the expression of the centre, not of the circumference of the Irish nation ; for the Irish have founded a nation in America and another in Australia already equal in number to the nation at home. Planetai, ceaseless wanderers through space, yet ever turning with thoughts of affection round the one common centre — their own old country. It is remarkable that although the Irish generally began life abroad at the base of the social pyramid, they rapidly rise to the summit ; and while the solemn, industrious Teuton races continue to plod on at the rough hard work of the world, the daring, brilliant, ambitious Celt 174 SOCIAL STUDIES. aspires to lead and rule. Thus the Irish element is found strong in every civilised government except their own. Our wanderings might lead us on over the maps of the world to an infinite of thought and speculation ; yet even from this brief survey the conviction must arise upon every mind that a brighter future is opening for the human race ; that light is gaining upon darkness, knowledge achieving her peaceful, yet stupenduous victories for man, and freedom is everywhere annihilating the system of the old feudal tyrannies, which kept the masses debased and abject in the bonds of ignorance and serfdom. The Spirit of the Age goes forth conquering and to conquer, with its three mighty forces : 2o^/a, dumfji,ig, voug — Wisdom, Power and Mind ; revealing, destroying, reconstructing and build- ing up a fairer world and a nobler humanity over the lair of the lion, the trail of the savage, and the wrecks and sediment of the bygone ages. THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. No speculative subject excites more intense interest at the present day than the future of the human race, especially in relation to those other planets of the great solar system, within whose stern and changeless laws our earth and all the planet worlds are alike inflexibly bound. Perhaps we have been over-wearied with merely mundane knowledge, and feel the need, as it were, to search the infinite for new subjects of investigation. Curiosity has been satiated here. We know all about the physical condi- tion of the earth, as it has been existing under many mutations for the last ten millions of years or more ; everything has been analysed and discussed and proved and tested in the alembic of science, till there are no more mysteries left of the visible world to excite the imagination, or to stimulate research for some yet undiscovered truth. But there is still one awful and gloomy mystery of the invisible world connected with our race which remains 175 1/6 SOCIAL STUDIES. unread. The generations pass in endless suc- cession through the silent gate of death — the wise, the learned, the noble, the good, disappear in the fathomless abyss, and we, standing on the brink in tremour and bewildered fear, await the coming of the Fates — Dark-coloured queens, whose glittering eyes are bright With dreadful, mournful, life-destroying light — yet vainly ask of revelation or philosophy for some voice through the silence, some word from the infinite, to tell us if there are other worlds where the soul's energy will find a wider sphere, and the divine intellect still more glorious objects for its splendid powers than it finds on earth. No proof, however, has yet been found of the existence of inhabited worlds beyond our own, although dim previsions exist in most men's minds that the planets are connected with the history of humanity, both as past and future abodes of the human race, through an endless progression of intelligence in ever-changing forms ; and when at night we look into the fathomless star-depths of the infinite, we yearn to know if the spirits of those we loved and lost are dwelling above in some bright world where life is nobler and more beautiful than it is on THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. I// our sorrow-Stricken earth ; yet that even there^ so far removed from sin and sorrow, some tender chord of human love may still vibrate in their nature, in sympathy with the tears that dim our eyes as we look upward and think of them, with the tender memories that can never die. This question of life in other worlds, which has such a mystic and powerful attaction for all reflecting minds, first attracted popular atten- tion from the eloquent and emotional manner in which it was treated by Chalmers in his astron- omical sermons, and afterwards by the splendid utterances of Whewell and Brewster, in their celebrated essays, ' The Plurality of Worlds,' and ' More Worlds than One.' In the former, Dr Whewell, the great an- tagonist of the habitation theory, maintains that our earth is probably the only abode in the universe fitted for rational beings ; and of the planets he affirms, that no other except our world has the conditions necessary to highly organised beings. The inner planets are globes of fire ; the outer are globes of water and frigid vapour, with scarcely any solid nucleus which could give the means to support life. The moon is a burnt-out cinder, without sea or atmosphere, where the wretched inhabitants, if M 178 SOCIAL STUDIES. any existed, would be scorched with intolerable heat, then frozen with intolerable cold, every alternate fortnight. The sun — that glorious orb which nations have worshipped as a god — he affirms, is nothing more than a gigantic fiery furnace of red-hot vapour, where life of any kind would be im- possible ; and the planets are incomplete worlds filled with inorganic material, or, if any organic creatures exist there, they could be only like the first evidences of creation in the slimy produc- tions of the earth's earliest youth, before man appeared. In Jupiter, for instance, they could be nothing more than fishy, flabby, boneless, gelatinous, hideous creatures, groping their lives out in a twilight of fog and watery vapour, through which the sun would appear merely as a speck of light. And one could scarcely imagine such beings endowed with conscious intelligence ; while the planets Uranus and Neptune must exist in that ' outermost dark- ness ' which is the Scripture expression for hell, intensified in horror by the duration of their winters, which in Uranus last for forty years, and in Neptune for eighty years, of a human life. Then, in the inner planets next the sun, no life or vegetation could sustain a THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 179 heat seven times greater than that of our earth, where even metals would be reduced to a state of fiery vapour. The earth alone, according to his view, has a sufficient solid nucleus to support life — an atmosphere, a temperature and succes- sion of seasons favourable to the manifestation of rational industry and intellect, and the en- joyments suited to a fine and highly sensitive organisation. In opposition to these theories of Dr Whewell, Sir David Brewster maintains with great elo- quence, and arguments drawn both from science and religion, that the omnipotent Intelligence could suit the organisation to the abode, and that the presumption of rational life through- out the solar system is great, from the evi- dence of compensation to the outer planets for diminished solar light, by the arrangement which supplies them with many moons, and Saturn with a resplendent ring of circling satellites ; and he asks, — ' Could it be believed that through the millions of years of the pro- tozoic and pre-human periods of the world's existence, before man was created, there was not to be found, a single rational being in the whole great universe of God ? ' Mr Proctor, a most brilliant writer on these subjects, takes a middle course, and his clear, I So SOCIAL STUDIES. definite views, enforced with spirit and keen argumentative power, deserve the deepest atten- tion. He beheves that rational Hfe is a scarce and rare phenomenon in the universe, not exist- ing simultaneously in all the worlds, but mani- fested occasionally, and then lost, to reappear again when the physical conditions have been reached in other worlds, by which alone rational life, as we know it, can be sustained. The com- pensation theory he refutes, by showing that the moons of Jupiter scarcely afford any light to their primary, owing to their great distance from the sun ; and that the ring of Saturn actually darkens the planet, in place of en- lightening it, during half the year. According to his theory, all the worlds and suns of the universe pass through successive and progressive stages during immense periods of time. At first they are simply accretions of burning vapour, which gradually attract to themselves floating material of planet-forming elements ; and, as they cool down, a solid nucleus is formed, and organic life of the lowest type begins to appear. Higher grades follow in succession, but at long intervals, until, finally, a race of beings gifted with conscious intelligence, such as the human, takes its des- tined place as head and ruler of a perfected world. THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. l8l Our earth, through millions of years, has been passing through all the progressive stages of formation and completion, until the culminat- ing moment arrived when the highest product of development was manifested in man ; but that was only six thousand years ago, so brief is the history of intelligence in the history of worlds. And already the earth is showing signs of decrepitude and lessening vital power. Worlds, like living creatures, have their fiery youth, their full, calm maturity, and their failing age and final death. Nothing remains steadfast in the universe ; all things fluctuate and change. Even the sun is in a process of exhaustion, so that eventually life will fail on the earth, directly by the decay of vital force, and indirectly by the dying out of the solar heat and light which is the source of all planet life ; and this world at last will become silent and lifeless, a bleak and barren waste, as the moon is at the pre- sent moment. The progress of civilisation, he adds, is also rapidly consuming the earth-wealth by which men live. The great forests are disappearing from above the soil, and the great coalfields from beneath it. It has been even calculated that in five hundred years the coal will be ex- 1 82 SOCIAL STUDIES. tinct — a mere moment in the history of a world, but a moment that will bring consequences of awful import to humanity, for either an entirely new order of things must be established on this earth within the next thousand years for the human race, or the human race itself will perish and become extinct. Meanwhile, however, other worlds are pre- paring for the reception of rational beings, and, according to Mr Proctor, Jupiter, Saturn and the outer planets are even now passing through the fiery stage, which is the azoic period of all worlds, and from which they rise into abodes fit for rational life. The objection to the possibility of life exist- ing in the remote planets by reason of their immense distance from the sun, he meets by the hypothesis that they are not dark, opaque masses revolving in space, like our earth, but self-luminous suns, lighting up the otherwise thick darkness of the outermost regions of the solar system. He holds, for instance, that Jupiter, the largest planet of the system, in place of being a huge ocean of fog and mist, is a globe of fiery vapour, giving resplendent light and heat to his circling moons, which are the inhabited portions of the Jovian system, if there be inhabitants, and which THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 1 83 revolve round their primary in the warm glow of an endless spring. Saturn, in like manner, is a mass of incan- descent vapour, giving light and heat to his attendant moons, and to that lustrous ring of countless satellites, so massed together that they seem like one continuous arch of light. Yet, a time may come when these fiery suns will absorb into their masses the circling satel- lites, and as the minor worlds are accreted a solid nucleus will be formed as a basis for sup- porting a new phase of life ; the life of the satellites will then gradually die out, but in their place new and splendid worlds will be formed, fitted for the abode of those higher races for whom alone all worlds exist. These daring theories of a mind, which seemed to see by inner vision the formation, life and death of worlds and sun and systems, are sup- ported by the argument that, as far as our earth is concerned, we know from scientific investigation that the azoic inchoate state of the world lasted for millions of years, while it was passing from the condition of fiery vapour to that of a concrete mass, but six thousand years cover the brief period of its human, historic life ; from which Mr Proctor concludes that ' the lifeless gaps in the history of the solar system 184 SOCIAL STUDIES. far exceed the periods of life with which they alternate.' From this view of the succession of vital epochs it seems not improbable that it is our own human race which is destined to pass through all the changes of life and death and resurrection, from world to world of the eight planets con- nected with the solar systsm ; so that in place of there being a distinct creation, and a new race for each planet, it is humanity itself, ever dying, ever living, that will travel from star to star, from grade to grade, still ascending in the infinite scale of power, intelligence, beauty, and moral harmony, until the human becomes almost divine, and reaches at last the glorious promised Heaven within the radiant, central temple of the sun. It is right to state, however, that in Mr Proctor's theory, the sun is not a habitable world. He considers it as being now only in the first stage of all worlds, that of a mass of burning vapour. Yet others, and not without reason, believe that the sun fulfils exactly that splendid dream of Heaven pictured for us in the sublime description of the seer of Patmos — a glowing world of light and of eternal summer, where there is no nigJit. Of no other body in the solar system can this be predicted. Of the THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 185 sun alone it is true ; there can be no night as he revolves in the unchanging light of his own luminous atmosphere, and for the same reason, no change of seasons. No seed time or harvest ; eternal summer must reign for ever there, and the Tree of Life will grow beside the living waters, as the trees by the rivers of Paradise. ' No night ' implies also that stated periods of repose after toil for weary workers, and frail, decaying organisms will not be needed ; these are the conditions of labour and of imperfect frames that require constant renovation through sleep. For the perfect organism, not subject to disease or death, there will be eternal youth, without the weariness of exhaustion, or that decadence of vital power which we call old age. These views are not altogether fanciful : such conditions must exist to some extent in a world where there are no seasons for toil and no nights for rest ; and sorrow could hardly find place in a world where youth, beauty, peace and joy, and the divine powers of the intellect were eternal, and subject to neither exhaustion nor decay. The inspired writer describes such a world and calls it Heaven, and one cannot lightly cast aside the belief that the sun may be that destined and glorious home of our race 1 86 SOCIAL STUDIES. where ' the nations who are saved shall walk in light.' The splendour of the vision is even increased by the recent discoveries of science, which show the magnificence of the spectacle that surrounds the sun. Pillars of light formed of luminous gas, spring up vertically on every side to an enormous height like the mighty columns of a temple, then fall down again on the sun like the spray of a fountain, and there assume the forms of gigantic trees rich in branches and dazzling foliage, until gradually the whole magnificent mass sinks down in soft clouds upon the solar surface. The intense heat, which would make life in- supportable, is modified, some philosophers think, by a veil of mist, which, rising from the ground high above the solid nucleus of the sun, forms a majestic dome, beneath which might dwell in safety the glorified races of all the worlds ; and it has been supposed that the dark spots seen on the sun are openings in this dome, through which the inhabitants can behold the outer firmament, and the philosophers of earth behold the dark solid body of the sun. But the sun also, with all its attendant planets, is moving swiftly through the star- depths to some unknown point, where, perhaps, THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 1 87 in the far distant ages, the whole solar system will be absorbed by some system still more stupendous, and new cycles of life will commence, of a splendour and power of which the darkened soul of humanity can now form no conception. The star Sirius, for instance — ' the giant sun,' as Mr Proctor calls it — a thousand times larger than the sun of our system, may be the centre to which all worlds are tending, and the centre now of worlds where the inhabitants have a destiny of felicity and perfection of intellect, unknown to our limited, dark and blind and storm-tossed existence. But, however mighty in power and intellect may be the inhabitants of the worlds revolv- ing within the splendours of the magnificent Sirius, they must, in all important points that characterise rational beings, be akin to the human. It has been proved that the same laws of motion and force, of heat, light, electricity, gravitation, attraction and repulsion pervade the infinite. The Omnipotent Ruler of the universe rules through unchanging physical laws ; and the moral laws which guide, control and direct the actions of all rational existences throughout all the worlds, must be as unchangeable and universal as the laws of matter ; for the moral 1 88 SOCIAL STUDIES. nature of man is a manifestation of the moral nature of God, and, therefore, unchangeable in its essence, and eternal in its unity with the divine mind. There can be no world, however distant, throughout the infinite, where justice, truth, love, mercy, purity, and all that makes human life most beautiful, are not recognised by rational beings as the highest law and rule of life. As Kant has said, — ' The command, " Thou shalt not lie," is not valid for man alone. It is for all rational beings as well as man ; for the basis of obligation is not in the nature of man, but a priori in the conceptions of pure reason ; and so are all moral laws.' And this thought infinitely ennobles the human race. We are one in nature with all the intelligences of the universe ; the difference, as regards power of intellect and holiness of will, may be quantitative, but is not qualitative. Man's life seems no longer mean and isolated ; it is an arc in an infinite circle, comprehending all life that draws its being and nature from the divine. Even the identity of the elements that form all the worlds has been demonstrated by the spectroscope, and revealed to us through the language of light and colour. We now know that iron and all the metals THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 189 familiar to earth are found in the planets and in the sun, and with the same properties. Iron especially has been proved to exist in enormous quantities in the sun, so that we may consider it to be an immense magnet suspended in space. But it is worthy of note, that although, from the apocalyptic vision, we are accustomed to associate the idea of the sun with the radiant city — the new Jerusalem — the central temple of our system, whose pavement is of gold, and whose walls are of precious stones, yet the presence of gold amongst the elements that form the mass of the sun has not hitherto been detected. From the unity of material throughout the worlds of space, we may infer that the modes of utilising it in some manner analogous to the industries of earth exist there also ; and, rising still higher, we may infer, from the unity both of material and of law throughout the infinite, the existence of one Supreme Intelligence, all- wise, all-powerful, who has ordained and organ- ised all, and given the initial force which keeps the ever-moving, ever-steadfast machinery of the universe in eternal and unerring order. In Mr Hamilton's interesting and instructive work. The Starry Hosts, the question of the habitation of the planets is discussed very ably. 190 SOCIAL STUDIES. and with much convincing force, from a religious point of view. It is, indeed, impossible to ap- proach the subject of astronomy except in a religious spirit. The evidences of infinite wis- dom and power are so overwhelming, the scheme of the universe so vast, yet so perfect in its obedience to law, that none but the fool could say in his heart, ' There is no God.' ' There dwells a noble pathos in the skies, That warms the passions, proselytes our hearts.' The awful beauty of the star-crowned night, the sublime magnificence of the fathomless infinite of revolving worlds and suns, compel the spirit to adoration, while at the same time we feel with deeper intensity our own high pre- rogative as a portion of the all-pervading in- telligence that fills the universe, deathless in essence, though manifested in ever - changing forms. A great poet has said : — ' At night an Atheist half believes in God.' And at such moments the well-known words of Kant may rise to the memory with a fuller sense of their sublimity : — ' Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them — the starry heavens above, and the moral law within.' THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. I9I And there is truly a striking analogy be- tween the two, for all these revolving unresting worlds are incessantly acted upon by opposing forces, one driving them to chaos, the other drawing them to total absorption within the burning mass of the primary. Yet, from the perfect balance of the tangential and centri- petal forces, they are forced to move in that steadfast and harmonious curve round the primary, which, through millions of years, remains unaltered. So it is with the soul acted on by the op- posing forces, the carnal and the spiritual, and which finds its steadfast path alone in the mean, or the /Micorng, of which Aristotle speaks as the highest rule of life — the balance of the dual nature of man between the life accordinsf to reason and the chaos of a life according to the senses. And as the worlds of space never traverse the same path twice, but are ever drawn on with their primaries in an endless spiral towards some unseen, far distant point, so the soul takes a new standpoint at every step of its infinite progression, and is destined never again to know the path or the past it has once left. It is along these lines of thought we are led by the earnest, believing tone of Mr Hamilton's 192 SOCIAL STUDIES. book. No proof can be given that the planet worlds are inhabited ; and he does not attempt a proof. It is a great ' perhaps,' no more, but the arguments he uses from reason, from our knowledge of the Divine mind as revealed to us in Scripture, and from the intuitions of our own nature, are even more convincing to many- minds than those based upon scientific data. For science goes but a short way along the shrouded path of infinite mystery, and can affirm only with a hesitating asseverance what may be afterwards overthrown by wider views and more perfect knowledge of the physical world. His work, though showing a wide knowledge of astronomical details, is yet quite free from technicalities, and therefore well suited to the general reader and to young persons, who are often deterred from the study of astronomy by the dry array of figures, fearful and incompre- hensible, which beset their path, whereas the question of life in other worlds is one rather to be apprehended by feeling than demonstrated by mathematical calculations. He agrees with Mr Proctor in the belief that the vital epochs in the universe are not simultaneous, but successive, and manifested only at long intervals. But his faith is greater, and he affirms from spiritual THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. I93 insight, where Mr Proctor only hazards a con- jecture, derived from analogy. He recognises, also, the unity of matter and the universality of law, but he makes no attempt to define the forms or modes of existence of the planet races ; he only claims for them conscious intelligence and a moral nature — that they are beings, there- fore, who can show forth the glory of God through the intellect, the will, and the affec- tions. The question is one which has an immense influence upon the human mind, for if we believe in the eternal relation of all intelligences with each other and with God, the notion of annihila- tion after death becomes untenable and impos- sible. The universe, then, seems to us like an infinite harp — strike one chord, and all vibrate in unison — and we feel that man was not brought into this wondrous sphere of conscious being merely for this world and for this one brief life ; the whole planet system is his kingdom, and the whole universe is to him a consecrated temple, where, by right of his deatehlss intellect, he holds an eternal place. All progression is towards perfection, and, in these other worlds, man, gifted with divine strength and clothed upon with a more glorious vesture, may find the antagonism between the higher and lower N 194 SOCIAL STUDIES. nature gradually become less and less, until at last the harmony between the will of man and the law of God is perfected, and the ideal heaven of peace and blessedness is reached. Yet, in spite of this community with the uni- verse, it seems the destiny of the human soul to be eternally alone. A crystal wall insulates and separates each one from his race, and even from his nearest kindred. There are despairful moments in life, when it seems as if we stood alone in the universe. We gravitate towards no centre — have no place in any system — and the primitive force which flung us into being seems ever hurling us onward and downward into an infinite depth of darkness, silence and utter loneliness. No heart reveals itself fully to an- other ; no soul can ever fully utter forth the infinite within it, in human speech. In prayer only do we seem to rise to that divine extasia when our souls mingle and blend with the one universal soul of the Universe, and, therefore, with truth, one of the Platonists has divinely called prayer (pvyri (lovov 'xpog [Jjovov — the flight of the Alone to the Alone. The full emancipation of the spirit, the rend- ing of the bondage which fetters and limits it here within a prison, will be the work of an eternity. It takes millions of years to perfect a THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 1 95 world ; it may take millions on millions to per- fect a human soul ; and as here on earth each generation hands on the torch of light to the next, and we walk in the accumulated light of all the ages — so the soul will gather light in its progress from star to star, for ever ascending nearer the throne, but never one with God. Thus the individuality of each conscious being is preserved, and God and the soul remain eternally distinct though eternally united, in the same relation as the planet worlds to the central sun. In contemplating the solar system in its unity, one is struck with the singularly rhythmic ar- rangement which connects planet with planet in one harmonious chord. Pythagoras compared the solar system to the chords of a lute, and had we ears to hear, what a magnificent diapason would reach us from the highest to the lowest note of their grand choral music, as the planets rush through space in orbits of well-adjusted harmonic distances ! The relation to the num- ber three is particularly worthy of note; the ancients have noticed this Triad in all things. Taking, for example, the inner planets, we find the year of Mercury to be about three months ; Venus, six months ; the Earth, twelve months ; and Mars, twenty- four months. 196 SOCIAL STUDIES. Then, also, in their respective distances from the sun, the same relation to the number three is observable. In approximate figures, Mercury is distant thirty millions of miles ; Venus, sixty; the Earth, ninety ; and Mars, one hundred and eighty millions of miles from the sun. After passing these four smaller planets a great break occurs in the order of the system. In place of one large planet there are numerous fragments, like islands in an aether ocean, either parts of a shattered world, or masses of material which never yet had the power to cohere, being drawn in opposite directions by the opposing influences of Jupiter and the Sun. On passing from these half-formed worlds we arrive at a new order of planets of immense magnitude and immense length of years, but with days only half the length of ours. The four inner planets have a day of twenty-four hours ; the four outer and larger a day of only nine hours or a little more. The relation to the number three is also manifest in the stupendous masses of the outer planets. Jupiter, the first and largest, thirteen hundred times greater than the earth, has a year, or period of rotation round the sun, of twelve of our years ; Saturn, next in order, of thirty years; THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 197 Uranus of ninety years ; and Neptune, the last and outermost, of one hundred and sixty years. It is distant from the sun three thousand milHons of miles, and the pale satellite that has been discovered attending its path has a solar distance of three times three thousand millions of miles. So that from the first planet, with its year of three months, and solar distance of thirty millions of miles, to the last revolving in the outer darkness, the relation to the number three still holds its remarkable place. There may be some mystic symbolism in these numbers, for all Nature is full of symbol- isms, if we could only find the key. And in these immense orbs and orbits there is no vagueness, no element of chance ; all is ordained with the precision of a mathematical intelligence and designer. With regard to the duration of life in the other planets, one cannot avoid hazarding some curious speculations. If the inhabitants, like man, are given about three score revolu- tions round the sun as the period of an ordinary life, then, in Jupiter, the natural life would be seven hundred years ; in Saturn, a thousand years ; in Uranus, five thousand years ; and in Neptune life would reach to the enormous extent of ten thousand years. IpS SOCIAL STUDIES. It is, indeed, impossible to believe that in those outer planets, with their immense orbits, the length of life would only equal ours ; for, if so, those born in spring, in Neptune, for instance, would never gather the autumn fruits, and those born in winter would never see the summer flowers. Yet, we have every reason to think that as there exists in these worlds a succession of seasons, and of day and night, so there must be seed time and harvest ; the necessity of sustenance, of toil to produce it, and of rest when the work is done. In fact, that the lives of rational beings throughout all the worlds must be of the nature of the human, and, therefore, the duration of life must be in proportion to the sequence of the seasons. And from this enor- mous length of life they probably attain to a height of power and knowledge impossible to man in the brief span of threescore years. For the human intellect is limited in its opera- tions chiefly because of the frail and rapidly decaying mechanism with which it is united, and through which alone it can manifest itself What wonders might be achieved in Art and Science if only man were given a more powerful organisation, and a few centuries more of life. THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. I99 In the larger planets the material frames are, no doubt, proportionate to the vast length of life in strength and vitality, and are thus enabled to resist the disintegrating action of forces which destroy human organisations in the poor limit of seventy years — a period which does not even equal six months of life in the planet Neptune. But in the minor planets, where the annual revolution is so brief, the conditions of life must be singularly different. The year of Mercury is but a summer's day, and that of Venus little more. Yet there also we find the regularly recurring seasons and the alternating day and night, as if toil and rest were as necessary as upon earth. But in those fiery regions can there be toil ? or do souls pass swiftly through them as through a purifying fire, before entering the temple of the sun, there to rest for ever- more, after their long wanderings of expiation through the series of the outer worlds ? Perfect happiness may, indeed, never be experienced in any grade of being ; there will still be pain — not the pain resulting from weak organisations, such as ours, but the pain of unfulfilled aspir- ations, of unsatisfied desires — the finite still seeking to grasp the infinite, and finding still an infinite beyond. In such pain, however, 200 SOCIAL STUDIES. there is no misery, rather, as Schopenhaur has remarked, the intensest consciousness of life. Without it, life would be mere passivity — a dull negation, where the upward striving of the soul would be annihilated. But the Weltschmerz — that nameless, bitter despair which haunts humanity — may have no place in a life that finds power always ready to equal aspiration. The triumphs of intellect will be more splendid, and the soul devoted to the culture of the beautiful will then be able to manifest the ideal in more perfect symbols. The recognition of truth, and the power to give it form in word or act, will always be the chief joy of exalted natures, even as it is here on earth to those who value the spiritual above the sensual life. But here we only see as in a glass darkly ; those who attain the higher life will read the mysteries of the universe by a purer light. Yet ascension may not be the immediate destiny of all. Those who voluntarily debase their nature to the level of the animal may be further debased for a time, and degraded to an existence fitted for lower brute natures, until, after the lapse of ages, elevation becomes pos- sible, through the expiation of sorrow ; while those who have led the divine life on earth — the life after the spirit, and not after the flesh — will THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 201 rise at once to diviner heights of being in higher and nobler worlds. The ancient philosophers, from Pythagoras to Plato, and from Plato to Plotinus, have uttered many beautiful and striking thoughts concern- ing the state of the soul after death. Especially are the Neo-Platonists full of divine utterances, though they, indeed, may have caught the inspiration from St Paul, with whose opinions, particularly as expressed in that marvellous masterpiece of eloquence, the 15 th of ist Corinthians, their writings on a similar subject have a remarkable affinity. As St Paul himself, a man of learning and genius, was not unin- fluenced by the writings of Plato and Aristotle, with whose works he must have been perfectly familiar, having been brought up, as he expresses it, at the feet of Gamaliel, the most learned Jew of the period, and remarkable for his love of the Greek writers and his endeavours to in- troduce the knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy amongst the Jewish youth. It is singular that, with all the mechanical aids now given to science, the moderns, so far as the knowledge of a future life is concerned, have not passed the level reached by the sublime guesses of the ancients. The philosophers of above two thousand years ago recognised and 202 SOCIAL STUDIES. afifirmed progressive mutation under immutable laws ; the incessant destruction and renovation of all things ; the dual nature of man, half animal, half God ; the opposing forces of attrac- tion and repulsion, of love and hate, as the principle of motion in all things ; the necessity of the knowledge of evil, through which alone the soul learns to know its strength ; the origin of all things from fire, which is the theory of Mr Proctor, as well as of Empedocles, and the purification of the soul through infinite progres- sion and ascension, as taught by Plato. Plato asserts that our souls, ' when they are perfectly established with the Soul of the World, will be likewise perfect, reign on high, and govern the universe itself.' And souls of this exalted nature will be shrined in a glorified form, subject neither to infirmity nor defect. And Plotinus maintains that ' souls are eternally changing forms ; and as often as a soul is able to rise beyond the bounds of earthly generation, it lives divinely with the universal soul.' The theory of the existence of another life necessarily means a higher life — for we judge by analogy — all things here rise to a higher life through death, by which they attain to a nobler incarnation. The sublime views of Plato on the descent of THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 203 the soul into the body, as into a prison house, or sepulchre, having first drank of the waters of oblivion before entering the earthly life, and its subsequent resurrection and purification through death, find credence in many thoughtful minds, though visible, tangible proof may be wanting of the truth of the theory. We moderns come, perhaps, too arrogantly and proudly into the temple of knowledge. We stand when we should kneel ; and irony and self-sufficing dog- matism discard with a sarcasm all belief in mysteries which cannot be verified by experi- ence and observation. The final word of the modern philosophy is, that we know nothing of life beyond the grave, because nothing can be known. But the soul refuses to accept this final word, and still searches the infinite for some symbol, or analogy, or law that can give the hope of a future life redeemed from the narrow limitations of the present, and confirm the prescience of an existence transfigured to glory by unclouded intellect, a finer organism, and the highest aims of a purified moral nature. With this hope we can better sustain the mysterious dispensation of sorrow that shrouds this earthly life, and the coming of that awful moment of gloom when death lays on us his icy hand to draw us down to the grave, — 204 SOCIAL STUDIES. Nor think it misery to be a man ; '■ Who thinks it is will never be a God. If it be impossible to prove the unknown and the unknowable, it is equally impossible to era- dicate the universal intuition of humanity that the soul will one day be emancipated from the prison house, and arise from the sepulchre. Faber, the great religious poet of the century, has expressed this yearning of the soul towards freedom in verse as beautiful as Plato's words: — We have imprisoned by our sin Man's dread intelligences, And broken lights are flooded in Upon them by the senses. She sitteth there, a captive maiden, Upon the cold bars leaning, Until her bosom is dread-laden, With all Life's lustrous meaning. Of all the Arts by which the Invisible, the Ideal and the Eternal are manifested, per- haps music excels all others in its power to reveal to us the existence of this dimly dis- covered higher life of the future ; and there are moments when, lifted to ecstasy by the inspira- tion of music, we feel the deep affinity of the human with the divine intelligence, and a belief in the invisible comes over the mind with the strength of the proto-martyr's faith when, look- ing upward with death-shadowed eyes, he saw THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 205 Heaven opened, and Christ, the head and type of a glorified humanity, standing at the right hand of God. The followers of Pythagoras made a beautiful use of music as an influence to act upon the spiritual nature. Before retiring to rest they purified the reason by certain odes and peculiar songs which quieted the perturbations of the day ; and sometimes even by musical sounds alone they healed the passions of the soul as if by enchantment. And it was their idea that the soul, before she gave herself up to the body, was the auditor of divine harmony, and that now some melodies heard on earth have the power to wake within her the memory of that music, and she is lifted by it into a divine sympathy with the divine. The greatest names in the world's intellectual history have upheld the theory that our earth is not the sole point in the infinite cosmic scheme where conscious intelligence exists. Indeed, so instinctive is the belief in life in other worlds, that the doctrine is accepted by most minds passively, and without examining the grounds upon which belief may be based. Mr Proctor, though he does not write to prove that there are other inhabited worlds, yet is led up to the con- viction by his own deductions from physical 206 SOCIAL STUDIES. phenomena. His views, however, though emi- nent for the brilliancy and power with which they are set forth, and made comprehensible to all, even the most unscientific minds, differ in no way from those expressed by Kant a century ago in his work, entitled A General History aud Theory of the Heavens. Both he and Mr Proctor hold the belief in the succession of vital epochs ; in the luminosity of Jupiter as a life-giving sun ; and the incessant formation and destruction of worlds by absorption into their primaries, from whence they are again cast forth by the action of heat, to commence anew their existence as revolving systems round a central sun. The views of the great German philosopher concerning the inhabitants of the planets are worthy of note. He affirms his belief that the perfection of spiritual and material life in the planet worlds increases in direct proportion to their distance from the sun. Thus Mercury and Venus are placed in the lowest degree of exist- ence ; the earth holds an average place — im- perfect still, but showing signs of progression, while the highest development is found in the outer regions of the solar system. And he assigns as a reason that the density of the larger planets is much less, and the materials THE DESTINY OF HUMANITY. 20/ of which they are formed are much less coarse and ponderous than those of the inner planets, which we are accustomed to consider as the bright and beautiful regions of eternal summer. In studying these theories of the Infinite Cosmos, an involuntary shudder of awe, almost of terror, comes over the mind at the thought that we, frail, weak, much-suffering mortals, evolved from matter by the eternal forces, why or how we know not, without our volition, without the power to fall out of the ranks into the rest of annihilation, are destined for ever and for ever to endless mutations of form in an endless succession of lives, still, perhaps, of toil and labour and sorrow, under an eternal and change- less system of inflexible law. Turn where we will, the despotism of law confronts us. There is no escape from this awful all-compelling power. Sentient or non-sentient, the monads of the universe must exist throughout all eternity, and fulfil the work destined for them by the unseen Omnipotent Intelligence, who reveals himself only through laws. And each day, as science extends her conquests over ignorance, more and more of the phenomena of life and the universe are placed under law. We now know that all evil, all crime and vice, ) with their consequences of social and moral 208 SOCIAL STUDIES. ruin, all disasters and catastrophes by which thousands perish, and all the ills that flesh is heir to, result from the violation or disregard of some law, physical or moral. Yet, granting this, we stand before the thick darkness of another mystery. Happiness, as might naturally be expected, does not in this world follow obedi- ence to law — at least, as far as regards the outer life. ' The wicked flourish like a green bay tree ; the righteous perish and no man layeth it to heart.' The recompense and the punishment, then, must be within. There is, probably, no suffering like remorse, no peace like that of a good conscience, void of offence before God and men. The compensation will come, perhaps, in those higher states of being in which we all must believe. Suffering in our mortal life would be unjust unless it were meant for purification, because it would be useless. The idea that lies at the basis of all things in the universe is ultimate good, a man must work out this idea in the world which he has been given to rule, through obedience to laws written on his heart, revealed in nature, and manifested through the history of all human lives. Perfect obedience to the divine idea may never be attained. God alone is ; man is eternally becoming. But through the endless THE DESTINY OF HUiMANlTY. 209 succession of ages and of existences, each diviner than the preceding, the soul will go on unto perfection, until the physical and moral nature attain to their full beauty and harmony, and men shall be as gods. Mr Proctor deserves the thanks of the age for having given a fresh stimulus to this most important subject by his learned and lucid works. The bold and brilliant audacity with which he unveils the mysteries of the infinite, his clear and eloquent, yet simple style, his vast generalisations and fearless assumptions from the known to the unknown, combine to make his astronomical essays the most exciting and profoundly interesting of all the speculative studies recently given to literature. His facts and deductions are alike dazzling, from the wide amplitude and universal range of his knowledge over all that exists ; and though he reasons entirely from physical phenomena, as they have been, are now, and will be in the eternal duration and eternal change of all things, yet he, as well as Mr Hamilton, whose arguments presuppose a religious belief, can recognise the signature of the Omnipotent God written upon the mighty dome of Heaven in heiroglyphics, whose glorious symbols are worlds and suns and systems re- volving throughout eternity. O AUSTRALIA. (.4 Plea for Emigration.) Mr Foster Fitzgerald, late Colonial Secre- tary at Victoria, in his excellent history of Australia, contributed to the series entitled Foreign Countries and British Colonies^ sets one's mind seriously thinking on the great question of Emigration. No subject, indeed, can be of higher import- ance to our weary and dispirited generation than the condition and resources of the vast southern continent that forms so magnificent a portion of England's colonial empire. States- men and politicians are beginning at last to recognise the truth that to colonise a new country is the one great remedial measure for the suffering classes of the Old World ; for all who in our overcrowded cities and professions and trades are ever vainly seeking and hope- lessly awaiting the employment that never comes, the income that never is realised. 2IO AUSTRALIA. 21 f Whoever, then, can aid the youth of the empire to leave the old grooves and seek new fields of enterprise is a benefactor to the age. And Mr Fitzgerald's work affords exactly the information most necessary to the colonist. Full details are given of the climate, the soil, the various sources of wealth, with the peculiar laws and social elements of each Australian province ; so the adventurous settler can at once judge for himself what locality is best suited to his habits and pursuits, his consti- tution and his temperament. Maps and copious statistics are also included in the work, which brings down the history of the colonies to the present time, and leaves no point of importance untouched. The splendid picture drawn by the ex-secre- tary of the wealth, energy and progress of this new world, makes one feel still more vividly the helpless destitution and misery of the millions at home, and the importance of arousing men's minds to the great fact that this vast Australian continent belongs to no alien race, but is the heritage of our own people, won from chaos by their energy and daring, part of our own empire, with the same sympathies and interests, and every subject of the realm can enter in through its wide-open portals and share its wealth, and 212 SOCIAL STUDIES. profit by its infinite resources, without let or hindrance. It is but a narrow view to limit a man's rights to the little island or parish where he may have been born. The whole earth has been given to the children of men, and they should go forth boldly and claim their birth- right. The migration of nations is a fiat of Providence. It has been going on with the regularity of a law for six thousand years, and to our great Japetian race, the highest of humanity, seems especially to have been given the strength, the will, the intellect, and the power to make the circuit of the globe, going forth conquering and to conquer, with a mission to rule and lead wherever they lift their flag and plant their foot within the wide circuit of the world. The eternal march of civilisation knows neither pause nor rest. It sweeps like destiny over the desolate unsouled lands where nature has lain torpid since creation ; and over the rude, half-souled savage tribes of the earth. And no people should debar themselves from the privilege of joining the ranks of progress ; for there are endless sources of wealth still unutilised ; vast tracks still untrodden, waiting the transforming energy of intellect and science to make the wilderness blossom as a rose. AUSTRALIA. 21 3 Why, then, should not the vital force of our people be employed on these lines of certain profit, in place of being wasted year by year in the bitter strife with other men as destitute as themselves, for an acre of land more or less in the old country, some wild tract of dreary bog, or a few stacks of turf on some desolate moor, while all the time a new world is waiting to be occupied, where everything they had dreamed of vainly, and worked for sadly from their youth up can be realised and enjoyed. Every day the strife for bread here is growing more fierce, the struggle more desperate for the smallest gain, and the misery and want still deeper and darker ; so one cannot wonder if the suffering masses, ground down as they are by taxation, trodden down by the rush of the crowd, crushed by reckless competition, and galled and tortured by the impassable barrier between the Haves and the Wants, should be driven to revolution by despair. Life at present, even in industrious England, is a bitter heritage to many — a scroll written within and without with lamentations and mourning and woe. There is a feverish strain in all departments of the social system, an un- healthy excitement, everyone seeking the means to live with terrible eagerness, and few finding 214 SOCIAL STUDIES. any adequate result. Crowds working like con- victs on the daily treadmill, joyless and hope- less, till they drop from exhaustion into the grave ; others, strong and stalwart men, stand- ing idle in the market-place because no one has hired them ; while the young and brilliant rush desperately into literature, that last resource of the unfortunate, and write novels, which they publish, probably at their own expense, or fling themselves body and soul to the devouring hydra of journalism, to live and work and die without recognition or honour, distinction or reward. Life, in fact, has become a mean and ignoble scramble for the mere means of living. And all sensitive natures behold with dismay and terror the vile servitude of the intellect to the baser needs of life, and the degradation of the noblest instincts of the soul which the strife for money entails ; when a man dare not swerve one inch from the narrow groove prescribed by party politics, or our old social conventions, lest he should loose his chance of bread and be no longer hired to sweep the floor of civilisation for the shreds and fragments society may have let fall by the way — that one department of intel- lectual activity which now seems the most popular and the best paid. AUSTRALIA. 21 5 The great high priest of Pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, felt so keenly the discord and misery of life that he expressed his surprise the whole human race did not some day resolve to make an end of it by a simultaneous and com- prehensive suicide ; so, looking at the abject struggles with poverty of the millions in these British Isles, one wonders they do not arrange amongst themselves for a general stampede into the German Ocean on the one hand and the Atlantic on the other. But, happily, the burden of existence can be lightened without resorting to the extreme measures advocated by the Pessimist philosophy. A sail across the ocean might be tried before a final plunge into its depth ; and perhaps an intelligent study of the advantages of Australian colonisation would even persuade the despairing bread-seekers at home to give life another chance at the anti- podes. For what has our political and social system come to in this effete Europe? Mr Ruskin describes the result in his strong elo- quent phrases : ' The evidences of it are de- graded art, mean pleasures, merciless war, sullen toil ; the glory of it emaciated with cruel hunger and blotted with venomous stain, and the trail of it a glittering slime.' Surely then, there can be nothing cruel in asking these victims of 2l6 SOCIAL STUDIES. hunger and want, of degradation and vain hope, to turn their eyes to the great land where there is work and wealth for everyone ; no war, no want, no hunger ; and no fear of overcrowding in a continent as large almost as all Europe, yet with a population only equal to half that of London. It is remarkable, also, that just as the old countries begin to fail in resources, and men eagerly search for new and wider spheres of action along with the freedom and adventure of an untried life, the veil is suddenly lifted from some hitherto unknown region, and a new heri- tage is given to humanity. Plain and river and forest and mine are made to yield up their treasures, and science and industry win new victories over ignorance and barbarism. Thus America was revealed to civilisation in order that commerce and intellect might replace the buffalo and the savage on the wild prairies of the West. And when America was lost to England another field of action was found for the enterprise of the nation in the terra australis incognita of the Southern Sea. The Dutch, in their wanderings from the Spice Islands of the Indian Archipelago, had come on this vast continent Iving on the borders of the Pacific, but England only began to found AUSTRALIA. 21 7 settlements on the east coast about a century ago. No one then imagined that the land was paved with gold. It was used merely as a waste dust-heap for the refuse population of the em- pire, while but few independent settlers were found brave enough to dare the dangers of its untried desolation. From a beginning so unpromising the Aus- tralian nation has arisen, industrious, wealthy and self-governed ; splendid in enterprise and in all modes of material and intellectual pro- gress. Magnificent cities have sprung up where but a few years ago the New Holland savage hunted the kangaroo ; a fine export trade has been established, and limitless vistas of wealth have been opened to the colonist in a country that by its position commands the trade with India, China, Japan and America, along with the islands of the Southern Sea. Sydney was the first great settlement, selected for its harbour, where the navy of a world might anchor. Being the oldest colony, the Sydney people consider themselves the Aristos, the true noble class. They retain much of the fair English beauty that marks their origin, with also much of the stately forms of English society, and in splendour and pleasure Sydney almost rivals London. But Sydney soon be- 2l8 SOCIAL STUDIES. came overcrowded and expensive, land rose to a fabulous price, and so new colonists went forth and built other cities — Adelaide, superb in climate and scenery ; and Melbourne, the Athens of the State, where the highest culture is honoured and art and beauty have their temples. The fine library there to which all classes are admissible, built at a cost of two hundred and eighty thousand pounds, is one of the finest buildings in the world ; and a National Gallery has been founded to contain replicas of all the great pictures of Europe, selected by Mr Ruskin and other eminent critics, with casts of the most famous statues, ancient and modern. Melbourne is wealthy, and can afford these costly accessories of life. Since the auriferous fields were discovered, only fifty years ago, gold to the value of one hundred and ninety-two millions has been obtained, and the average annual return of gold is six millions. Ten thousand steam engines are ever at work on the quartz reefs, while still the yield seems inex- haustible. And this is but a fragment of the great gold land, whose full extent no man knows as yet. Railroads traverse the States in every direc- tion, and one has been already projected to span the whole Continent from south to north, AUSTRALIA. 219 at a cost of ten millions sterling ; while a telegraphic line, two thousand miles long, brings it into immediate communication with the whole world. There are millions of acres growing the finest wheat ; plains of pasturage for cattle that would feed the whole empire ; riches in coal and all the useful metals as yet only partly explored ; while the great mountain wall that guards the coast from the Pacific seems based upon a pediment of gold. In one year twelve millions of gold were realised by Victoria alone, and it has been computed that since the discovery of the gold- fields two hundred and sixty millions sterling in gold have been added by Australia to the wealth of the world. But the gold fever has already cooled down, now that the alluvial deposits are almost ex- hausted, for working by machinery on the quartz reefs is too costly for the ordinary gold-digger. Gold nuggets, worth many thousands, can no longer be picked up in a morning's walk, but men have found a truer and more profitable source of wealth in the cultivation of the soil, and in all those natural resources fitted to sustain life, of which, indeed, gold is but the accepted symbol. The real inexhaustible wealth of Aus- tralia is in agriculture, and the stream of emi- 220 SOCIAL STUDIES. gration may still go on, and find ample space and verge enough. Western Australia is still almost untenanted. These endless plains of the West and the interior, sombre, silent and gloomy, that fill the beholder with a sense of oppressive desolation, wait the tranforming energy of our race to give them a soul, and bring them within the circle of living humanity. England now expends above one hundred and thirty millions sterling for imported food. When these waste plains are cultivated, Aus- tralia can supply it all, and give the millions of her gold in return for English manufactures. Already she pays about seventeen millions a year for English goods. Thus the two countries can be mutually useful, the only fitting relation between the various portions of the empire, and the only one that can insure the loyalty of the colonies and dependencies to the Crown. Aus- tralia is loyal because it is her interest to be so. The bond is one of mutual advantage, not of subjection and tyranny. England appoints the governors to each province, but this is the only mark of sovereignty she is permitted to assume. Australia is perfectly free of all external con- trol, and is entirely self-governed, the result being that although civilisation there is scarcely AUSTRALIA. 221 a century old, yet the States already rival Europe in magnificence, while they far excel the old nations of the world in the human progress which consists in the well-being, the prosperity, comfort, freedom and sense of per- sonal dignity of every member of the com- munity. A few resolute men, unfettered by cant, prejudice or routine, have achieved there in a few years the almost perfect form of a free Government, after which Europe has been blindly groping for a thousand years through much blood and many revolutions, with all their adjuncts of scaffolds and martyrdoms, but has never yet reached or realised. Each state has its independent legislature, makes its own laws, and controls its own taxa- tion and finance. There are some minor differences, but all agree in giving to man the full charter of his rights. The leading principles are the same in all — manhood suffrage, liberal land laws, extended secular education, no state church, free libraries, splendid universities where women are eligible for degrees as well as men, triennial parliaments, an elective Upper House, no rights of primogeniture, no privileged class with traditions of superior wisdom and divine rieht of rule attached to the accident of birth, but each man takes rank according to his worth 222 SOCIAL STUDIES. and work. Society is thoroughly democratic, all are workers, and all are equal. A career is open to every man with the certainty of reward, and in the fullest sense the land is for the people. Australia has thus solved quietly and peace- ably the problem which in Europe has set Communist, Socialist and Nihilist at war with all existing governments. Vainly, however, they rave and rage, and slay and die ; the stifling traditions of the Old World social system still exist ; and the problem still re- mains unsolved in Europe. But in Australia the colossal experiment has been tried and has succeeded, to found a nation on the broad principles of freedom and justice with the widest recognition of human rights, and a great, powerful and progressive people has been the result ; free as America, self-reliant as England, strong as ancient Rome under the Republic, though no standing army is required to uphold its power. Why, then, do not trades' unions and mechanics' institutes and popular lecturers, and workmen's clubs, take up this subject of colon- isation, and show the intelligent youth of the country the advantages offered by this new world of vitality and progress over the decad- ence and stagnation of exhausted Europe ? AUSTRALIA. 223 And why, above all, should the force and fire of Irish manhood be wasted in vain complaints that their people are ' the worst fed, the worst housed, the worst clothed, the most utterly destitute of any of the nations of the earth ' (which indeed is a sad truth), when they could arise and go forth to a noble and splendid heritage ? No tenant is forced to remain on the land in Ireland. He is perfectly free to leave if he considers himself rack-rented. And, at the same time, the landlord is quite justified in letting his land for the highest price that will be given. Many will give fancy prices for property on account of the scenery, the picturesque view, from old associations, or for convenience of locality ; and a landlord has as much right to sell his land to the best advantage as a Man- chester cotton merchant to sell his goods at the highest profit. Irish poverty is in truth the melancholy but logical result of centuries of misgovernment, begun originally in spoliation and continued in apathy and indifference to the welfare of the people, varied with spasmodic intervals of vehement coercion and abrogation of all legal rights; while all the time the great material resources of the country were left entirely un- developed—the land, the fisheries, the mines, 224 SOCIAL STUDIES. the marble quarries, the vast water-power, the splendid lakes and harbours, with the means of rapid transit by railways — all were miser- ably neglected ; as a proof of which may be mentioned that for years the people of the west have been desirous of a railroad from Galway to Cong, a distance only of thirty miles, but it has never been accomplished. A steamer plies in summer on Lough Corrib between the two places, but ceases in winter ; so through all this inclement season the poor peasants are obliged to trudge backward and forward on foot with their market produce, between the capital of the west and the small county towns. Yet, in the same space of time, the Americans have completed ninety thousand miles of work- ing railways radiating all over their continent, a result that proves the advantage of a local government with a knowledge of the land and an interest in the people, over government by a distant legislature without the requisite knowledge, or the natural interest and loving bond of kinship. No individuals out of their own private means, still less Irish landlords, can undertake national works on any broad and extensive scale. They must be organised by the government of the country, and paid for out of the national ex- AUSTRALIA. 22$ chequer. This has been done in Australia. In New South Wales, for instance, the Government has spent nine millions sterling on railroads, three hundred thousand on harbours, and similar sums on public roads and buildings. It is by such means that the intellect and the energies of a people are aroused, and wealth, peace, happi- ness and prosperity are assured. Ireland has never yet been favoured with beneficial legislation of the kind, and now the Government seems inclined, as a final resource of civilisation, to annihilate the gentry in order • that the peasants may live ; there not being room enough in Ireland, apparently, for both classes to exist together on the land. And supposing this desired result obtained, that the prisons were filled with the youth and intelli- gence of the country, the landlords ruined, and the peasants set in their place, how will the condition of the nation be advanced by the robbery of one class to feed another? One shudders to think of Ireland mapped out into five million of potato plots, each fenced by its rude stone wall ; the beautiful and the pic- turesque utterly sacrificed without even wealth being gained, for all progress will be rendered impossible. Progress requires capital and cul- ture, science and knowledge ; and these true P 226 SOCIAL STUDIES. * resources of civilisation ' could scarcely be found in a flourishing state amongst five million •of peasants, each on his one-acre holding — a mere nation of labourers degenerating to paupers, while the land would gradually retro- grade to primeval bog. In Australia, on the contrary, there is room for all classes and many Irelands, and no one need stand on the dead to clutch at rent-rolls. The poor Irish settler who now treads his dreary round of life in the furrows of his scanty potato-field would there find tracts of the finest land — twenty, thirty, forty thousand acre farms to be had for a mere nominal price — while all the political dreams would be actually realised that in Ireland seem now but the vain hope of despairing men ; land without the incubus of a landlord ; a true Republic though under the flag of monarchy ; work and wages for everyone ; and a powerful and important Irish party, who have already created a new Ireland in the southern sea, strong, wealthy and in- dependent, yet with the love for the old country still unchanged, as was shown by their munifi- cent contribution of sixty thousand pounds to the suffering Irish during the famine years. At present about a hundred thousand em:- AUSTRALIA. 22/ grants leave Ireland yearly for America; but Australia would be a better and wider field for enterprise, and, as part of our own empire, ought to have special advantages for the colonist. There is not much roughing to be feared ; the climate is excellent, and yields readily every esculent known to Europe along with those peculiar to the tropics ; while all the new aids to life which science has discovered will be found in full working order ; for Australia has had no long ignorant childhood like the other nations of the earth, but is the heir of all the ages, and entered at once into the nineteenth century inheritance of civilisation, so has been able to utilise every modern idea by her exhaustless re- sources and untrammelled energy. The voyage that used to take eight months to accomplish, and was entered on with the dread of eternal banishment, is now but a pleasure trip of forty days ; the climate all along the coast is perfect and peculiarly suited to the Irish, who cannot well endure the rigours of a Canadian winter ; while the pastoral and agricultural employments exactly suit the Irish temperament and habits. No wars are possible, no hostile tribes are to be feared, for the Aborigines have nearly] become extinct ; there are no fierce beasts of prey, and but little of the still fiercer elements of a de- 228 SOCIAL STUDIES. graded humanity, for the convict sediment that formed the earliest social stratum has long since been covered and obliterated by the waves of advancing civilisation. Tasmania, once in reality the home of demons, is now a garden of loveliness, as large as all England, and with all the refinements of English life. Norfolk Island is a paradise of beauty, the air divine, the scenery fine and romantic. Mel- bourne has the softness of Southern Italy and Sydney glows with the radiance of the Grecian Isles. The death-rate is low in all these favoured portions of the States, far lower than the English average. And the English race does not dete- riorate, but the children grow up tall, fair and handsome, while the nerve power and energy for daring and enterprise seem even heightened. Victoria, with its rich soil, splendid climate, and glittering streams, sands, and rocks of gold, has become the queen of the Australian States, though but a barren wilderness fifty years ago. The gold madness raged there fiercely for a brief space, and life became an inferno, and the land was accursed through crime ; but all that has passed away, and the gold quest proceeds now with admirable order under Government control. Besides, the colonists have found that the AUSTRALIA. 229 honest toil of agriculture is safer and better in the end than the rude, reckless life and wild chances of the gold diggers. Immense fortunes are still realised by gold speculations, but more easily and certainly by the growth of wheat and the rearing of cattle for the manufacturing millions of England. The Irish can well estimate the advantages of emigration by comparing the condition of their countrymen now in America with those left at home chafing in discontent, reckless, hopeless, miserable, without any stimulus to work or means of advancement. The American Irish are now a great and powerful nation of ten millions, with wealth in abundance, as is proved by the fact that they could send over two thousand a week to Ireland as a contribution to aid what they considered the national cause. Had their fathers remained at home the children would now be only miserable cottiers like the rest of their kindred, with no profit, after the rent was paid, beyond what would give them a daily dinner of potatoes, and meat, perhaps, once a year. And there are now forty thousand of these cottiers in Ireland living on less than an acre of land each. The Australian Irish will in time be as power- ful a people as their American kindred, and the 230 SOCIAL STUDIES. chances of wealth are even greater in Australia with its population of two millions only, than in America with its sixty millions. The emi- grant will find in Australia farms as large as all Ireland to be had for a shilling an acre, and he could raise thousands of pounds from his sheep-walk in less time than he now expends in fighting desperately with his impoverished landlord for the reduction of a few shillings an acre at home, which reduction, even if obtained, brings in nothing to the wealth of the country. It is merely a case of money changing hands amongst the classes of the same community. Besides, when the Australian Irish have amassed sufficient funds they can return to Green Erin and buy up the estates of the pauperised land- lords, who will then only be too happy to obtain any chance of sale for their profitless acres. Considering the destitution of millions of the working classes, and even of the educated and cultured in these British Islands, it is surprising that the subject of emigration to the great rich lands of other portions of the Empire has not been taken up seriously and energetically by the nation and the Government as the one great measure of national salvation. Out of the five millions of Ireland, a million or two of the young generation might well be AUSTRALIA. 23 1 spared for the chances of a nobler life in the New World. The remainder would then have room and land enough to enjoy life at home> and even add to homely comforts some of the luxury and beauty which give a moral refine- ment to a people. Every cottage might then have its garden and pleasure-ground for the young children, every village its people's park, and every household the order, neatness and purity of Christian civilisation. The world is large enough and rich enough to allow every man free space and pure air. But we absurdly insist on crowding people together in one small locality, as if it were a praiseworthy thing, and a proof of the pros- perity of a country, to have as many human beings as possible to every square rood of ground ; whereas a dense population is invari- ably, and of necessity, a dense mass of poverty, and too often of sin, and a mournful effort to live without any of the joy of living. At pre- sent no class in Ireland is content, for no one seems to have any assured income. The gentry want money, and the peasants want land with- out paying rent for it, and strive to obtain it by means not quite satisfactory to the owners, such as burnings and slaughter and general devasta- 2.^2 SOCIAL STUDIES. tion — a mode of regenerating a country happily not needed in the great Australian land. The State, also, would be a gainer if the few were left to peace and comfort, while the many were relieved from want by emigration. Fifty thousand soldiers were recently required in our little island, only a hundred miles broad, to guard the granaries of the rich from the thin hands of the poor; and every potato was watched by a policeman, and every turnip by a dragoon, and no pig could go to market without an escort of cavalry ; and the prisons were filled with hundreds of young men who were eating the bread of compulsory idleness at the expense of the taxpayers, while they could have been of immense use and value, if only tending sheep and growing corn for the Empire on the broad plains of the southern continent. There the colonists could have a wilderness of land for the asking ; pastures for flocks and herds, were they numerous as the leaves of the forest trees ; and no standing army is required to guard the potatoes and turnips, but every man is able and willing to defend his own rights and the rights of others, for there is no antagon- ism between the State and the people ; all work harmoniously together for the general good. Even the effort to introduce manufactures into AUSTRALIA. 233 Ireland offers but a poor equivalent for the cer- tain advantage of Australian enterprise. And, in fact, the idea of making Ireland a manufac- turing country is a delusion to be avoided. Nature has given her rich plains for pastur- age, a splendid seaboard for fisheries, and the charms of wild and beautiful scenery, but has denied the elements of manufacturing success. England has coal and iron, a powerful army to force the opening of new marts of commerce, a powerful mercantile navy to aid and guard her merchants, and a thousand years' practice in trade. Ireland has none of these things, and all competition with England for manufactures simply means wasted effort and deplorable fail- ure, and would be as absurd as competition with France for silk, or with China for tea. Every part of the Empire has its peculiar province ; that of England is to provide cutlery and calico. This suits the hard, stolid, indus- trious Saxon, who never lifts his eyes from the toil of his hands, and has no need to lift them, for he has no ideal and no aspirations beyond food and wages. But the Irish are quite un- suited to the rigid bondage of manufacturing work, and would be altogether miserable in the dark, depressing, prisoned factory life. They need the sunlight and the open air, where the 234 SOCIAL STUDIES. laughter of children can be heard ; their light, joyous temperament requires constant diversity, with frequent rest for social talk, and the sense of individual freedom in the broad rich fields and healthful air. Therefore the pastoral and agricultural life was specially designed for them by Providence, not the crowded dens of factory toil with the drone of the wheels for ever in their ears. They have the linen manufacture already, founded by the French and worked chiefly by Scotch factory hands ; and they have the poplin manufacture, also founded by the French ; these have achieved success and may safely be continued. But the trades of the forge and the furnace should be left to England, as we leave dolls to Nuremberg, and watches to Geneva, and silks to Lyons. And what can be more bright and joyous or better suited to the Irish nature than the golden vales and emerald plains of their fair country covered with flocks and herds, or the silver salmon leaping in the nets, under the shadow of the purple mountains of the West, where the fiords of the Atlantic bite deep into the land, and the rushing streamlets murmur a divine music through the chasms of the hills. Such a landscape never should be desecrated by the tall chimneys of the factory prison, nor AUSTRALIA. 235 by the smoke of the furnaces rising up to ob- scure heaven. Ireland is a beautiful country, with its green plains and wooded glens and the hundred islands of the lakes, each made sacred by some ancient cross or ruined oratory where a saint has prayed. It is a land for the painter and poet, for romance and legend and song ; for men to hunt and fish and enjoy all manly sports in festive freedom, and where the women grow up, tall and beautiful in the pure air, with eyes deep as their lakes and purple as their mountains ; and in the soft Irish climate so little is required for sustenance that a population of two or three millions would find all they needed for enjoy- ment and even for luxury in the natural re- sources of the country, such as the pasturage and the fisheries ; for these are the true riches of Ireland, and if well worked and organised would be found infinitely profitable, whereas a competition with England in manufactures must be ruinous if attempted, because so utterly unsuited to the soil, the climate and the habits and disposition of the Irish people. Every nation has its mission ; that of England is to be the great workshop of the world, to supply man with everything he needs except food. 236 SOCIAL STUDIES. Scotland builds ships and weaves and spins, and supplies the leaders of Thought to the Empire, as Carlyle and Ruskin, and others of name and fame ; while Ireland supplies the mighty men of renown, the leaders of Action — warriors, statesmen, orators, as Burke, Canning, Wellington, Palmerston, and others down to the present time ; and she is able besides to feed all England with her flocks and all the world by her fisheries. Let us then leave the Saxon toilers, these true children of the mighty Thor, to the din of the hammer and the whirl of the wheels, but Ireland, Innis Helga (the Holy Island), should be kept sacred to the picturesque, a temple consecrated to nature where the weary workers of the world might come to refresh their arid souls by its lovely lakes and hills, and drink in the pure ozone of the Atlantic breeze. Yet to make Ireland attractive to tourists and visitors from other lands, and so bring a stream of wealth into the country, much progress is required in the arts and appliances of civilisation — good roads, good country hotels, pleasure boats on the lakes, public gardens and parks, branch railroads for safe and rapid transit, with a line of passenger steamers to southern Europe. It seems so absurd for the Irish now to have to cross first to London if they wish to visit France AUSTRALIA. 237 or Spain, when four or five hundred years ago there was constant and direct communication between Ireland and the Continent. The Irish do not seem to be fully and fearfully conscious how infinitely they fall behind the other nations of Europe in all that relates to the material well- being of humanity. They should be taught discontent in place of patient calm and endur- ance of their condition. Discontent is the great motive power of nations. It is the knowledge of the evil which must precede the remedy. The Irish peasants should learn that they are ' poor and blind and naked,' that they live in hovels and holes not fit for a dog, that their food is poorer than that of the root-eating Indians, their raiment the vilest of rags ; they should be made to see that Ireland rests in the midst of pro- gression ' like a frozen ship in a frozen sea,' and that as regards the ordinary comforts and common decencies of civilisation they are at this moment lower than any Christian people on the face of the earth, while if the natural riches of the country were properly developed by a local government and the resources of the national exchequer, no people on the earth would be happier or more prosperous than the Irish. But pending that good time let them take possession of any other land that will give them 238 SOCIAL STUDIES. the food and raiment God meant for all men. Let them fling up these miserable plots of poor, exhausted ground, and go forth from their wretched hovels to the bright, free country where life is a joy and a blessing and work has its reward, and wealth is certain to industry ; for in Australia the welfare of the people is the first consideration, important before all others. The improvement of the land is encouraged by cheap law, low taxation, facility of purchase, with merely nominal rent to the State ; and all measures that can promote the comfort, educa- tion, prosperity and enlightenment of the people are organised by Government and accomplished at an unlimited cost, and Ireland, if left but with two or three millions of people to feed and support, might attain also to that wealth and happiness which is now impossible to a nation of five millions of helpless paupers. The land could be made a garden of beauty by better cultivation, the people would find and utilise the riches in the earth and sea so lavishly given by nature. Visitors from all lands in search of the picturesque would be welcomed and honoured by the courteous and prosperous peasants, and the world would not again have to marvel at the want of gallantry that made Irish- men frighten away a charming Empress from AUSTRALIA. 239 their shores, while they were waging a desperate and deadly struggle among themselves for bread. But emigration is a great national measure, and should not be left to the slender resources of an impoverished people. To be successful it must be organised by Government on a liberal and extensive scale, with bright prospects set before the youth of the country, and ample funds available for proper modes of transit to the new settlements. A Minister of Emigration would be necessary to begin with ; then an Emigrant Commission in Dublin, with branches throughout the country, at the head of which might be placed men of sense and knowledge, like Sir Charles Duffy and others, who have had long and intimate experi- ence both of Australian and Irish life. There should be a line of emigrant ships, with free passage and proper comforts provided, free land given on arrival, without any rent for a certain number of years, after which a small tax might be paid to the State, but not to any intermedi- ate landlord — the State alone should be the real guardian of all the land of a country ; while emigrant homes should be provided under State supervision, where the colonists might be cared for until they found suitable employment. And every year a number of strong, intelligent chil- 240 SOCIAL STUDIES. dren of both sexes should be selected from our parish and national schools, and trained for colonial life — the boys taught trades, the girls all the duties of a household ; and, when suffi- ciently educated, sent out under State control to the emigrant homes till they were properly- located and settled. Young men of a higher grade might be trained in an agricultural college and taught farming and engineering, for which there is always a great demand in a new country ; and young ladies who passed the college course at home would find ready employment as teachers and professors in the colonies, where the universities have been thrown open to the competition of women equally with men. Thus a happy and prosperous Irish nation would be created in Australia, while the nation at home might also become happy and pros- perous if the redundant pauperised population of five millions were diminished to one-half, who might then live in peace and security. But an extensive deportation from the over- crowded localities of the Empire need not be limited to Ireland. How much better and healthier would London be, for instance, if out of the five millions of its densely-packed popu- lation three millions were shipped off to the AUSTRALIA. 24! wide plains of Australia or the invigorating snows of Canada, and all the squalid streets were cleared of the squalid life that now makes them hideous and revolting to every sense. These crowds of hunger -stricken, brutalised men ; these stunted, ill-favoured women ; these pallid, deformed children, where God's image is defaced to ugliness by want of free space to move in and fresh air to breathe — let them be uprooted, in the common interests of humanity, from the pestilence-stricken lanes and alleys of the Great City, and transplanted to a free, healthful soil, where the human form and the immortal soul might grow in beauty under kindlier influences. Even amongst the higher classes a million or so might well be spared from the crowd and vain strife of London life. And what is there to regret? When Mr Mallock propounded the question of the age, ' Is life worth living ? ' one universal chorus of negation rose up in response. ' No,' they exclaimed, ' it is not worth living. Everyone is miserable in the old mill-round of routine and social bondage, in want of money or in debt, weary of the falsehood and flimsiness of all our words and works, of the groove we cannot leave, of the phrases we are forced to utter ; weary of striving and failing in the hope- Q 242 SOCIAL STUDIES. less quest of employment, where only favour gains the prize, merit is set aside, and intellect and worth have only the loss and the sorrow.' So the vultures of discontent gnaw at the heart of the age. And there is but one supreme remedy for these men of tired brains and corroded lives and wasted energies, who pine and perish in our overcrowded, overworked, under-paid, exhausted social systems. It is to fling off the bondage of a worn-out civilisation and start on a new career in a new country with the audacity of youth and the certainty of success. Besides, if a large emigration is not organised, and that London continues to increase by two thousand a week (its present rate), we shall soon have all England a monster factory, and all London a model lodging-house laid out in flats, rising like Babel to heaven, till both earth and sky are obscured, and one will forget the green of the grass or the form of a tree, and there will be no divine solitude left any more for the artist and for the soul-hunger of the painter and poet, and the Ideal will die out, slain by the Real. Mr Ruskin already complains that the rivers of England run black with dye-stuff, and the sky is heavy with smoke, and the scenery, God-given and sublime, is sacrificed on all AUSTRALIA. 243 sides to the devastating and destroying Moloch of trade. It is a mistake, therefore — almost a crime — not to utilise the whole great English Empire for the ever-growing population with all its needs, spiritual and material. Every class and grade of society might be extensively weeded,' so as to bring the numbers in London at least within a reasonable limit, in place of the five million that now encumber the soil of this mighty Babylon. All younger sons waiting the abolition of primogeniture might go with advantage ; all elder sons whose club bills are heavy and cigars unpaid ; the hundreds of briefless bar- risters ; all landlords whose incomes have been made over to their tenantry ; all the waiters upon Providence in the courts of the publishers, the writers of magazine articles returned ' with thanks,' and all the brilliant young men who strive painfully after a shadowy income from the society journals by paragraphs and acrostics. An emigrant ship freighted with this amount of fashion and genius would be an immense acquisition to the Australian world, as yet in the infancy of social scandal, gossip and thrill- ing romance; and the young aspirants for fame in place of browsing on the thorns and thistles 244 SOCIAL STUDIES. of Fleet Street and the Strand, will soon find grapes, and figs, and corn, and wine, and oil in abundance in the new land of their adoption. Of course, with countless thousands a year, London is a delightful place ; nothing equals it in the world for splendour and expense, for the magnificence of houses, horses and stately- dinners. But only about ten thousand persons in Lon- don can live this delightful life of love in idleness, with all its pleasant varieties and sins, and a million or so of toilers might be left to supply whatever they need ; but the remaining three million might certainly be transplanted to a better field of action, with considerable advan- tage to themselves and society ; where they could live and move and have their being as God meant them to be — useful and active mem- bers of the great human family. For if one has no thousands a year, nor even hundreds, nor even so many pounds, and credi- tors become clamorous, and tenants get peculiar ideas about rent, and the young man of genius who has trusted to the chance of a prize for the best poem on the ' Christmas Robin ' or the solution of the last acrostic finds the cheques from admiring editors few and far between, then the claims of civilisation seem rather vapid, the AUSTRALIA. 245 excitement lessens in intensity, and one almost begins to weary, if it were ever possible to weary of London enjoyment and society gossip. At such times a morbid gloom covers life, and, with a blighted, hopeless, discouraged feel we painfully realise in our inner consciousness the melancholy fact that the dream of our youth was an illusion, and that we cannot suddenly spring to the summit of the social ladder and hurl down contempt and scorn on our rivals and enemies with superb disdain. Then is the moment for the emigrant commissioner to ap- pear like a Deus ex macJiind. He offers land, and gold and work and triumph, and only asks in return the splendid daring of youth — for only the young should emigrate. Youth is for adventure, excitement, audacity and success ; and the glorious freedom of a new, magnificent country is a baptism of regeneration to the fevered victims of our vain, false social life, with all its 'venomous wind-sown herbage.' Amidst the strangeness and mystery of the untrodden wilderness, with its forests of cedar and sandal wood and mighty trees, within the hollow of whose trunk nearly a hundred men might find shelter, and the vast sheep-runs where a man may ride for two whole days and not come to the limit of his holding, the young generation 246 SOCIAL STUDIES. of the wearied brains, the chilled ambitions, and wrecked hopes will find a new stimulus to exertion, a new excitement in existence, and certainly the chance of a better income than could be derived from even the most brilliant paragraph or the solution of the most in- volved puzzle in the acrostic column of the local journals. They will miss at first, probably, the copious literature of the London press, and life will seem impossible without the solemn Times, the genial Telegraph, the soothing flatteries of the AthencEum, and the high-toned grace and cour- tesy of the society papers. Yet even a rest from these things might be welcome and bring a tender calm and repose to the overtaxed brain. For that must be a land of pure delight where no demand is made on one for universal erudition ; where it is not requisite to study all theories of government from Aristotle to Mr Gladstone while sipping the morning coffee ; and where even the most exhaustless leaders would be worthless after a transit of forty days. In fact, one would be ashamed to be found reading them when the world had gone spinning on in quite another spiral of progress since they were written. Besides, the telegram, the literature of electri- AUSTRALIA. 247 city, will adequately supply all knowledge sum- marised, and the whole history of the universe can be cabled in a phrase. Even Mudie may in future have his three volume novels wired (without adjectives to save expense) in place of packing them in tins as now for colonial con- sumption. Literature is mainly the product of sorrow and strife, and the Australians have had little of either, so their intellectual efforts want, as yet, force and pathos ; they are deficient in despair and aspiration, the qualities that create poets. Nor have they any heroic traditions of a noble and conquered race to be worked up into epics and dramas. The Aborigines have no claim to interest of any kind ; they are evidently the last decaying remnant of a low pre-Adamic race, a mere slight advance of the kangaroo towards the human, evidenced only by the faculty of speech ; they have no idea of God, of religion, of government, or morality ; no words to express chastity, truth, purity or shame. They are copper-coloured and hideous^ even brutalised-looking, like all inferior races. They neither plant, nor sow, nor weave, nor build ; they live by fishing and hunting, and are known to be cannibals. Their only garment is an opossum skin torn from the animal, and 248 SOCIAL STUDIES. their only dwelling is formed of a skin hung to windward on the branches of a tree. For six thousand years this race has had a trial on the earth, but has never made any advance in the scale of being. It is now, there- fore, the manifest destiny of the great Adamic race to clear the world of these half-souled in- ferior types, as a forest is cleared of its poisonous undergrowth that the fair and goodly trees may expand and flourish, and take freely of the sustenance offered by earth and heaven. To the English-speaking races above all have been given dominion and power over the earth, and what they have conquered they have a right to keep as their just and lawful heritage. And, if the suffering millions of the British Isles, the helpless, hopeless toilers in the exhausted plains and crowded cities of the Old World, have begun to find life all too bitter under the chill northern sky and the uncongenial constellation of the Great Bear, let them by all means arise in their might as the conquering sons of Japhet, claim boldly their portion of the broad earth, and go forth gladly and bravely to take posses- sion of the fair and fertile land at the other extremity of the Empire that lies beneath the holy symbol of the Southern Cross. THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. {A Study from Victor Hugd s Poem ' Le Pape.') * The Lord of Tears,' ' the stormy voice of France,' as Tennyson finely designates the great Poet of Freedom, never denounced wrong and tyranny with more powerful invective than in this fine poem, which in its full expression of Sin and Sorrow, may be called ' The Drama of Humanity.' Yet there is no actual life or movement, the scenes are visions only, supposed to pass before the mind of the Pope as he sleeps in his chamber in the Vatican, and they are flung as pictures on the mystic background of night and dreams, each vision representing a separate and distinct phase of human life. First the kings of Earth pass before him in their purple splendour; then the Prelates in their sacerdotal pomp and pride, and after them the great stream of humanity sweeps by ; the poor, the sinful, and the sorrowing ; the sheep 249 250 SOCIAL STUDIES. without a shepherd hunted by the wolves ; the tempted and the outcast ; the victims of want and misery driven to crime by despair; and with fierce and scathing anathemas, the Pontiff in his dream denounces the sin robed in purple that receives the homage of the crowd, and con- trasts it with the sin born of want and hunger that is expiated on the scaffold. The language is bold and beautiful. Every line shows a terrible impatience of wrong, with an infinite disdain for the vain pomp of life ; for the whited sepulchres filled with all uncleanness, and for all that is false, mean and shallow in our Social System. With superb audacity the poet rends the veil from the world's lies and the hypocrisy of the world's masters, and shows to King, Priest, and Ruler what they ought to be, but are not. The Priesthood had accused him of Atheism, he retorts by showing the pride and greed of the Church, and the darkness and bondage in which it holds men's souls ; the Kings had accused him of stimulating Anarchy, he retorts by showing how every throne is set upon a writhing, tortured people, and every royal robe is trailed in blood. But there is no reckless democratic rage in his teaching. No effort to reach regeneration through destruction. THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 25 I After the denunciation comes the strong clarion call from the poet's lips arousing the people to a sense of the true uses of life, and the infinite beauty of those grand words — Light, Justice, Liberty — to which all heroic lives have been consecrated ; words that mean emancipa- tion from ignorance, servility and oppression, and the uprising of a nation, or 'of a human soul into the nobler life of truth, dignity, know- ledge and self-reverence. Never is Victor Hugo's eloquence more power- ful than when he preaches the great gospel of human brotherhood, the divine sympathy of man with man, which should be the moving principle of all social life; the true fraternity based on the recognition of the holy and eternal rights of man. ' Peace on Earth ' is the Christ- word he would make a reality in its fullest sense, for in the new social state of which the poet dreams, there shall be no more war, nor oppression, nor crime born of want and misery ; no pride of life while the people starve; no lights burning on the altar while the nations sit in darkness. Help for the weak ; pity for the sinning ; justice for the wronged — these are the gifts he would have kings and priests lay on the altar of humanity, and above all, he demands Light 252 SOCIAL STUDIES. for the nations, even as light was first struck from chaos before an organic world could be evolved. The first scene opens in the Pope's chamber in the Vatican with a mystic invocation to sleep : ^ — 'When weary men and women. All who live And bear life's galling fetters on their limbs, Find peace and rest at last. A voice is heard from Heaven : — Sleep now and take your rest From the dark tumult of a weary life, While like a silver lamp within a tomb, God's spirit comes to light the death-like form. The Pope sleeps, and the Kings appear in his dream and salute him. Hail to thee, Pope ! We are the Kings of Earth All powerful. The Masters of the World. We stand upon the summit of all life. Supreme as Horeb or as Sinai. A mighty chain of mountains robed in light, Elect of God, and crowned by His own hand. The Pope : — I see no summit in the world save one. And there God stands. There is no king save God, But ye, what are ye ? Men like other men, Poor fleeting shadows of a passing day, ^ There is no attempt at strict verbal accuracy in these translations. The object is simply to give an idea of the tendency and scope of the poem by a free paraphrase of some of the most striking passages. The rich cadence of Victor Hugo's verse none can emulate, ' The Thunder and the Music of the Line,' but his strong thoughts are like golden sands, and may be gathered without loss of lustre. So I have endeavoured to collect a few in this rough English casket, as they glittered by me in the stream of his eloquence. THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 253 God's sacred sign is not upon your brow. The mountains have the glory of the sun, But ye are robed in darkness like the night. Your thrones are vile. Your purple reeks of blood. There is for man but one throne, purity ; One garment, love ; One law for all the world, Light, Justice, Truth. These are the Rights of Man. The Kings : — Yet thou, too, art a king, elected, crowned, What is thy work on Earth ? The Pope : — To serve and love. I blush to wear this triple crown of gold. And dwell amidst my prostrate worshippers. Like a dumb idol in this glorious shrine, For what am I to be enthroned like God ; Will not the Judgment come ? He advances to the portal of the Vatican and addresses the assembled crowd : — Oh ! people trembling in these servile chains, Help me to break your bonds of servitude. See how I rend my royal golden robe, And fling away these sandals from my feet, Soiled by the lips of kings. Now we are equal. Now I go forth alone where Heaven may lead ; Through storm or tempest, cloud, or sun, or rain. To tread the stony places of the world, And learn the mystery of suffering. Romans, I leave you Rome ! Henceforth I reign Over Christ's kingdom only ; deathless souls Who bear the standard of humanity Through want and woe and scorn and bitter tears. Farewell to splendour ! People let me pass ! My path is in the track of Christ. Farewell ! In the next scene the Pope, robed in serge, and, bearing a wooden crucifix in his hand, enters the eastern Synod. The Patriarch in 2 54 SOCIAL STUDIES. his golden robes and crown, surrounded by the bishops, rises from his throne to bless the people. The Patriarch. — I bless the tribes and cities of the world ; The vales and hills ; the mountains and the sea ; All peoples ; earth and heaven.' The Pope.— Rather bless hell ! Ay, priest, bless want and misery and tears From broken hearts. Bless tempted erring spirits Warring with wrong, yet falling in the combat. Bless the chained gangs of sullen tortured souls Made devils ere they knew their rights as men. Bless the faint hearts with only strength to suffer ; The wronged, the weak, the outcast and the sinning. Bless all for whom no lips have ever prayed, For these make up the sum of human life. Therefore, I say, bless hell ! The Patriarch. — Who is this man ? The Bishop of the West ? Robed as for death ! The Pope. — And wherefore not? I mourn for human sin ; Still more for human pride and pomp like thine. Amid the world's great sorrows. Cast aside This golden robe ; this glittering diadem; Thy velvet, damasks, pearl embroideries Are chords to strangle Christ. These priceless gems Are tears of widowed mothers, orphan'd babes. Thy rubies are the blood-drops of the people. Doth not the pale Christ, with His crown of thorns. Rebuke thy sinful vanity and pride ? Look at the people crouching in their lair. Maddened by want and hunger. Stalwart men Hunted by demons down the waste of years ; Wan, naked children sobbing in the streets ; Pale women bartering their youth for bread. Each hour a soul is passing to the judgment — Souls to be saved or damned ! Hast thou, O priest. Gone down to hell to save them ? taught the kings, THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 255 As priests should do, that sacred human rights Mean honour, dignity and honest toil ; The holy joys of home and innocence, Not luxuries that make our toiling men But devil's tools and ministers, because The rich have vices and the poor want bread. Think you God's priesthood should look calmly on While tyrants rivet chains, and evil laws Degrade men to the level of a slave ? You traffic in the sanctuary, and set Your foot upon the people for a base, That so the kings may trample them to dust. Swing silver censers, let the incense rise In perfumed clouds to heaven ! flash the blaze Of all your altar lights upon the scene ; You cannot hide the hideous wrongs of men From God's swift searching glance. The Patriarch and the Bishops vehemently express dissent The Patriarch. — Most saintly Pope, The laws are graven on brass, we cannot change The ancient form and usage of the Church ; Besides, the people like our splendid rites, The glory of the altar is their sun ; Our mitres flash like stars upon their eyes. 1st Bishop. — And speak of kings with reverence ! their swords Cast the same shadow as the cross. God's temple Is founded upon kings ; if kings should fall God will fall with them. 2nd Bishop. — Ay, in truth we know The people are but sheep and must be driven. Two powers only rule on earth — the priest. Head over all, and secondly the king. The ploughshare must be sharp to cut deep furrows. Leave it to us ! the priests of God know best How deep to cut that so good seed may grow. 3rd Bishop. — And cease this cry of ' knowledge for the people ; ' Books, schools and science ! What ! to make men think ? 256 SOCIAL STUDIES. They do not need to think ; dogma is everything. Anathema on him who dares to doubt. If they would reach us in the sanctuary It must be on their knees. Let us not fear To burn up heresy as though a torch Were flung into a field of straw. The Patriarch. — Beware ! You drag the people down to an abyss By this word Liberty. It is perdition ! Bowed heads and humble hearts are all we need ; Obedience to the priest and to the king. To think, to judge, to reason, and to doubt Is blasphemy, the primal sin of man, That cost him Paradise ! and God will cause All words and works to be accursed of those Who preach this vain word Progress, to the people. The Pope. — O Brother, clearer vision comes to me. Can Dogma save them ? From my splendid height I looked down on a seething gulf of crime. Black smoke of Hell that darkened all the land, And poisoned even the incense on the altar. Cries as of murdered souls went up to Heaven, I saw the reign of Sin — the death of Innocence, Vice set on high and Virtue in the mire ; Christ's sheep left foldless and no shepherd near To guide, to save, to comfort or to bless, And make God visible to human eyes ; So I have flung my earthly glories down, W^hat has God's priest to do with luxuries ? Vain cheats foul frauds — I fling them to the poor ! I will not take my place amongst the Kings Upon whose thrones rests everlasting darkness. Kings, Princes, Pontiffs, Sovereigns, Ccesars ; Weird shadows, hollow words, dead Phantoms robed As living men, like idols in our churches. False gods that brutalise the worshippers ; Shall we take all the people's holy rights — - Light, knowledge, freedom, justice, happiness, And sell them to the kings who build their thrones THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 257 On corpses, and fling hecatombs to death To buy another jewel for their crown ? Trampling on Christ to honour Attila. The Bishops. — Blasphemy ! blasphemy ! The Pope. — Peace, proud prelates, Peace ! You outrage Heaven. O Christ, come down ! By all Thy seven wounds we plead to Thee. Give back Humanity its rights, despoiled Of all God's gifts and disinherited By Kings and Priests. O people, women, children. Have they not souls ? have they not human rights ? Arise, O Priests, be on the side of God, Build up a temple, holy, pure, sublime With innocence and truth. The Lord Himself Will be the light thereof, and every heart A living stone on which God's name is graved. The Patriarchs and the Bishops rise up'tumul- tuously and rush from the scene. What ! vanished like a vision of the night ! The phantoms fled that strove to be as gods ! So Babel fell through pride and vain ambition. No priest — no temple ! Must I work alone In the dense darkness of this sea of sin ? A Voice from Heaven — Have Faith and trust in God The Lord is with thee ! The Pope leaves the Synod and goes forth on his mission of charity and love ; ministering to all who sin and suffer, and bringing peace to those who, through much sorrow, had began to doubt on God. The people gather round him with wonder while he speaks words of comfort and compassion. The Pope. — O People, I have left my royal stat To learn the bitter sorrows of the poor R 258 SOCIAL STUDIES. The woe, the wrongs, the agony, the tears, The bitter desolation called your life. Days without bread and nights made black with crim^, Unlit by any ray of love or sympathy. Your wounds that none bind up, your souls none save ; Your roofless homes, your fireless hearths, your cries That stifle Hell, your sins that startle Heaven. Come troubled hearts made mad by want and scorn, I bring you love for hate. I share your life, And give you of my gifts — Light, Freedom, Hope ; The knowledge of the birthright you have lost. Come, soul -stained outcasts ; trampled, bleeding slaves. Come all that men have shunned, that men despise, That men have cursed. Come all who weep and mourn, I will present each suffering soul to God And plead for ye before the Sacred Throne. The crowd press round with tearful prayers. A Passer-by. — What means this pauper multitude. Old Priest ? The Pope. — I gather priceless treasure for the Lord. In his dream the Pope beholds the building of a Temple, while the Archbishop gives his orders to the builders. The Archbishop. — Bring jaspar, onyx, sapphire, porphyry; Make the gate splendid and the portal high, That all may enter, all the people stand Amid the glittering glory before God. On the august facade flash forth in gems The name 'Jehovah,' as if traced in fire. Ring out the bells like choral harmonies Sending vibrations to the inmost soul ; And all things be in reverent order, Christ's Bishop seated on his golden throne, Christ in the stable ; and the holy Priests, Let them have soft warm cushions as they kneel To expiate your sins. THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 259 Bring costly gems, Jewels for crowns, and flowers for festivals, Gather all beauty of the earth and heaven, — Statues like Gods, Madonnas, Prophets, Saints, Divine as Raphael, strong as Michael Angelo! Resplendent frescoes, all the walls ablaze With the great story of Humanity ; The trees of Eden with their golden fruit, And the fair Woman as she tempted Man, The Builders piling rocks to mount to heaven ; Moses on Sinai, Christ on Golgotha; Belshazzar's feast and Cana's wedding wine ; The wealth of kings, the splendours of the world Were all too little for our holy Church,. Our altar and our priesthood. The Pope. — And the poor? Will they find shelter in the winter night, Amid your statues and your porphyries ? He mediates over the doom and curse that rests for ever on human destiny. Nothing but evil seems the law of life. The People writhing in their dull despair. And Princes, Nobles, Judges, Warriors, Priests, All working out the tragedy of man. The morning bids him weep, the night says die, Sin, suffering, tears, — the sum of human life, The doom of all the worlds, of all Creation. This is the creed that all religions teach — .Sorrow on Earth, eternal fire hereafter ! Oh fatal shadow thrown on life from Hell By rituals of falsehood and despair. The dogma of Damnation ! Wrath and hate Poured on our race throughout Eternity. A darkened life, a dark abyss beyond ; If Man, a tortured, bound Prometheus ; If Angel, a thrice cursed Lucifer. O helpless mortals in the grasp of fate. Can we not claim some higher rights from God, Then tears on Earth, and Hell for evermore. 26o SOCIAL STUDIES. A flock of shorn sheep pass by, while the wild winter wind is raging. The Pope regards them with pity. Poor shorn flock ! poor trembling shivering crowd ! What hand has shorn you of the sacred fleece God gave you as your right, and left you bare To the wild driving of the pitiless rain ? Will not a curse rest on the impious heads Of those who left you naked to the blast ? So on for ever on through life's fierce storm The mournful march of sad humanity. Toiling and working, suffering, weeping, dying, Naked while weaving royal robes for Kings, Homeless while building granaries for others; O People, ye who feed, clothe, nourish all. The worthless and the idle are your masters, They grind your lives down for their pleasuring, Body and soul and brain, the rich seize all. Where are the Shepherds whom the world calls Priests, Can they not save you from the hands of those Who take the wool and then will take the flesh, O dark-winged angels of remorseless fate, Why this eternal war upon the poor ; Why must the shadow fall upon their lives So darkly that it blots out all the sun ? The next scene is a battlefield, the Pope stands between the two armies and speaks : — What ! must we give these fields of living men, To be mowed down, as wheat is by the scythe, That Kingo may make a footstool of the dead To mount to thrones ? They grasp at diadems. And care not if the jewels drip with blood. Aye, seize your lands, as wolves their living prey. Send forth your fiat, bid the trumpets sound, And tell the people 'tis a glorious thing To die for Kings. But I through blinding tears I see your royal raiment trailed in blood, THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 261 The red plain strewn with dead and dying men, The trampled fields, the burning villages, The women weeping for their slaughtered sons. He adv^ances between the combatants with upHfted hand. O People, break the chain, be strong and cease To tremble at the shadow of a King ! Fling down your swords, and boldly say as men ' We will not sell our lives to purchase thrones, And leave our children orphans for the sake Of building up an empire for the Kings.' And who are ye who do the murderous work. And kill to order ! Men with brain and hand And power and might, the workers of the world ; True Titans of the Gods and of Humanity. And yet you give your manhood to be ruled By these poor phantom shadows called the Kings ; Who laugh and eat and hold high festival. And gaily wreathe the cup of blood with laurel. While earth is strewn with dead and drenched with tears. You robe them, crown them, pay them from your toil, Shrine them in gorgeous palaces, and then Fall down before the gods of your own making. Ye, the great movers of this vast machine Called Human Progress ! Ye, who have upheld By your strong work and arm the thrones of Kings ! Ye, root and leaves of the great tree of life, Without whose aid the world would come to naught ! All-powerful People, mighty world-sustainers. Rest but for one day idle, leave your work And the whole fabric falls ! Beware, O Kings ! The People yet may know their power, and then The cry of suffering humanity For retribution of their ancient wrongs Will startle earth, and reach the ear of God. You stifle thought and bind revolt in chains. And raise your scaffolds by your palaces Amid the people's deep anathema ; 262 SOCIAL STUDIES. In every age the same environment Of wrong, and wrath, and torture, and despair, And edicts traced in blood. But nothing done To help the blinded, sinning, suffering soul, To rise to human happiness through Love. Each generation sends its bitter cry Up to the silent heaven, ere it falls Into the depths of everlasting darkness. Yet still the wrong remains, the fetters gall ; The vengeance, and the sorrow, and the doom Make human life more terrible than death. The kings alone are sacred as the gods, They set their feet on slaves, their thrones on tyranny, And priests will preach to us of ' Right Divine.' Tiberias before Christ ! Yet what are kings— The Bourbon, Hapsburg, Brunswick, Romanoff— But idols men create ? and men can crush If only they demand their rights as men. But unjust laws, brute force, and grinding care Stifle the life in nations : soul crushed slaves They fall below the level of the beast. While if they strive to give back blow for blow, They're gagged and chained, and beaten with many stripes. The Pope beholds a scaffold, and the execu- tioner waiting for the victim. He asks the reason. The Executioner. — He slew a man. The Pope. — And therefore you slay him. A crime to expiate a crime ! Oh give The sinning soul some time for penitence. Repentance purifies, but not revenge. What right have you, O Judges of the Land, To take the life God gave, the sacred life You never can restore, and call it justice ? God is more merciful ; He sends old age. The silent calm of passionless old age. To bend the heart to penitence, and through The sorrow for the sin work out salvation. But you defraud the sinner of his rights, THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 263 And take from him the two sole ways of pardon — Time and remorse. God knoweth best the hour To strike the doom of death. Leave him to God. Why should men dare to send a sinner hence Before God calls him to the judgment seat, With all the awful angels looking on ; Ere yet the baptism of grace had cleansed The stain of sin that lies upon his soul ? If the dread past is shadowed dark with crime, Give him the time to pray ; to lift his eyes Out of the blackness of a ruined life Up to the pitying heaven — where Christ stands Pleading for sinners by the throne of God. He may repent — give him the time for tears, One hope, one gleam of pardon for the past, One moment of God's sunshine on his soul, Ere he is sent into the gulf of death.' In the terrible misery of humanity the poet finds the true cause that leads to crime ; and the chief sin, he maintains, rests not on the people, but on those who have driven the people to despair. Thus he justifies his fierce vi^ar against the greed of kings, the pride of the priesthood, and the selfish oppression of the rich; the purple and fine linen of Dives, while Lazarus is dying at his gate. In every age the great world leaders have lifted the standard of battle against wrong and tyranny, and Victor Hugo's noble poem is a grand hymn of revolt against the existing state of society with all its awful contrasts and insolent luxury and bitter poverty He sees, — Down in the depths, a mass of living men Groping and grovelling for their daily bread. 264 SOCIAL STUDIES. But Society with its vain traditions, and the Church with its formal ritual, give no help to the abject sorrow of the poor. Some great social revolution seems necessary to lift them from the moral and physical degradation of their dark- ened lives. Meanwhile the poet can but counsel resignation : — Patience ! God's hour will come. I lift mine eyes And see the Saviour standing by the throne ; And he hears, though none heed, — Up from the depths, the ceaseless, bitter cry Of disinherited humanity. He will have pity, for He drained the cup Of human sorrow upon earth, and knows The soundless depths of human suffering, The bitte woes that tempt a soul to sin. The last scene is entitled, 'The Entry to Jerusalem,' in which is depicted the glorious destiny of humanity as it might be, if Kings, Priests and Rulers were true to their mission as guides, teachers and saviours of the people. The Pope. — I preach to all men the great reign of Christ : Right, Justice, Truth ; the full equality Of man with man before the face of God, True liberty made perfect through the laws That guard the rights of others as our own. No ignorance, no fratricidal wars, No want, no misery, no darkened souls Made brutal by despair, therefore no crime, And if no crime no scaffold. Let the rich Learn the true use of riches is to give ; And all who suffer by their own deep woe Teach pity for the sorrows of another^ THE VISION OF THE VATICAN. 265 The darkest fate can be made beautiful By those great angels of Redemption, Grace, Mercy and Love. They raise the meanest life, And give the darkest sunshine. I have trod The loftiest heights of splendour, King and Priest, Yet now I give back Rome, and take Jerusalem, The sacred, mystic city of the soul. As my true heritage. I leave the Vatican And choose my place on Calvary with Christ, To work and suffer for humanity. The dying Christ, and not the living kings Will give me power to raise the trampled crowd, And make life's darkness luminous through love. O workers of the world, true splendour rests Not on the palace : 'tis a charnel-house Where all divinest things lie slain and buried. But in the holy strength of noble deeds. The holy words — Truth, Duty, Sacrifice, Fill Earth with light as Heaven is lit by stars, And through the mournful mysteries of Fate, Diffuse the Godlike grace of love and purity. So shall true freedom come upon the earth. The People. — Father, we thank thee for Thy blessed words. The Pope (awakening from his sleep). — What mystic visions I have had to-night ! ' So ends this strange and powerful drama ; this divine dream of a noble soul filled with pity for the wrongs of man, but illumined by a sublime faith in the splendid possibilities of our race when redeemed and sanctified by Light, Justice and Freedom ; and that supreme moment of human history is reached when Humanity becomes at last the true Incarna- tion of Divinity. IRISH LEADERS AND MARTYRS. The fervent nationality evoked by Moore's music and song at the opening of the century, and formulated afterwards into an immense political force by O'Connell, rose to a fever of enthusiasm in 1848, when a madness of lyrical passion seemed to sweep over the heart of the nation, and ' Young Ireland ' sprang to man- hood, splendid in force and intellect, earnest in aim, and stainless in life and act. Amongst the new band of workers were powerful organisers like Gavan Duffy ; chival- rous leaders like Smith O'Brien ; orators like Dillon and Meagher ; and fervent apostles of freedom like John Mitchell, one of the boldest, bravest, and most noble-hearted of patriots. But the man, above all, whose words were a tocsin of Revolution, was the poet, orator and leader, Thomas Davis. His whole public and literary career barely 266 IRISH LEADERS AND MARTYRS. 26/ exceeded four years, yet, in that brief time, he created a nation with noble, definite aims, and passionate resolves to achieve success. A delirium of patriotic excitement raged through the land as these young orators and poets flashed the full light of their genius on the wrongs, the hopes, and the old heroic memories of their country ; even the upper classes in Ireland awoke for the first time to the sense of the nobleness of a life devoted to national regeneration. A Gott Trunkenheit, the ' Trunkenheit ohne Wein,' was on all hearts, the divine fanaticism of youth and genius. The leaders spoke as in- spired men, and their words, like the words of the spirit, gave new life and power to every lofty purpose and high resolve. Even Trinity College struck the Irish harp to Hymns of Freedom, and the most popular poem of that era, ' Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight ? ' was written by a young collegian, afterwards a distinguished Fellow of the university ; and an eminent Irish Judge, but recently passed away, won his first laurels in literature by songs contributed to the national cause. Another of the leading spirits of that day was Ferguson, afterwards Sir Samuel Ferguson, who illustrated all that was grand or tragic in the 268 SOCIAL STUDIES. past by his splendid ballads ; and who flung the silken singing robes of the bard over the muse of Irish history; while Aubrey de Vere, the most cultured of all the Irish poets, crowned her with the golden diadem of his perfect verse. The powerful ballads of Charles Gavan Duffy also achieved a rapid fame, and will for ever hold a distinguished place in Irish literature ; while as a song writer, John Francis Waller almost rivalled Moore in the melody and music of his words ; and his graceful and beautiful lyrics have the true mirth and pathos of Irish nature, blended and united. Denis Florence M'Carthy, the translator of ' Calderon,' wrote patriot verse that clashed like cymbals ; and Clarence Mangan brought treasures from every land and language to weave into the national minstrelsy ; while Carleton and Banim proved their claim to rank as poets, as well as the greatest amongst Irish novelists. Nor was genius unrepresented in the other arts. Frederick Burton, the painter, now Sir Frederick Burton, first drank inspiration at the holy wells of Ireland, and has never known inspiration more fervent and glowing since he left their tree-shadowed mysteries for his Eng- lish home ; and George Petrie's divine soul grew diviner amidst the holy ruins of the ancient IRISH LEADERS AND MARTYRS. 269 abbeys and the purple mist-crowned solitudes of the Irish mountains ; for love of country is one of the great motive forces of the mind, and the Irish have ever been singularly susceptible to its influence as a stimulus to action. Nor is the influence evanescent, for the Irish people have been tried through much suffering, yet neither the prison, nor exile, nor broken hearts, nor even death itself, could weaken the love and reverence that binds them to their mother- land. In the great outpouring of the Spirit in '48, not only the cultured classes, but the toilers and artisans also, many of them were seized with the poetic frenzy, and wrote and published verses of singular merit and strong, rude power ; for Celtic favour always finds its fullest expres- sion in oratory and song. The Irish, especially, have a natural gift of copious and fluent speech. They are orators at all times, but under the in- fluence of strong excitement they become poets, and in that stormy era, when every nation was reading its Rights by the flames of burning thrones, the Irish poets, mad with the magni- ficent illusions of youth, flashed their hymns of hope and songs of defiance like a fiery cross over land and lake, over river and mountains, throughout Ireland, awakening souls to life that 270 SOCIAL STUDIES. might long have Iain dead but for the magic incantation of their words. Yet, the fate of many of those who made '48 a splendid moment in Irish history, was dark and tragic, and the flame lit up by patriot- passion died out in martyrdom. The brave and brilliant Thomas Francis Meagher, the handsome and gifted young orator of the National party, was drowned in the waters of the Mississippi, and D'Arcy M'Ghee, the poet and statesman, met his death in Canada, mur- dered by some Irish fanatics who believed that he had given up nationality for place. The high-souled Smith O'Brien, the descendant of kings, and venerated by the people as their chief, was tried and condemned to death, though the sentence was commuted afterwards to exile. He served out his time through the long weary years, disdaining to break his parole, and then returned to Ireland to die. His last words were, — * My heart is broken.' John Dillon, the impassioned orator, who could sway thousands to his will by the mag- netism of his presence, looking every inch the magnificent Spanish Hidalgo, with his dark eyes and raven hair, was doomed to prison and exile in the prime of his splendid manhood ; and came back only in long after years, a white- IRISH LEADERS AND MARTYRS. 27 1 haired, mournful wreck, to rest in an Irish grave. He looked not like the ruins of his youth, But like the ruins of those ruins. And John Mitchell, the all-powerful advocate of human freedom, suffered also the bitter martyrdom of exile, till youth, hope and energy were all crushed out of his life, and then he was permitted to return and see his native land once more. But the shadow of death was already on him, and he died just as the people, with all their old vivid love for the patriot-martyr un- changed, had elected him as one of their repre- sentatives in Parliament. So they laid him in his Irish grave, with the shamrock on his breast, and never a truer heart, with its scorn of everything false, or a more powerful brain as thinker and writer, could be named amongst all those who have lived and worked and died for Ireland. Clarence Mangan, one of the most remark- able of the gifted young race of that era, was found almost perishing of want in the streets of Dublin; and he died shortly after in the hos- pital whither they carried him. Henry O'Neil, the artist and writer, to whom we are indebted for that truly splendid work ' The Sculptured Crosses of Ireland,' was sus- 2/2 SOCIAL STUDIES. tained chiefly by charity during the closing years of his life, and his family, after his death, were left almost in utter destitution. But the list is endless of Irish genius left to struggle hopelessly against the corroding cares of life. A natural result when there is no kin- ship or sympathy between the rulers and the ruled, no pride of race, no heroic memories, no traditions of suffering common to both, yet the the word country should be for ever sacred, and lie at the base of all individual action and effort ; for love of country is the divine force that can alone war against the degrading tendencies of mere material gain ; and no mental or moral elevation can be attained by a people who do not, above all, and before all, things, uphold and reverence the holy rights of their Motherland. THE POET AS TEACHER. It is one of Goethe's profound aphorisms, that ' Every day we should in some way renew our impressions of the true and the beautiful by a verse from some great poet, the sight of a painting or a statue, or by a noble thought from some heroic mind ; for the spiritual within is ever in danger of being choked and suffocated by the rank luxuriance of the weeds and thorns that crowd our daily life.' In this country, however, Art has but few temples wherein lessons of grace and beauty can be taught the people ; nor can even the glorious book of Nature be enjoyed by those who, with toiling hands and ever lowered eyes, work day and night at the loom of life to earn the scanty bread of sub- sistence. The poor in these rough northern climes have little time for the dreamy musings over the illuminated pages of Nature, to which the luxu- rious indolence of a southern existence gives 274 SOCIAL STUDIES. such full facility. The sunset and the cloud, the spiritual influence of dying day, or of night with her starry host ; the grandeur of the lonely mountain, the song of waters, the choral music of the waving trees — all the beauty and melody of the world, is, in a great degree, mute and veiled to our weary toiling slaves of civilisation. But literature, in the full plenitude of its en- nobling influence, can reach all classes, the lowest as the highest. The words of man can permeate where the music of the forest trees never can be heard. In the cabin, the cellar, the factory, the mine, amongst the children of the cities or the plains, wherever there is a soul however darkened, the souls of other men can reach him ; the divine thinkers of all ages may come in and sit down by him, though his dwelling be the meanest hut The soul at least can ' build herself a lordly pleasure-house,' be the poor, toiling, material frame ever so lowly located. The duty of a government, then, is to ameliorate the condi- tion of the people as far as possible by afford- ing every facility whereby these angel ministers may pass to and fro amongst them. It is ignorance that degrades, not poverty or toil. ' That one man dies ignorant who has a capa- city for knowledge, that I call a tragedy,' is THE POET AS TEACHER. 275 the deep and wise utterance of the great thinker and philosopher — Carlyle. ' Every man/ he adds, * even the meanest, is a priest sent to minister in the Temple of Immensity.' And if the masses of men everywhere have fallen from this high birthright, so that the general characteristic of the labouring classes has hitherto been that of the lowest mental and physical degradation, the cause and the consequences must be laid to the charge of the ruling classes who for ages have debarred them from the light and privileges of knowledge. The truth seems only lately to have dawned upon the English mind that edu- cation was necessary to build up a noble race of citizens, and that every material advance, with- out a corresponding moral and intellectual pro- gression, only ensured a vaster amount of crime by increasing the facilities whereby all the tend- encies of the lower sensuous nature could be gratified. Education forms the only counterpoise against the low instincts of a darkened intellect. And a world of gladness and blessedness dawns upon the lowliest human life in proportion as the clouds of ignorance are lifted. A noble thought, then, brings joy, for the moral sense is elevated to comprehend it. The beautiful can be un- folded everywhere from the sepal leaves of the 2/6 SOCIAL STUDIES. visible, and the awakened intellect finds endless sources of joy in the study of the new-learned harmonies between the laws of nature and of spirit. But the ignorance and darkness to which Ireland was condemned, up to a very recent period, would be scarcely credible, forming as it does part of an empire whose wealth, power and resources are inexhaustible, if it were not also known that everywhere throughout her colonies and her continents England has at all times manifested the one uniform spirit — a love of gain, and a neglect of souls. Carleton, our great novelist, in the sketch of his own youth prefixed to the last edition of his Traits and Stories, thus speaks of the state of education in his time : — ' In my youth I do not remember a single school in a parish, the extent of which was ten miles by eight. The instruction of the children was a matter in which no one took any interest. Education was wholly left to the hedge school- master.' And we have only to read Carleton's tale of the ' Hedge School ' for a melancholy proof of what that education was, though the rich humour of his description makes the sketch infinitely amus- ing. It is indeed coloured from the life, for at THE POET AS TEACHER. 277 this same Hedge School he himself, the ' Great Peasant,' reeeived all the instruction of his early- years. His trials afterwards in pursuit of know- ledge were bitter, but one is half selfish enough not to regret them, since they resulted in that most pathetic tale of his The Poor Scholar. Tracing, also, the abject misery and degrada- tion of our people to this systematic neglect, even discouragement of education by all in authority, he says : — ' The Irishman was not only not educated, but actually punished for attempting to acquire knowledge in the first place, and in the second, punished also for the ignorance created by its absence. In other words, the penal laws rendered education criminal, and then caused the unhappy people to suffer for the crimes which proper knowledge would have prevented them from committing. It is beyond question, that from the time of the wars of Elizabeth, and the introduction of the Reformation, until very recently, there was no fixed system of education in the country. The people, possessed of strong political and religious prejudices, were left in a state of physical destitution and moral ignorance, calculated to produce ten times the amount of crime which was committed. Nor is it any wonder if poverty and ignorance combined 2/8 SOCIAL STUDIES. should give the country a character for turbul- ence and outrage. The same causes would pro- duce the same effects in any country.' There is truly a deep analogy and intimate connection between morals and education, holi- ness and intellect. The object of both is the attainment of that ideal perfection which is God's image stamped upon the soul, though obscured for a time by ignorance and vice. Life has no higher meaning than to evolve the inner subjec- tive ideal in word, act and form — that is in Literature, Morals and Art. And to emancipate this higher nature should be the noblest aim of all education. To remove the mists of sense that stand between the soul and the objects with which it has a natural affinity. To reveal this soul itself in its essential beauty and purity, as the statute be- comes revealed slowly from within the block of marble, according as the gross and exoteric is dissevered from it. And as the lower nature is annihilated, the soul will stand forth clearer and and clearer, the human life reveal more and more of the beauty, harmony, grace, and gentleness, which is love, and the deep and intimate com- munion with the hidden and profound things of the universe, which is k7iowledge. For all these things are of the essence of the soul — they dwell THE POET AS TEACHER. 279 in it eternally — are not created, but revealed through culture and discipline. The thoughts of a great man do not startle us because they are new, but because they wake up what has long lain wordless in the deep infinite of our own souls. This excellence, however, cannot become the law of a man's life until the lower nature is subdued, and made the slave not the master. This is the mystery of crucifying the flesh.' It is a deep truth which should be ever present to us, that each human being is a compound of two natures, the animal and the God — senses and soul, clay and ether ; and the true task of life is to evolve the divine from the earthly. Education, therefore, must contain a moral idea at the foundation, or it becomes only the ally of the senses. By the effect any work in art or literature produces on the mind, and by that only are we to judge its excellence — by the amount of emotion and the kind of emotion which it excites. Schiller's profound comment on St Peter's at Rome is, that its grandeur con- sists in making us grander. The proof likewise of the surpassing excellence of Handel's ' Halle- lujah Chorus ' is, that it excites the highest and sublimest emotion of the soul — worship. Our souls are elevated to his own level by a great 28o SOCIAL STUDIES. artist or poet, and we are for the instant equal to Michael Angelo, Handel or Milton. When the intellect and moral nature thus acts in con- cert, striving together to realise the subjective ideal, the result is the advancement of our entire spiritual nature towards infinite perfection. It is in a word religion, for this is the highest, com- pletest term whereby we can express the eternal asymptote or curve of the soul to God. But of all forms in which the thought of man can be incarnated, poetry is the one which produces the most vivid and instantaneous excitement upon the mind of youth. Children may be insensible to the picturesque, to sculpture, music, painting ; but no child-heart is proof against a ballad. Impressions which last a life long are often stamped upon the soul by the chantings of a nurse. Thus Carleton's genius was first awakened by the soft, sweet songs of his mother to him in childhood in her own Irish tongue. Poetry, therefore, must always form an impor- tant element in education, because it can be made so powerful an auxiliary. It permeates the blood, and tinges a nature for ever after. Amongst the working classes especially, litera- ture of feeling and imagination finds ready access. No world of conventionalities rises up as a wall between them and the spiritual, or THE POET AS TEACHER. 281 crushes them day by day with the dull, leaden weight of its petty forms. Their thoughts rush into space more easily than in higher, fettered, artificial modes of life. Their life-task and God — these are the two poles of their existence. How faithfully and trustfully they seem to realise him as a Presence in their daily life ! referring all trials, fortunes and events to him alone — never thinking apparently of secondary causes — and this it is which often gives such dignity and pathos to the sorrows of the poor. Out of these elements, faith, simplicity, and an ever-present sense of the spiritual, is the true poetic spirit made, or the true recipient of poetry ; and so in the calender of genius one finds but few noble pedigrees. Here in our own Ireland have not Carleton, Banim, Griffin, Moore, all sprung from the people ? The star rests oftener over the manger than the palace. Knowing, then, the influence of poetry upon the people, and how readily they receive impressions through such a medium, one looks with interest on a collection of poems issued by the Irish Commissioners of Education, and intended ex- pressly for the young hearts who are to be the working heads of the advancing age. The col- lection professes to range over a period of 500 years — from Chaucer to the present time — and 282 SOCIAL STUDIES. from such an ample field one might naturally expect all that could elevate, inspire and in- vigorate. Into this vast temple of thought, where the words of the great of all ages are collected — it is the office of the teacher to lead the spirit - shrouded child, and guide him to every shrine where the true divinity is wor- shipped ; to all that would excite the emotion which produces noble deeds, all that would appeal to the heart through the history, tradi- tions, sorrows, hopes, aspirations of his native land. After the knowledge of God, a wise teacher would implant a Love of Country in the heart of a child. It is the source of all the noblest virtues, of those most difficult to attain, for they rise on the ruins of narrow self-interest. Thus would a noble, large-hearted race of men be reared, fit to act when duty called them to the great redemptive work of life, and a national spirit fostered, which, re-acting against petty party egoism, would make them one day worthy of being intrusted with national power. To unfold to the child all that is beautiful in nature, and noble in life, is little, unless, at the same time, you give him an object commensurate with the great duties you teach him. The love kindled for humanity must be concentrated where it can act with power. The knowledge acquired THE POET AS TEACHER. 283 should find channels on every side to benefit others, be a man's station ever so apparently- isolated and powerless, for to break down the barrier-walls of self, and diffuse and expand the riches of our own mind amongst thousands around, raising them to the level we have reached, no matter how gained, whether by study or through sufferings, has in it something glorious and godlike as an aim of life, and brings to the soul something of divine felicity. The true aim of all individual effort should be national advance. Our own land is the sphere of our duties. Here God placed us to dress it and keep it ; a vineyard of whose state he will one day demand an account. How a lofty self- denying purpose can ennoble the lowest life, poverty, rags and destitution, we know from the history of many a holy saint : Sacrifice and self-devotion hallow earth and fill the skies, And the meanest life is sacred whence the highest may arise. One of the many reasons, perhaps, of Ireland's degradation is, that her gentry were never taught to feel and act as Irishmen ! The fact of being placed by God in this particular land, seemed never to suggest the idea that they were to work for it, or would have to render an account of their stewardship. Men and women are dead 284 SOCIAL STUDIES. and dying around us, whose hearts through life never throbbed at the word ' Country.' By some strange hallucination they strove by vulgar imi- tation to transform themselves into English, and then assumed they were identical, though England by many a bitter sarcasm showed how she scorned their pretended claim. In the preface to the Selections for Irish Children these views of the paramount im- portance of inculcating a love of home and fatherland, are distinctly stated ; but throughout the whole collection we find no illustrations whatever of so just a theory. In connection with home or country there is not one verse which would strike into the young Irish heart ; and for the names even of our leading Irish writers we may search the volumes in vain. The general tone also is didactic and prosy, quite unfitted to attract the attention of youth. At that age fire and energy are demanded, as a translation into words of the first throbbings of the eager, buoy- ant, daring heart. Ethics must be taught in action, in a vivid picture language, in deeds of heroism that make heroes — of patriotism that kindles a glow which keeps burning a life long ; but patriotism is the word which, above all others, is excluded from the national education. Irish children, it seems, may be taught everything but THE POET AS TEACHER. 285 what regards Ireland. An instance of this is given, by the compiler, in his introduction to the Ballad Poetry. For after going over all ballad history, from Homer to Macaulay, through north and south, east and west of Europe, and even crossing the ocean to pay a tribute to the muse of the native savages of America, he says that the national poety of Ireland is a subject upon which he has left himself no space to make any remarks. Numerous instances have been already- brought before the public establishing the ex- istence of this quarantine law against all things Irish in the system of national education, yet one would think that literature was too sacred to be made the tool of politics. The thoughts of genius are for all ages, they are the inherit- ance, the rightful possession of a people. One is ashamed to see them dovetailed to suit the expediencies of a government. Is it fair that native shrines should be veiled before the eyes of the young child while he is taught to kneel at those of other lands ? Not that sectarianism or one-sidedness in literature should be mistaken for nationality. The mind, like the mystic city of the Apocalypse, should have portals open to all points of earth and heaven, from which a thought, a holy and 286 SOCIAL STUDIES. ennobling thought may come. Heroism from all lands and of any age is still vital and will kindle heroism. We can sympathise with ' Horatius Codes, who kept the bridge so well,' or with old King Pharamond, seated calmly by the burning pile to destroy himself if conquered ; but in this authorised collection for Irish chil- dren, of all the brave deeds our poets sang, of all the wild, beautiful legends of our land, which their verse made more beautiful, not a line is to be found. Holy memories and heroic traditions are the guardian spirits of a people. Why should national commissioners — Scatter these angel guards, glorious and beautiful ? There is an elevation by induction. Show a child what is worthy in his own race and he will strive to rise to it Self-reverence is generated, for we reverence our own nature in that of our great men. Different literatures, truly, are but different languages in which one human spirit speaks. But each nation has a peculiar mental organisation. Each heart has its own idiom and ideas thus illustrated, a child will assimilate faster because they are congenial to his nature. To rear a nation to its full stature upon foreign thought is impossible. Even in an THE POET AS TEACHER. 287 aesthetic point of view, nothing great or original will ever result from it, much less will it awaken the national pride, hereditary heroism or self- respect, at all times necessary in those who would advance their country's glory. Germany tried to live upon foreign thought for a hundred years or more — English and French, or any thought except their own — but nothing came of it. So at last, headed by those grand iconoclasts, Lessing, Herder, Tieck, Goethe and others, they threw down all the foreign idols, and went back to drink at their own holy wells, their Sagas, Mahrchen, and wild lays of the Niebelungen. There they found inspiration, and the free, native tide of thought has ever since poured forth in channels created by its own daring force — the only fitting channels for that wondrous German mind, at once the profoundest and most imagin- ative of Europe ; while, on the other hand, by stifling the free utterance of native thought, the literature of modern Italy became the most meagre and artificial of Europe — for the Austrian forbade the words country, independ- ence or freedom to be uttered by the subject people. There is a magic might in song. All rulers and despots know this well. Napoleon found its power, when the chorus, — Sit sollen ihn nicht habeii, derfrete Deutsche Rhien ! 288 SOCIAL STUDIES. made all Germany fly to arms for the War of Liberation. The songs of the poets become swords in the hands of the patriots. , Can it be in fear of this transmutation, that Irish song is not flung into the furnace of young hearts ? One can only hazard an hypothesis for the cause of this singular omission ; but the fact can be easily proved by merely looking over the index of the selections. In the long list of poems on home and country, there is but one by an Irishman, and that merely displaying individual, not national feeling — it is, ' Our Native Valley,' by Grifiin — although the com- piler states in the Introduction, and justly, that, ' On the love of home is founded that of country, and unless this first of affections is inculcated the heart must ever remain selfish, desolate and cold to all social and patriotic feelings.* His illustration of these admirable sentiments is by teaching the poor Irish child to chant ' The Stately Homes of England.' France might as well make * Rule Britannia ' her national song, in place of the ' Marseillaise,' or America rear her youthful population upon ' The British Grenadiers.' In the list of ' Songs and Lyrics ' there is but one by Moore, the chief of our poets and our national glory and that the least characteri.stic THE POET AS TEACHER. 289 of his melodies. However, in compensation, we have ' Ye Mariners of England ' and ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' which, though excellent poetry, could scarcely vibrate through an Irish heart like Moore's grand and solemn appeal, — • Let Erin remember the days of old, Ere her faithless sons betrayed her. In the list of the ' Social and domestic affec- tions,' not one Irish name is to be met with. Not a line from Banim's iron verses, strong and sinewy as a peasant's arm, and passionate as his heart. Nor from Griffin's mournful muse, filled with that deep tenderness yet plaintive orientalism of resignation so characteristic of Irish sorrow. How in that poem of his, ' The Mother's Lament,' one sees the poor old for- saken, desolate, bereaved-one rocking herself to and fro, by the chill hearth of her ruined home, while she chants — My darling, my darling, while silence is on the moor, And lone in the sunshine I sit by our cabin door ; When evening falls quiet and calm over land and sea, My darling, my darling, I think of past limes and thee ! My darling, my darling, God gave to my feeble age, A prop for my faint heart, a stay in my pilgrimage ; My darling, my darling, God takes back his gift again. And my heart may be broken, but ne'er shall my will complain. Do not these genuine outpourings of an Irish T 290 SOCIAL STUDIES. heart call a rush of tender tears to the eyes, which the cold, cultured extracts from * Gertrude of Wyoming,' given in the selections, never could awaken ? Amongst the ballads also, a species of com- position in which Ireland has won a world-wide fame, there are but two representatives from our country — Moore's ' Lake of the Dismal Swamp,' and ' The Faery Thorn ' by Ferguson. The omission of all other distinguished Irish names cannot, however, arise from ignorance ; for in his simple way of always making his prose bear testimony against his verse, the com- piler assures us of the deserved popularity of Banim, Callanan, Lover, Davis, etc., amongst the modern Irish writers in this particular de- partment, yet no extract appears from any one of them ; and throughout the whole work, not a single line from Davis is to be found. The grand and glittering ballad of ' Fontenoy,' every verse flashing like swords in the sun- shine, would give the heart of youth a healthier action, one would think, than ' Sweet William's Ghost.' Or that other by Davis, where the verse bounds on fierce and beautiful as a panther, — Oh ! for a steed, a rushing steed, and a blazing scimitar, To hunt from beauteous Italy the Austrian's red hussar. THE POET AS TEACHER. 29I To mock their boasts, And strew their hosts, And scatter their flags afar. Oh ! for a steed, a rushing steed, and dear Poland gathered round, To smite her circle of savage foes, and hurl them to the ground ; Nor hold my hand While on the land A foreigner foe was found. Or is ' The Child and Hind,' another of the selections, better teaching for the men of the future who are to war and work against the darkness and bigotry of ages than the spirited nationality and noble moral of ' The Irish Chiefs,' which thrills like a sursmn corda through the frame. Oh ! to have lived dear Owen's life, to live for a solemn end, To strive for the ruling strength and skill God's saints to the chosen send ; And to come at length with that holy strength the bondage of fraud to rend. And pour the light of God's freedom in where tyrants or slaves are denned. Or ' The Muster of the North,' by Gavan Duffy, with its fast and fiery rhythm, like the rushing of horses over a rocky causeway ; or that spirited Orange chant of ' The Maiden City,' by Charlotte Elizabeth, coloured with the memories of the other Ulster race, beginning, — Where Foyle his swelling waters Rolls northward to the main, Here, queen of Erin's daughters. Fair Derry, fixed her reign. 292 SOCIAL STUDIES. A holy temple crowned her, And commerce graced her street, A rampart wall was round her, The river at her feet; And here she sat alone, boys, And looking from the hill, Vow'd the maiden on her throne, boys, Would be a maiden still. Ballads like these light up courage and hero- ism. A great heart speaks in them, and the child, for the moment, is transformed into the hero. But, alas, native heroism is a taboo d sub- ject to the young national scholar. He may- sing of Wallace wight, and the triumph over the Armada, but must not dare to tell how at Fontenoy — Right up against the English lines the Irish exiles ran — and conquered too. But leaving these exciting ballads aside, why is there no illustration of Carleton's thrilling genius given ? Would not the exquisite faery music of his legendary ballad of ' Sir Turlough ' — The bride she bound her golden hair — Kileevy, O Kileevy ! And her step was light as the breezy air, When it bends the morning flowers so fair, By the bonnie green woods of Kileevy ! — have been a bitter poetical model, and more fitted for a place in an authorised collection for national purposes, than the infantile lispings of THE POET AS TEACHER. 293 the Misses Davidson, of America — ' The Shout- ing Cuckoo/ or the feeble, flimsy fripperies of the ' Keepsake Era ' ? Then we have numerous specimens from a poet of Blackwood, called ' Delta ' ; but of the learned, original mind of Clarence Mangan, there is no trace whatever. Poor Mangan ; who spent a weary, sad life illustrating all literatures from Ireland to Iran! and who lives consecrated in the martyrology of genius, though allowed no place in the Pantheon of Marlborough Street, amongst the Peabodys and Patersons, and Polehills and Wasthills, and Wiffens, and Wilcoxes, and other poets of such-like strange and uncouth appellations whom the compiler delights to honour, though where he discovered them (particularly Wiffen, author of ' The Shout- ing Cuckoo ') is the grand mystery of the book. It is so sad in all the wide world not to know where to look for Wiffen ! But the selections even from the best poets, are as unfortunate as the omissions. Moore, for instance, seems more like an improved version of Isaac Watts than the impassioned bard of Ireland — the quotations from him being princi- pally of sacred pieces, and one ' To a Grass- hopper.' From Keats, ' flushed all over with the rich light of poetry,' but one poor extract on 294 SOCIAL STUDIES. 'Autumn.' Were there not ' Madeline' and the ' Pot of Basil,' and these two exquisite odes to a ' Grecian Urn ' and a ' Nightingale ' to choose from ? But of these not a word. Then not a line from Motherwell, but an in- terminable number from that dull Montgomery, beginning with ' Autumn,' too. All he ever wrote is not worth Motherwell's ' Jeannie Mor- rison.' No rich and gorgeous harmonies of Tennyson's from ' Locksley Hall ' or the ' Lady Godiva.' No gleam of that sweet vision the ' Queen of the May.' Or, ' Mariana in the Moated Grange.' Only two extracts upon ' Autumn ' likewise. ' To a Bee,' ' To a Primrose,' ' To Autumn,' ditto, ditto, ditto, is the staple commodity ap- pended to every name great and small down the index. We turn to Wordsworth, — but find only Daisies and Daffodils. Not one tinge of sanc- tuary splendour. No ' Intimations of Immor- tality,' not a 'Palm Leaf from Monckton Milnes. Yet, how beautiful is his poem, ' The Flight of Youth.' Alas ! we knew not how he went, We knew not he was going — For had our tears once found a vent We had stayed him with their flowing. , THE POET AS TEACHER. 295 It was as an earthquake when We awoke and found him gone, We were miserable men, We were hopeless, everyone ! His impassioned eye had got Fire which the sun has not — Silk to feel and gold to see Fell his tresses full and free. And engarlanded with bay Must our youth have gone away. Though we half remember now, He had borne some little while Something mournful in his smile — Something serious on his brow; Gentle heart, perhaps he knew The cruel deed he had to do. And that other sweet poem of his entitled ' Moments '^ I lie in a heavy trance. With a world of dreams without me, Shapes of shadows dance In wavering bands about me; But, at times, some mystic things Appear in this phantom lair That at most seem to me visitings Of truth known elsewhere. The world is rich, these things are small. They may be nothing, but they are all. A sense of an earnest will To help the lowly living. And a terrible heart thrill. If you have no power of giving An arm of aid to the weak, A friendly hand to the friendless. Kind words, so short to speak, But whose echo is endless.' These are verses to set as jewels in the heart ; 296 SOCIAL STUDIES. but while the noblest poets are ostracised, we find plenty of Mickles and Millars and Mudies, and what they said. Hogg's name is there, but no bright fragment from his ' Bonnie Kilmeny,' the sweetest poem of modern Scotland. From Coleridge — the vis- ionary Coleridge — we have only ' Lines to a Young Ass,' not a line from ' Christabel,' or ' The Ancient Mariner,' the poem above all others to excite the heart of youth. And Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the great poetess of England — of the world — is not even named. Yet that noble poem of hers, ' The Cry of the Children,' so full of beauty and agony, of tenderness and sublimity, is excluded to give room for Miss Eliza Cooke's lines to a Buttercup, and Miss Hannah Golds' to a Crocus. There are pale young faces enough around us, marred with want, misery and famine, and sad young hearts from desolated homes, to realise Mrs Browning's mournful description : — Do you hear the children weeping, O, my brothers. Ere the sorrow comes with years ? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest ; The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west; But the young, young children, O, my brothers, They are weeping bitterly ! THE POET AS TEACHER. 297 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. And well may the children weep before you ; They are weary ere they run ; They have never seen the sunshine or the glory, Which is brighter than the sun. They know the griefs of men, but not the wisdom ; They sink in the despair without the calm. Are slaves without the liberty in Christdom, Are martyrs by the Pang without the Palm ; Are worn as if by age, yet unretrievingly, No dear remembrance keep ; Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly — Let them weep ! Let them weep ! Poor L. E. L. is somewhat better treated. But she has written verses more attractive to youth than some we find here ; for instance, her spirited, clanging Hnes on the death of Alexander, surrounded by His silver-shielded warriors The warriors of the world ! And ' The Graves of a Household,' by Mrs Hemans, might surely have claimed a place, of which Monckton Milnes says so beautifully — There's not a line but hath been wept upon. Of Shelley's ' Sensitive Plant ' there are only half-a-dozen verses given. Its fine sensibilities no doubt shrank from keeping company with a Mr Hurdis, who says, — I love to see the little goldfinch pluck The groundsell's feeble seed, and twit and twit and twit. 298 SOCIAL STUDIES. Neither is the arrangement the best that could have been chosen for the advantage of students. The classification by subjects is fatiguing in the extreme. One grows wearied by the monotony of a series to similar objects, or on the same subject. Dr Johnson speaks all our feelings when he says, — ' One ode, sir, is well enough, but half-a-dozen of them together makes one very sick.' Beside the poems ranged under different metaphysical heads, we have an animal series (so long that it seems a rhymed bill of lading from the ark) and a vegetable series, and another to fish. Surely, none but graziers from a cattle show could get through poems to a ram, to a lamb, and to an ass, following in con- secutive order as they do here. Then come a great number to cuckoos, but these all appear to be by Wiffen ; and amongst the ichthyo- logical specimens we find a sonnet to a gudgeon, by some anonymous writer, the compiler actually leaving out the names of such men as Davis, Carleton and Mangan, to make room for a sonnet to a gudgeon ! In addition to the weariness which such an arrangement induces, it deprives the student of the opportunity which a chronological order gives for becoming familiar with the eras of the language, and the mental history of the THE POET AS TEACHER. 299 nation at each successive period. The Saxon, the Latin, the French, and the Teutonic styles of composition in EngHsh Literature are as clearly defined as the successive orders of architecture ; but these distinctions of style, and the psychological phenomena of which they are the exponent, are wholly lost by the want of a chronological arrangement. The poetry of an age is generally the completest expression of the mind of that age, the ultimate and most perfect formula to express the height to which thought has reached. It incarnates the highest ideal to which the soul of humanity, viewed in its unity, had sprung, and gives definite form to those vague perceptions of the new regions of thought to which it is travelling^ It is not merely the result of the spirit of an age, but the spirit itself Not alone the actual, but the tendencies. Poetry is, in fact, the chanted spiritualism of an age ; whether that spiritualism be as full of faith and earnestness as the 1 6th, and first half of the 17th century ; as frivolous, false and materialised as the i8th ; or as daring and transcendental as the philo- sophic creeds of our own day. Whatever faith or hope exists in any age, will be found con- densed or sublimated in the poetry of that era. But from the arrangement of these selec- 30O SOCIAL STUDIES. tions no definite idea can be gained of the peculiar characteristics of each successive cen- tury. The biographies of the poets form the third volume of the work. They are interesting, useful and well executed, and it must be ac- knowledged that wherever the editor speaks in his own person, it is with sense and judg- ment. Indeed, his prose displays so much of the qualities in which his selections are deficient, that we must impute the failure of the latter to some stern political necessity ; some dark and secret threatenings, some official baton sus- pended over his head, which forced him, in defiance of all good taste, to send forth a col- lection which almost justifies Hallam's sarcasm on these works in general, that they seem com- piled on the principle of excluding everything which is good. THE TWO ARTISTS. A SKETCH. (From the Spanish.) THE STUDIO. In one of the narrowest and most obscure streets of Seville, there stood, in the year of grace 1616, an old-fashioned house, which, in consequence of repeated addition, subtraction and multiplication of architecture, could in no way have been recognised by the ancient builder, who, years before, probably with much joy, had eliminated his fundamental idea of beauty in its creation. The house consisted of two storeys, if the upper half may be dignified by such a title, being nothing more than a species of loft with an earthen floor, and low raftered roof, to which you ascended by a ladder. But this loft, or garret, or den, is precisely the only part of the house in which we are interested. However, to gratify laudable curiosity, we state that the remainder of the Domus consisted of a parlour, a small 301 302 SOCIAL STUDIES. kitchen, a large paved court, and a villainous stable for one horse, uniformly empty ; and we state the fact now respecting the stable, that the subject need not again be resumed. The den (we ^prefer the briefest appellation) had two windows — one looking on the street, and the other on the paved court at the back. When you raised your head perpendicularly, after ascending the ladder, and projected it through the trap-door which served for entrance, you beheld various pieces of canvas, pictures and prints, some hanging from the wall, others strewed on the floor, evidencing at the first glance, that the idea of symmetry in the arrange- ment could never have entered their owner's head. Some were resting on the side, others suspended from a corner, or dangling negli- gently, according as the nail from which they hung was placed at a greater or less distance from the centre of gravity ; while unfinished pictures, bold sketches of vivid power and imagination, and studies of the human form in every stage of transition, were blended on floor and tables with equal disregard of harmonic arrangement. A small bookshelf was suspended from the wall, containing some ten or twenty volumes of poetry and scholastic philosophy, along with Albert Durer's Syuunztry of the Human THE TWO ARTISTS. 303 Frame; Bexalio's Anatomy; Daniel Barbara on Perspective ; Euclid's Elements; and other mathematical and artistical writers. Then there were piles of rough crayon outlines, caprices of a painter's brain ; half-sketched landscapes, daubed and spoiled, as was evident from the contemptuous manner in which they were thrown into a corner ; and beyond, a large oak chair, on which lay papers, drawings, etch- ings, a hat with a rather attenuated feather, a faded doublet, and a jerkin of silk, one sleeve of which hung over the chair, reposing calmly in a small tub of water which par hasard lay near. A pestle and mortar, for grinding colours, stood on the table ; and towards the centre of the apartment, near one of the windows, was placed a large easel, over which a canvas was extended, on which fell a good light from the north, entering in at the left side. The window was judiciously shaded, admitting only one bright, full, direct ray from the top, which fell upon the glowing olive face of a peasant boy, who, seated in a grotesque attitude, displayed two rows of the whitest teeth in all Seville, sharpened, no doubt, by the bread of Toledo, in an affected laugh of such broad extravagance, that the most afflicted spectator would have been moved to hilarity. But, by a singular con- 304 SOCIAL STUDIES. tradiction,the only spectator present did not in the least participate in the mirth. He was a young man, of some eighteeen or twenty years, with a grave, earnest expression, pale bronze com- plexion, and large deep eyes of enthusiasm and genius. He stood before the easel, a palette in one hand, and brush in the other, copying, as it seemed, that reckless, extravagant laugh of the sunny-cheeked peasant-boy ; but there was no inspiration in the work, to judge from the con- tracted brows, compressed lips, and quick, con- vulsive movement of the artist. Twice or thrice he drew back to contemplate his progress — his eyes wandering rapidly from the model to the copy. Then he touched, and retouched, and obliterated and renewed ; but the result of all the manipulations was only a violent exclama- tion — ' I swear to — ,' and here he stopped like a good Christian, to consider whom he should swear to. ' Valame Dios,' he continued, ' who can imitate such tints ? ' and, after some ap- parently violent efforts to control his rage, he seized the brush, and drawing it from top to bottom right through all the moist colours, succeeded in producing — a beautiful rainbow certainly — but by no means anything approach- ing to the original design of the picture. Not content with this, he aimed a violent blow at the THE TWO ARTISTS. 305 very centre of the canvas, causing a large triangular rent, and exclaiming, without the least scruple of reserve this time — ' Voto a Dios ! no mortal man could give those tints,' he flung away palette and brush, and threw him- self into the large oak chair, over papers,, doublet, jerkin, hat, and all, in the most utter contempt of their claims on space. Then, covering his face with both hands he remained motionless, in a pale trance of suffering, agony and despair, as if he were dead — the suffering, the despair of Genius who sees Heaven, but cannot ascend to it. The glowing boy, who had served as model, without saying a word, or appearing at all astonished at his master's frenzy, closed his lips over the two strong white rows of teeth, and, seating himself on the ground, drew a huge piece of black bread from his bosom and commenced eating it with a voracity that proved how much he had been longing to cultivate its acquaint- ance. Occasionally he took a furtive look at the master ; but, observing no sign of motion, when he had finished the bread and smacked his lips lusciously over the last morsel, he slid from the studio, and the artist was left alone. Tranced in thought and misery, silent and still sat that despairing painter, giving no sign U 306 SOCIAL STUDIES. of life, save a convulsive twisting of the hands. Once he raised his head and looked wildly around him, then pressed both hands upon his brow, as if to repress some horrible thought. Thus passed the day, and he ate not ; thus passed the night, and he slept not. When morning dawned however, he rose, with sadness indeed, still upon his countenance, but not despair — took his hat, with the crushed, broken plume, wrapped his large mantle around him, curled his nascent moustache with a natural and unconscious movement of vanity, though his dry and hollow eyes betrayed the sleepless night, and then, crossing himself devoutly, descended the ladder to the street. THE INSPIRER. He was a good Christian ; a Christian of the sixteenth century, though the seventeenth had begun, and therefore his steps were first bent towards the neighbouring church. There he heard mass, and was preparing to quit the porch, somewhat tranquillised, when a hand touched him lightly, and a well-known voice saluted him with a ' Good-day, Senor Diego.' The person who addressed him was a tall, fine-made old man, of about seventy, with dark complexion, marked, bold features, that once THE TWO ARTISTS. 307 must have been eminently handsome ; large vivid eyes — eyes of genius, that flashed with daring and poetry, revealing all the ardour of a soldier and enthusiasm of an artist. The mouth was small and sunk in from loss of teeth, but age was no way discernible in the noble and easy movement of the dignified speaker. Truly his mantle was worn threadbare, and the doublet, though slashed and broidered, was in no better condition than his friend's ; but though you could see poverty in the twanging of a bow-string, yet his half-military costume was worn with a certain air of self-respect, and the soldier was still discernible by the handsome sword at his side, and the very mode of wearing his plumed hat. It was a strange sight the meeting of those two men ; one entering life, the other leaving it ; one all hope, the other all memory ; but both fierce combatants with destiny ; both looking out on a cold world with eyes through which glittered a burning soul, a genius of fire, and a volcanic imagination. You could read there a life that enthusiasm was wasting as if with an iron file, and this through the prism of the future in the youth, through the veil of the past in the old man. He who looked on them but once, would have distinguished them from the 308 SOCIAL STUDIES. vulgar herd, and exclaimed, ' a mystic past and future lies hidden beneath those fleshy masks — a heaven or a hell.' For the youth, suicide or glory ; for the other — but the other had already fought a hundred combats with life and destiny — ay, and had conquered. And, in truth, that old man was a poet, a grand poet ; though poor and neglected, save by some finer spirits, filled with genius and enthu- siasm, who worshipped the wondrous intellect within him. Our young painter knew him well^ and loved and respected him as a profound philosopher and a brave soldier. His verses were engraven on his heart, and many a trova of them had he recited to the young students of Seville, who shouted back their wild applause. ' Why this pallid cheek, Diego ? ' exclaimed the old man, ' those heavy eyes. Why consume thy life, which is a prophecy of glory; thy heart — tell me, boy, what means this ? ' ' It means,' said the painter, interrupting him quickly, 'a night of vigil, of weeping, of torture, of despair, of madness,' and he grasped the arm of his companion, and groaned heavily. ' What ? fir.st love, is it ? ' said the old man with interest. ' But, no, there is a wilder light burning in those eyes. Tell me, young man, what has happened ? ' THE TWO ARTISTS. 3O9 ' What has happened ? Lost my hopes of glory — burned my wings — fallen — fallen to earth.' ' Ha ! thou hast undertaken something be- yond thy powers. Thou shouldst wait for the moment of inspiration, child.' ' No, no ; there is a line, a boundary I can never pass, and yet, to be confounded with the rest ! — ' ' Peace, boy. Thoti wert not born to be con- founded with the crowd. No ; raise thy head — raise it thinking of glory.' ' Yes, I dreamed of glory, and to you I owe those dreams which have destroyed me. I must have fame or die. No base, corroding death-in- life for me ; and now — who will give me back the wings to mount ? ' ' Have faith in thy own powers,' said the old man, with the fire of enthusiasm, as he placed his hand on the young painter's shoulder and looked into his eyes, burning with genius and poetry, ' Have faith ; thou knowest not the hidden treasures of thy soul. Strive. / pro- mise thee immortality.' ' It is in vain ! ' replied the youth, with ap- parent indifference. ' Glory has lost her illu- sions. I should perish but embracing a cloud,' and he remained silent ; then added, — ' But you Senhor — you, too, have dreamed of glory ! You 3IO SOCIAL STUDIES. have worshipped her in every form, and what — what has been the result ? Is this threadbare mantle glory ? This faded doublet ? ' ' True,' said the old man, with sadness, ' true, I am weak, poor, persecuted ; behold my glory ; all that I have obtained from the idol I caressed, adulated, deified ! Thou hast rebuked me, O God ! ' And he bent his head, but after a mo- ment raised it again, with the haughty fire of a soldier and a poet. ' Yes, I am poor,' he ex- claimed, ' poor but honoured, and the visions of my genius — the beings I have created, like a god, with their virtues, vices, passions, follies at my will — these phantoms into which I have breathed the breath of life — this world which has sprung up at my feet, with all its fantastic colouring, its illu- sions, its deliriums, its delights ; in which I wan- der free as air and, god-like, create and destroy with a word, a thought — tell me, who can deprive me of this world ? Does it not compensate for all the agonies of life ? What glory equals that of a man who wanders amidst his own creations ? Tell me, does it not equal the glory of a god ? ' And the deep lines on his high brow seemed to pass away, and his eyes streamed with the double light of genius and of youth ; and with his noble head thrown back, his proud glance of conscious power, that seemed to measure earth THE TWO ARTISTS. 3II with the sceptre of heaven, he looked no longer a man, but a spirit, a god — yet more, that which comprehends them all — a poet ! The true poet, as he stands transfigured by the light of inspira- tion. The young painter felt himself dominated by that eagle eye, those eloquent lips, and bent his head to the ground, ashamed of his own weak petulance, in silence and humility. ' Come,' said the old man, ' let us return to thy house — courage for the soul and work for the hand, and never name despair again — come ! ' And the youth followed him as docile as a lamb. THE PORTRAIT AND THE PROPHECY. The studio was in the same state as we left it when these two men entered, looking like father and son, ' Where is the canvas ? ' said the old man. ' Here,' replied the youth, lifting up the torn disfigured object of his rage and despair from the earthen floor. ' What ! not content with this ? Thou hast destroyed a prodigy. What life ! what vigour ! The face laughs, the whole figure laughs. What colouring, what boldness of outline. Ah ! this 312 SOCIAL STUDIES. medium tint is the only blemish, touched and retouched till thou has spoiled it, boy.' ' Ah ! ' replied the painter, ' it is this which ruined me, which caused my despair. I saw the tint wandering round the lips of the model, uniting but not blending with the shadow, and and I had the idea in my head but could not execute it. Have I not cause for despair?' he added, weeping. ' No, no, young man ; leave the vulgar track ; cease to imitate ; follow thy own inspiration.' 'Inspiration! What can I invent? What colouring that Titian has not already produced with so much softness and harmony ? Alas ! Corregio, too, with his enchanting grace, his exquisite taste, the roundness and finish of his forms, and his virgins — ! My imagination that you talk of, what serves it? Has not Raphael's exhausted everything that is divine in expression and beautiful in idea ? Oh, why was I born so late? What is there left to me in the world of Art ? ' ' To imitate Nature. All others have idealised her — some to embellish, others to degrade. Do thou paint her as she is, with her divine beauty, her venerable majesty, conferred on her by the Most High, with all her capricious defects, her strong, decided tints, without omission, without THE TWO ARTISTS. 313 addition ; and thy inspiration, thy pencil, will do the rest. Then, then, hope for glory, but not for happiness. No, no ; dream not of that. Dost thou tremble? Dost thou fear envy, persecution, the scorn of ignorance, the malice of rivals, the neglect of the world — dost thou hesitate to sacrifice happiness upon the altar of glory — thou art no artist. Break thy pencil.' ' No, no,' exclaimed the youth, with enthusi- asm, and his spirit agitated, as by a tempest, with the words of the old man. ' Give me but fame, give me immortality, and I accept every evil life can offer. I defy them,' and he raised his head proudly, and it seemed as if Hope, evoked by the talismanic words of the old man, had at length started from her trance. ' 'Tis thus I would behold thee,' said his com- panion with emotion. ' Now thou art worthy of that great gift of Heaven — thy genius ! Ah, had I possessed thy magic pencil, were I gifted with thy enchanting art, the world should have re-echoed with my name, and I might have been less unfortunate. Look at my brow. Has not sorrow written her epic there, in deep, deep lines ? I lived in a world that could not com- prehend me, and I was miserable. Burning thoughts, passions, genius, devoured my soul. 314 SOCIAL STUDIES. I could not fling them forth on canvas, nor chisel them in marble, yet my soul of fire must breathe forth or die. I flung myself in the ranks of battle against the enemies of Christen- dom, and honour and the laurel wreath seemed within my grasp. I was a soldier, and, before God, never have I disgraced the name. But, see here,' and he displayed a ghastly cicatrice and a mutilated trunk — 'the path of life that slaked the fever of my blood has closed to me for ever. I had to resign the sword, but I could hold the pen ; and with it I drew pictures as vivid, as strongly coloured, as bold, as thy own.' * Ay, and glorious pictures thou hast drawn, my father,' said the youth, with eager delight. ' Yet thou hast not seen my chief work,' con- tinued the old man. ' See, here it is, on my heart ; and it shall be buried with me. It was pronounced a libel, and I was prosecuted. It has caused me many troubles, yet I love it all the more fervently.' And he drew forth from beneath his mantle a huge roll of paper, and unfolded to his eager listener that immortal tale which still enchants the world ; with its wit and mirth and madness — its fantastic Arabesques — its profound philosophy and laughter-moving folly — its episodes of tenderest love — its deep feeling and reckless humour — strange kaleido- I THE TWO ARTISTS. 315 scope of all human passions ; life itself with its joys and sorrows, tears and smiles, phantasms and visions, mockeries and glory, flung like a many-coloured Iris upon the dark, dark ground of insanity. Such was the sublime, fantastic, all - embracing picture he enrolled before the eyes of the young artist. The sad delirium of a human soul, and the wild mirth that could make even the dead to smile. And the painter forgot his despair, his fears, his hopes, as the old man went on, and still stood listening trancedly when the chapter was concluded. ' Now,' said the old man, smiling with more pleasure at the glistening emotion at the young artist's eyes than at the homage of a multitude, ' Now, commence tJiy picture.' ' I — after what I have heard ! And what would you have me paint ? ' ' Paint Nature, as I have done, and thou wilt be original, and the world shall reverence thee. Never heed the medium tint ; leave thy torn canvas on the ground. I promise thee a better shall arise. Only swear to me, before God, to do as I command thee.' ' I swear,' said the youth, awed by the magic influence of Genius. He opened the window, prepared the palette, stretched a new canvas on the easel, took his 3l6 SOCIAL STUDIES. colours and brushes, seated himself in silence ; then, suddenly remembering that he had no model, asked, inquiringly, — ' But what am I to paint ? ' The old man stood leaning at the window which looked into the street, and, without turn- ing his head, pointed to a figure outside. ' Paint that,' he said, indicating an old water- carrier, who at that moment was giving a draught to some thirsty passengers. The youth hesitated. ' Have I not told thee, copy Nature ? What matter if the object be vile and mean ? Others need a divine religion, an aureole of flame, and angel's wings to mount to Heaven ; but Genius reaches it by its own mighty strength alone, without aureole or wings, or other religion than faith in its own divinity.' The sentiment was somewhat heterodox for the age ; but it passed as an axiom between the two artists, without comment or contra- diction. ' Young man, hear me,' he continued. ' Place those rude, dull eyes, that rude soul, on the canvas before me, as God has placed them there ; and thou, too, wilt be a god, and I thy worshipper.' In a moment the young imagination of the THE TWO ARTISTS. 317 artist was penetrated with the idea, and earnestly and seriously, as though Art were Religion, yet ardent as a volcano, he set himself to the task. The old man drew forth his purse and counted out the few copper pieces yet lingering there ; then, making a sign to Andreas — he who had served as model to the disgraced can- vas of the preceding day — despatched him to the street. The intelligent knave at one bound pounced upon the old aguador, and in a second placed him, without a word, before the painter's easel. The youth, already plunged in the flood of rich fancies that submerged his soul, thanked his friend only with a smile. But what more was needed ? At last he understood him. No word was spoken. There is something sacred in such silence. Ah, how the pencil flew along the canvas ! How rapidly the varied tints were mixed on the palette and blended on the coun- tenance in all the capricious shadows of the falling light ! Thus, his beautiful head ever bent over his work, passed hour after hour of that long summer's day. As the form grew into life, the agitation of the artist increased. Ever more intently watched that aged poet. 'Ah! he lives at last; there are the hard. 3l8 SOCIAL STUDIES. angular forms, the dull, brown tint, the matted hair, the deep, sorrow-traced furrows of that rude face ! Now the bony hands start from the canvas ! The poor, old, rude aguador of Seville is immortalised ! ' Andreas, with beaming eyes, watched the progress of the creating hand. Once he stooped before the aguador, as if in the attitude of drink- ing, and the painter, without a word, transferred him to the canvas, with his picaresque face, vainly trying to look innocent ; and so he lives in Seville yet. The hours fled ; the work proceeded. ' Good ! Good ! ' exclaimed the ancient poet, with enthusiasm — ' Thou hast done marvels.' And the young artist smiled ; but suddenly a cloud passed over his brow — ' Ha ! that accursed medium tint ! ' he ex- claimed — ' Can I never conquer it ? ' and he grasped rhe brush to retouch the face, when the old man seized his arm — ' Voto a Dios ! ' he cried ' thou shalt not. Hast thou not sworn to obey me?' But the young man struggled hard. ' Leave me — leave me I beseech, Senhor — now, while the idea is perfect in my brain.' ' Remember thy oath.' ' What care I for oaths when my eternal fame THE TWO ARTISTS. 319 is at stake ! Let me go,' he exclaimed frantic- ally. ' First murder the infirm, poor old man, who holds thy arm,' and with a force beyond his years he barred the artist's approach to the picture. ' Senhor ! Senhor ! ' cried the youth, gnashing his teeth. ' Senhor, I conjure you, let me finish the first true work I have ever accomplished.' ' Madman, thou wouldst ruin it ! ' But the painter still struggled to free himself, and heeded him not. At length, after some time, the old man relaxed his hold, and the youth sprang to the easel ; but astonishment seemed to have petrified him to silence as he stood before it. That fatal medium tint, the rock on which he had always split, was gone. The painting was a masterpiece. ' See, now,' said the old man, ' if I had not reason in my words. That vapour — that misty shadow, existed only in thine own eyes, fatigued by long gazing on thy work — tell me, what is wanting now to perfection ? Touch it not. Whatever it gained in softness would be lost in genius and vigour. Contemplate thy work, and tell me if I spoke lightly when I promised thee eternal fame. Sign it — sign it, that thy 320 SOCIAL STUDIES. name may pass glorified from age to age.' And, the youth smiled gratefully on the prophet, and with a cheek bright with genius and enthu- siasm, his hand trembling with the glory of success, he wrote beneath it, — ' Velasquez pinxit.' ' Diego Velasquez de Silva ! ' said the old man, ' thy name will be immortal ! ' Velasquez threw himself, weeping with joy, upon the bosom of the old man, and ex- claimed, — ' And thou, too, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ! The words which thou hast read to me to-day will be eternal ! ' 'TERTIA MORS EST.' {A Tale from the German.') In the year 1665, Daniel Muller, afterwards Professor of Jurisprudence, lived at Colmar as tutor to the three sons of a certain Burgomaster of high repute in the town, named Steinberg. Now it happened that in the October of that year a travelling alchemist was received and entertained by Steinberg as his guest, and at supper, amongst other seasonable condiments, a dish of nuts being on the table, the conver- sation turned on their many good qualities and uses. The three pupils of Muller were, however, entirely absorbed in their consumption, and the nuts were so rapidly seized, crushed and de- molished, that Muller, as a good-natured reproof, gave them three lines to translate from the Schola Saliterna — Unica nux prodest Nocet altera Tertia mors est, X 321 322 SOCIAL STUDIES. which they rendered — One nut is good, the second hurts, but the third is death. ' Well,' said Muller, laughing, * this can hardly be true, for you have gone much beyond the third nut, yet there is no sign of death on you ; so we can't believe in the tertia mors est' Scarcely were the words uttered when the alchemist started from the table in violent agi- tation, and, without any apology to his host, rushed from the room, leaving the company in no little amazement. The Burgomaster at once sent his eldest son after him to know if he could in any way be of service to him, fearing he was ill. But the boy found the door of the bedroom locked to which the stranger had fled, and, looking through the key-hole, he beheld the alchemist on his knees groaning and weeping in the most violent grief, and wringing his hands, while from time to time he muttered, ' Tertia mors est ! Tertia mors est ! ' Shortly after the boy had returned with this strange story, a servant came in with a message from the stranger, requesting a private interview with the Burgomaster. At once Steinberg went to the room, where he found the wretched man still grovelling on the floor in bitter despair. 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 323 ' Save me,' he cried ; ' save me from a shame- ful death. Do not betray me ; do not bring me to the scaffold. You know my story and my crime. Save me ! Save me ! I implore you.' The Burgomaster, much shocked at his ap- pearance and manner, tried to soothe him, fearing that he was out of his mind ; and, raising him from the ground, asked the mean- ing of his mysterious words. ' Do not deceive me,' said the stranger. ' You and Professor Muller must know all ; that line about the three nuts proves it — Tertia mors est. True, oh true. The third is death — a little leaden ball. A touch of the finger and he fell. You have resolved to deliver me up to justice. I shall die the death of a felon.' And again he flung himself on the ground with tears and groans. Steinberg, now fully persuaded that the man was mad, still tried to soothe him, assuring him that he was perfectly safe ; and even if he were guilty of any crime, they would not betray him nor give him up to justice. At length the unhappy man grew calmer, and was persuaded to lie down, and after a little he fell into a deep sleep, as if utterly exhausted by grief and strong emotion. But next morning, when the Burgomaster 324 SOCIAL STUDIES. inquired for him, they found that the stranger had disappeared, leaving no word or letter ; and no tale or tidings of him after this strange scene ever came to Steinberg's knowledge. The whole mystery of his grief and despair, and the nature of his crime, if he had committed one, remained unknown. The next year, just about the close of autumn, Steinberg and his family were again seated at the supper-table, when the dish of nuts appeared as usual with the fruit and wine, and as the sight of them recalled the strange visit and conduct of the travelling alchemist, they began to discuss his singular story with great interest and fresh expressions of curiosity. Just then a strange lady was announced, who requested an interview with the Burgomaster ; and Steinberg immediately rose to receive her and conduct her to a seat. She wore a plain but elegant travelling dress, and at once every- one was struck by her remarkable beauty and distinguished air, though her countenance bore traces of the deepest sorrow. Steinberg felt greatly interested as he looked at her, and, placing her beside himself at the supper-table, laid a plate of nuts and a glass of wine by her side. ' No nuts, no nuts,' she exclaimed hastily. ' TERTIA MORS EST.' 325 pushing away the plate with horror, while tears filled her eyes. Her violent agitation, reminding them again of the alchemist, struck the family with con- sternation ; and the Burgomaster having apolo- gised for offering her nuts, not knowing her dislike, politely asked in what way he could be of service to her. ' Let me first tell you my name,' she said, * and then you shall hear my story. I am the widow of an eminent man, the Professor of Chemistry at Lyons, and we lived there happily many years ; but a sad fate has compelled me to leave my native place, and I now wish to settle at Colmar. Here is my passport. You will see my name inserted as the widow of Pierre Dupont, or Petras Pontanas, late Pro- fessor of Chemistry at Lyons.' The Burgomaster having seen that all was correct, asked her to accompany him to his study, where he would write introductions for her to the leading medical men of the town. On passing through the hall her attention was attracted by a painting hung up on the door leading into the study. It was a simple, coloured sketch of a man lying on the floor of a room, with disordered hair, and wild glaring eyes, apparently in some crisis of strong mental 326 SOCIAL STUDIES. agony — but as the lady looked at it she became deadly pale, and Steinberg, fearing she would faint, hastily led her into the room, and placed her in the large study chair by the table, where she leaned her head upon her hand in the greatest emotion. ' That picture ! ' she exclaimed ; ' how came it here ? Who told you of my sad history ? ' and her voice seemed choked with tears and sobs. * We know nothing of your history, madam,' answered Steinberg. ' That picture was done by my eldest son, a clever young fellow, who witnessed a remarkable scene in this very room, and sketched it off at once with just such rude colouring as he could find. It represents a stranger, an alchemist, who stopped here one night, and was apparently suffering some deep agony of mind. My son saw him writhing in mental torture on the floor, just where you are seated — a torture that seemed like madness, while the wild despairing cry broke from his lips, — Tertia mors est I and, as you see, my son has placed these words as a motto over the picture. We know nothing of the man, nor of his story ; but the painting represents him exactly, and the terrible scene.' ' That man,' exclaimed the lady, clasping her hands in horror, ' was my husband. I knew the 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 327 likeness at once, and too well I know the bitter tragedy represented by the three nuts above his head, and the fatal words — the last I ever heard him utter, — Tertia mors est.' 'Your husband !' exclaimed the Burgomaster, ' I thought you were the wife of Pierre Dupont, the Professor at Lyons.' ' And there is his portrait,' she replied. ' Fate has led us both to you, and I feel you have a right to hear the whole terrible story ; but I trust to your honour that whatever I relate shall in no way be turned to my disadvantage. ' My husband. Professor Dupont, was well off in the world ; indeed, he might have been wealthy if his love for alchemy had not caused him the loss of a great deal of money. I was young, and had the misfortune of being very beautiful ; I may say so now that youth has passed away, but then I reigned as a queen in society. Yes, it is a misfortune to be beautiful. I know of none greater for a woman than the fatal beauty, that tempts men to frantic love, or terrible despair. * For myself, fortunately, I had a calm tem- perament, and I loved my husband ; but all the men that came under my influence seemed to grow mad ; and few are able to resist the eternal solicitations and adulations that besiege a beau- 328 SOCIAL STUDIES. tiful woman at every moment, until, finally, dazed by the glitter of incessant homage, she yields to temptation, not indeed from love, but from weariness of the combat against the temp- ter, and the fatal delirium of the senses that gradually steals over her and weakens the power of resistance. ' Happily for myself, I knew little of the com- bat against temptation. I was neither vain nor frivolous, only fatally beautiful ; and I would willingly have parted with my beauty to be at peace. I gave up my ornaments, I adopted the plainest dress, but it was of no use. Whatever I wore instantly became the rage, and was pro- nounced even to add to my beauty. Whether I walked or drove, or sat or stood, I was sur- rounded by adorers. At night I could not sleep for serenades. All day my door was besieged by letters, messages and presents ; and every week I had to dismiss some one of my servants for having accepted bribes to betray me. Two of my husband's secretaries poisoned themselves because one found out that the other was a nobleman in disguise, who had entered our service in order to be under the roof with me; and, finally, the rumour spread that I had learned the secret of making love- potions, so no man was safe who came near me, 'TERTIA MORS EST,' 329 and all the women hated me in consequence. Thus my life was really a torture and a misery to me, and nothing but my husband's pride in my beauty deterred me from completely destroy- ing it in some way or other. ' Often I asked him if my qualities of head and heart were not sufficient to retain his love, and if I might not destroy my fatal face by some disfiguring preparation ; but he was en- raged at the idea. "My lovely Amalie," he said, " if I ceased to behold your beauty, despair would drive me mad. What supports me through the toils of the day in the deadly atmosphere of the laboratory, but the hope that in the evening you will shine on me radiant and beautiful, and make life seem paradise ! You are my heaven, my destiny ; the one star in my exist- ence ; and if all the wealth I have made in my profession went up in vapour from the crucible, what matter, so I could still look upon your beauty." ' In truth, he loved me passionately, though our union was not blessed with children ; this was our only sorrow. But one evening that he returned home unusually late, he told me that he had met a deeply learned adept while he was gathering herbs in the wood, and had held a long conversation with him over occult mys- 330 SOCIAL STUDIES. teries ; and the stranger had revealed some singular secret to him that he had learned in the East ; and he even foretold the certain fulfilment of our hopes and wishes. ' That night I was startled from sleep by a movement in my room, and, sitting up, beheld the whole place lit up by a number of beautiful fine flies. ' Wondering how they had gained admission, I awoke my husband, and at the same moment perceived on the table near my bed a costly vase filled with flowers, and beside it a pile of Parisian ribbons, gloves, perfumes, dainty satin shoes, and beautiful embroidered stockings. ' Believing that they were all presents from my husband, the morrow being my birthday, I thanked him warmly ; but he assured me he knew nothing of the gifts, and for the first time he seemed roused to jealousy, and with tears, and then with threats, conjured me to reveal the name of the donor, who must also certainly be my lover. I wept, but could give him no informa- tion. Then he took my keys and examined my writing-desk, but nothing was found to con- firm his suspicions, and he finally left me and retired to his laboratory in a state of mad rage that filled me with terror. ' As I was dressing, the sight of my face in 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 33 1 the large Venetian mirror, my fatal face, with the long golden hair falling round me like a mantle, became hateful to me, and I was ready to do anything desperate to mar the beauty that was the bane of my life, when suddenly I beheld the edge of a note half hidden under the glass. Hastily I seized it, and read, — ' " Beloved Amalia, — I am more wretched than ever, and must fly this land ; for I have killed a brother officer in a duel who dared to speak lightly of you, and I am pursued by the officers of justice. This night I stole to your room to have one last look at your angel face, and to leave my farewell souvenir for your birth- day. Perhaps we shall meet no more, but come, if possible, early to the little wood by the ruined chapel. I shall wait for you under the nut trees, and you shall hear from my own lips all I have suffered. Be secret, but meet me, or I shall kill myself on your threshold. ' " LUDOVICK." ' I read these words with the deepest emotion. Cost what it would I must see him and comfort him ; for I loved him and was about to lose him for ever.' ' So, fair lady,' murmured the Burgomaster 332 SOCIAL STUDIES. 'you were weak as others, and could find a place for a love next your husband in your heart' ' Hush ! ' she answered with dignity. ' Do not condemn me. Wait till you hear the end of my story. When I was dressed, I packed up a few jewels for a parting gift to Ludovick, and set out with my maid, leaving word that I had gone to the bath-house, a place I often visited. On reaching it I dismissed the ser- vant, telling her to return home and send the carriage for me in an hour. ' Then I went on alone to the wood, and there, close to the ruined chapel, I found Ludovick awaiting me. * How can I describe the emotion, the agony of that last meeting. Our tears flowed, our kisses mingled, and then, clasped in his arms, we rested on the steps of the ruined altar, while I listened to his last sad words of love and sorrow beneath the shadow of the nut trees. ' He was fearfully excited, for he dreaded this meeting might be our last. But the parting moment approached, and I rose up resolutely to end the terrible scene, giving him, at the same time, the little packet of jewels I had selected as a souvenir. He put them back, however, exclaiming, — " No, no, Amalie, I need ' TERTIA MORS EST.' 333 no such memories. Your presence is ever with me, and I would have shot myself last night beside your bed, only your beauty disarmed me. You seemed to me like a glorious angel in your sleep, and I knelt down reverently to utter one prayer for strength, and then I pressed my lips upon your hand. Your good, simple husband was sleeping calmly all the while, quite unconscious of my presence, and then I descended by the balcony, in the same way as I had climbed up. Your husband knew nothing of the midnight visitor. Poor man ! science is his true bride. I had met him in the morning here in the wood gathering herbs, and, thinking that I, too, was one of the sacred brotherhood, he plunged into a deep discourse on their occult qualities. In return I told him of a night I passed in a convent in Armenia, when a monk revealed to me the grand secrets, which gives power over all things in nature. It was to distil a living man slowly in the perfect chemical manner, and then concentrate him slowly in a glass. He believed all this, and pressed me to visit him. But he little knew the manner in which I would visit him that same night, at the risk of breaking my neck. Oh, Amalie, how I pity you. Childless, and wedded to this half-mad philosopher." 334 SOCIAL STUDIES. ' I was still a little vexed with my husband for his jealousy and harsh words, and could not help saying, — ' " Yes, truly, he does rather tire me with his long disquisitions, and I am sure he would distil me if he thought it would give him some of this mysterious occult power to which he is so devoted." ' But the hour of parting had arrived, and Ludovick pressed me to his heart in a last caress, exclaiming, — "In life or in death, my beloved, I swear to you eternal love." Then he drew down a branch of the nut tree that shadowed us, and taking three nuts, said, " Let us eat these together as a last sacrament, and when the season comes round again you will think of our last embrace beneath these branches." ' Then he broke the first nut, giving me half, and saying, as he kissed me tenderly, — " Unica nux prodest. No, no, that is false — it is not good. We are about to separate — nocet altera. The second hurts — true, oh true, for this is our last embrace ! Oh Amalie, pray for me — forget me not. Were death even to come now it would be welcome, for I hold you in my arms, and life has no higher joy to offer. Let us then divide this last third nut for a deathless memory, even though it should bring death, and the solemn 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 335 words came from his lips as he broke it in two — Tertia mors est — the last is death ! " ' At that moment a shot was fired, and Ludo- vick fell dead at my feet. Then a form rose up from the shadow of the ruined chapel, and my husband stood before me livid with rage. * " I have heard all," he exclaimed — " Tertia mors est " — and he raised the pistol in his hand to fire at me, but I wrenched it from him, and flung it into the bushes. ' Murderer,' I cried, ' you have killed my brother ! Go, while there is yet time — let me never look on your face again — here, take these jewels, they will carry you over the frontier. But remember, our lives are now parted for ever. And as I thrust the packet of jewels into his hand, a crowd of people came rushing forward ; but my husband plunged into the wood, and I saw him no more. Then a faintness came over me, and I fell insensible to the ground. ' Afterwards I heard that I was carried to the carnage and brought home, while my poor brother's dead body was laid in the court-house to await the official examination. ' I was the only one capable of giving informa- tion as to his death ; but, fortunately, as I may say, a brain fever laid me me up for weeks after, and the doctors having declared that all 33^ SOCIAL STUDIES. allusion to the past might be fatal to me, the inquiry was allowed to rest, and there was no public trial. ' But evil tongues did not rest. All the women who envied my beauty poured their venom on me, and all the men whose advances I had repelled mocked and derided my claims to superior virtue. The rumour, also, that the murdered man was my brother, heightened the scandalous imputations. Everyone strove to tread me in the dust and triumph over my vaunted beauty, while they flung their scorn on my tragic fate, so that life, at last, became insup- portable, and I would have made an end of the horrible torture, only, just then, a letter came from my husband. He was safe for the present, he said, and already on his way to Denmark, where he meant to live and practise his profes- sion under another name, and the country he left should hear no more of him. But before his departure he had drawn up a document making over to me all his property, and this deed, pro- perly signed and witnessed, would be forwarded without delay. So, then, I was free. The deed arrived in due course, and I immediately took steps for the sale of our house and property ; and having realised a large sum for investment in the bank, •tertia mors est. 337 I felt secure as to the future, and able to arrange my life as seemed best to me, without let or hindrance. ' But I hated the world and society, and my first move was to enter a convent as a lay sister, and devote myself to works of charity and attendance on the sick. My services were highly valued, for I had acquired a great know- ledge of medicine from my husband's teaching ; and so my life passed smoothly on for some years, till evil tongues ceased to revile me, and I was left in peace.' ' Your misfortunes touch me deeply,' said the Burgomaster. ' Yet I confess that your brother's words might well excite suspicion, and your husband may be pardoned for the fatal result of his very natural jealousy. But was your brother indeed your lover ? And how could you permit so dreadful an entanglement ? ' ' Ah, sir,' she replied, ' his love was a misery to me, and I did all I could to turn his mind from the passion, which became almost a mad- ness, for my fatal beauty seemed to have turned his brain ; so at last he resolved to leave the country and see me no more. That very night he meant to quit me for ever. But the passion and the madness are now extinguished with his life. My husband had never seen him, but his Y 338 SOCIAL STUDIES. suspicions were aroused by the presents ; and, hearing that I had gone to the bath-house, he followed, bringing his pistols. There the women told him that I had left for a walk in the wood ; then he remembered the stranger he had seen there gathering flowers and glow-worms, and suspicion became certainty. He followed me to the ruined chapel, and, hiding in the shadow of the wall, watched us and listened to our con- versation. At the last words — Tertia mors est — he fired, and the deed of death was done.' ' Ah, wretched man ! ' exclaimed the Burgo- master. ' Can you not pardon him ? Will you not see him again and give him your for- giveness ? ' ' No human eye will see him more,' she an- swered. ' He has passed before the judgment- seat of God. But I forgive him ; yet he could not forgive himself For eight years he lived at Copenhagen under an assumed name ; and his learning and skill soon gave him wealth and position, and he became State Alchemist to the King of Denmark, who was passionately de- voted to the Secret Science. ' Still, however, the memory of the murder haunted him, and he became strange and un- settled in his mind. The sight of nuts always affected him, and brought on a crisis of grief 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 339 and tears. So at last he resolved to travel, in hopes of gaining peace of mind. It was then you saw him ; and after that scene in your house he went back to our old home, and was seen, at the ruined chapel in the wood, prostrate under the shadow of the nut trees. But no one recognised him. He seemed only a feeble, white-haired old man, and they thought him crazed. Then, after some days, he disappeared. But his soul was filled with a strong purpose ; the hour of retribution had come, and he de- liberately gave himself up to justice, and con- fessed his crime. ' While in prison he wrote for me to come to him, and there in the prison- cell was our last meeting. We prayed and wept together, and then he told me all, and of his meeting with you ; and he charged me to go to you after his death and narrate the whole dreadful story, and bring you his deep gratitude for your words of kindness and sympathy. ' The next day, in presence of an immense concourse of people, he was conveyed to the scaffold, which was erected just beside the ruined chapel in the wood, where the murder had been committed. ' There he knelt down and prayed, while I knelt beside him and held his hand. Then 340 SOCIAL STUDIES. he plucked three nuts from the tree waving above us — the very tree where Ludovick had gathered his death-fruit — and, dividing them with me, as had done, pronounced the fatal, well-remembered words, embracing me in a last farewell, for the terrible moment had arrived. They carried me half fainting to the chapel, where I sank prostrate on the steps of the ruined altar but his voice still rang clear in my brain, — Unica nux prodest, Nocet altera, Tertia mors est. And then the heavy fall of the sword of the executioner followed the words, and I knew that his miserable existence had ended on earth.' The Burgomaster was deeply touched at the lady's story, and, taking her hand, promised to be her faithful friend for life, and, if possible, to alleviate her affliction by his care and sym- pathy ; but as his tears fell upon the hand that he held in his own, he observed a ring on her finger that riveted his gaze. That ring, she said, was my poor brother's. It had be- longed to our dear father, and I always wear it for the sake of its sacred memories ; see, here are my father's initials, P. R. 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 34 1 ' And the name ? ' asked the Burgomaster eagerly. ' The name of your father ; of your family ? ' ' My father's name was Paul Rochet^ ans- wered the lady ; ' and he resided at Montpellier. Have you heard of him ? He was well known as a leading physician.' The Burgomaster seemed unable to speak from agitation, but, going to his desk, drew out some papers carefully arranged and tied. * Tell me,' he said, and his hand trembled with excitement as he unfolded the papers ; ' tell me the age of your brother ; if he were living now.' ' Forty-six years old this very day,' she replied. ' Right, all right !' exclaimed the Burgomaster, with joyful eagerness. ' He is forty-six years old to-day, and he is living, Amalie. There is a strange mystery to unfold, but I have the proofs here. If the unhappy Ludovick loved you, there was, at least, no sin. He was not your brother. It is I who claim you for a sister ; listen to the strange story. Your mother's nurse changed two infants that were in her care, both being of the same age ; and it was her own child, the son of Maggi the artisan, who V as reared in your father's house as his heir, while I, the true heir, was brought up by Maggi, and lived with him till his death, know- 342 SOCIAL STUDIES. ing nothing of my parentage. But I had intellect and ambition, and after Maggi's death I removed here, far away from all early associa- tions, and took the name of Steinberg, that nothing might be known of my obscure artisan life, and here I have attained wealth and honour and a high official position. Amalie, you need not fear to receive me as your brother, nor as your father's son, nor for the proofs of my strange tale. ' Some years ago I was summoned to take the deposition of a dying woman in one of our hospitals ; but when I arrived she was almost at the last gasp and unable to utter a word. She had only strength enough to me hand a packet, on which was written ' The Confession of Liza Maggi,' and then she fell back dead. ' Here is the document. In it she tells the story of how she changed the children, that her son might be reared in affluence as the hein but, unfortunately, she only gives the initals of your father's name, P. R., and no clue whatever to his place of residence. ' However, strangely enough, she mentions the beautiful Amalie, who was brought up with Ludovick as his sister, and she expresses bitter sorrow for her sin, for she now knows that her son adored the lovely Amalie, and. if the 'TERTIA MORS EST.' 343 truth were known, there might be no hindrance to the marriage. Therefore, feehng that death was on her, she wrote her confession, and pro- mised full evidence of all before a magistrate. But, as 1 said, she died before the word was uttered that could have revealed to me the history of my parentage. * It was only when I saw the initials on your ring, and thought of your sweet name, Amalie, that the truth flashed on me, and I felt that you were indeed my own, long lost beautiful sister. Oh, Amalie, will you not receive me now with trust and affection, and let me con- secrate my life to your happiness.' Her only answer was a flood of tears as she flung herself with emotion into his arms. ' Amalie,' he said, tenderly caressing her, ' let us thank God, who has brought light out of the darkness. While to me he has given a name, a heritage, and a loved and lovely sister.' ' Stay with me, Amalie, and let our lives be united in the bonds of sweet relationship.' ' No, my dear brother,' she answered sadly. The dead stand between me and the living, I shall go back to my work in the holy sisterhood of mercy, and find rest and peace at last beneath the shadow of the cross. But your spirit will 344 SOCIAL STUDIES. be with me, for through you the doom has been lifted from our family, and the tragic drama has ended which began and closed with the fatal words that will never leave my memory — Tertia tnors est — the third is Death. THE END. COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. WAKD & DOWNEY. A SELECTED LIST nt' NEW AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS. NEW BOOKS. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke. By J. F. Hogan, Author of "The Irish in Australia." 1 vol., 10s. 6d. "Mr Hogan has really rendered a great service to history and biography by his account of the very remarkable part played by Mr Lowe in his colonial career." — Mr Justin M'Carthy in the Pall Mall Gazette. Social England from the Restoration to the Revolution. By W. C. 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