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. 
 
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