them. The violets should not droop when she passes, but burst into flower."

"1

We do not claim that this system is perfect; our aim is precisely to examine with the utmost care its strong and its weak points; but it is certain that, to begin with, by the side of almost all the illustrious men who then flourished in such numbers, we see the indispensable woman silhouetting herself, not as tyrant or even director, but as mentor and guide as mother, rather, since she brings them forth into the higher life; or, still better, as light and sun, as reinvigorating, vivifying warmth: according to the saying of Schiller, "Love is the sun of Genius." "Without women," says Castiglione, "nothing is possible-neither military courage, nor art, nor poetry, nor music, nor philosophy, nor even religion: God is only truly seen through them." This was no new observation: Solomon had already said the same thing; but we must believe there were new conclusions to be drawn from it, since men hoped to find in it the answer to that vexed question of happiness which has been put in vain since the foundation of the world.

To realise how women transformed themselves, we must follow their example and open our minds. They had the courage so to do: they looked life fairly in the face-with their woman's eyes, it is true, fine, subtle, and complex; they looked, and often they did not really understand their own impressions, vivid, and rather strong than clearly defined. Often, also, under the impulse of these impressions. they acted in the genuine woman's way, with tricks and reservations, evading the consequences of their own theories, going round the obstacle they advanced to attack in front. Their achievements and thoughts are difficult to determine. We cannot here, as in an ordinary history, be satisfied with a mere string of facts; we must play the chemist, analyse these various and complex elements, and seek to evolve a general formula.

That formula is this: to live, that is, to love life, to attain a mastery of life without allowing it to crush or dominate us. The attainment of this result is well worth the trouble of deciphering a few women's hearts, even though the handwriting should be less clear than our ordinary manuscripts. In those days they sincerely studied to love life; they loved

John Ruskin.

it, rejecting all negations and obstructions, all that overwhelms and paralyses, scouting death itself! Instead of yielding to scepticism in regard to things, they wished to push love to the stage of Stoicism, to lift the heaviest burdens, to gaze upon the star of consolation which speaks to us of love eternal.

Every woman will begin with her own redemption. She is at first thrown out into the world while still a child, almost in childish innocence: very soon rigorous duties, material and oppressive in character, seize upon her she is, so to speak, battered and rolled out by very rough forcesthe firm authority of her husband, the idea of obedience, the trials of motherhood, fruitful in joys, but also in hardships and cares. Whilst her will is annihilated and enslaved, and her heart often remains an undiscovered country, she assists with pain and disgust at the downfall of her flesh-that flesh which has become the abode of pain, a body of death, to give birth to life.

How is the sudden thrill brought about, turning the dull, torpid larva into the bright butterfly? How do women succeed in drawing from this essentially human condition something of the divine, passing from physical production to spiritual production? These above all are the questions we must seek to determine.

It must not be expected that we shall present to our readers fair barristers, or engineers, or professional scholars, still less pedants. No; these ladies were simply modest women, who took their share in the humblest duties of everyday life, but discovered, apart from charity in the material sense, the absolute necessity of another charity, moral charity for moral and spiritual penury, for those destitute of happiness, so numerous and found everywhere, even within the walls of the Louvre.

If they accomplished a revolution, it was a peaceful and internal one. They piled up no barricades, issued no manifestos, launched no declaration of their rights as women and citizens. Though the laws were not generally favourable to them, they demanded no amendment of the laws; the same magistrates continued as in the past to deliver the same judgments from the same benches, politicians still made their fortunes, ploughmen still followed the plough, engineers continued to construct bridges and make roads,

notaries to scan the cause-lists. Nothing was changed, in appearance, in the material course of the world, except that a moral power had come into being, and that women, like the goddesses of happiness painted by Nattier, under the cloak of indifference had taken into their keeping a mysterious urn, whence life seemed to gush in a spontaneous stream, without the help of judges, engineers, or notaries, yet continually sending out the current essential to the sweetness and fruitfulness of the world.

BOOK I. FAMILY LIFE

CHAPTER I

MARRIAGE

THERE are two ways of dealing with the heart of a woman. You may have confidence in it, believe in it, regard it as a real element of strength and happiness, uplift and develop it, touching it then to fine issues in love, religion, philosophy. These are the lines on which the modern world proceeds. Or you may treat it as a frail organ of the body, unruly, incapable of good; you may bind it down, early and with due care, with all sorts of reasonable chains, the chief of which, marriage, will keep it fast prisoned, and reduce it to nothingness and oblivion. This, of course, was the system of former days.

Singularly enough, these two systems, contrary as they are, spring from precisely the same practical starting-point, which indeed remains the sole point of contact between them the principle, namely, that marriage and love are distinct, and must neither be confused nor blended.

To Battista Spagnuoli of Mantua,1 poet and monk, in the solitude of his cloister, marriage shone with a rosy light. Cornelius Agrippa,2 with his utilitarian and paradoxical [The most prolific and popular eclogue writer of the fifteenth century (1436-1516). "As the moste famous Baptist Mantuan, The best of that sort since Poetes first began." -Alexander Barclay.

Erasmus went so far as to match him with Virgil.]

2[The celebrated cabalistic philosopher (1486-1535). He stayed for a time with Dean Colet in London. He wrote a book De Nobilitate feminei

sexus.]

mind, regarded it as a compulsory conscription of the German type, with no possible exemptions, or almost none, and fancied that if men would but go in quest of a pretty woman instead of being so much absorbed with the proprieties and the main chance, the result would prove far more satisfactory. With the exception of these two, and a few more or less ingenuous or eccentric people like them, no one believed in the utility or the possibility of love in marriage. Caviceo's romance Il Peregrino was considered sheer perversity, for after innumerable intrigues and adventures it ends-how? With wedding bells! So that, according to Caviceo, marriage was to turn out a romance of cloak and sword! 1

It was universally agreed that no idea could be more absurd, less practical, more detestable, more immoral even. Marriage was a transaction, an 'establishment,' a business part-nership, a grave material union of interests, rank, and social responsibilities, sanctified by the close personal association of the partners. To insinuate an idea of pleasure was to rob it of its noble and honourable character, and to drag it down into the mire of sensuality. To mingle with it a physical suggestion was to degrade it; to mingle with it love, the absolute, great enthusiasms of heart or intellect, was to lay

An extract from the marriage of Peregrino will give an idea of the Romance (Book I., cap. i., p. 32):

"There standing and awaiting the wished-for end, I heard the voice of a minister of Jupiter, who, regarding both of us, thus spake: 'Peregrino, and you Geneva, are you clear and free from every manifest or secret bond?' 'We are free, nor anywhit bounden ?'-Minister: Are you not conjoined in affinity?' Peregrino and Geneva: Naught in affinity, and little in amity! Minister: Have you promised marriage or betrothal to any other man or woman?' Peregrino and Geneva: 'No, never.' Minister: Are you by common consent disposed to celebrate this present holy sacrament of matrimony? Peregrino and Geneva: 'We wish it heartily and in faith.' Minister: "Thee, woman, give I to him, and Peregrino will put on the ring.' "Having done his bidding, as it is the wont, we sat ourselves down," and a tender conversation ensues between the two spouses.

"O matchless eloquence!" cries Peregrino, "O thrice lucky hour! O blessed day! O my hope in the sovran guerdon vouchsafed to me! With thee, sweet my dame, love, and gentleness, and discretion, and prudence have their habitation, in thee every good thing doth lie hid. Thou art very music, of all discords the harmony. In all parts I find thee whole and perfect. Thou art abundant in all humanity and sweetness, and in thy making the lord and maker of heaven hath created the true copy and sovran revelation of all things." The couple dream their souls away in these platonic effusions. The bride is bedded there and then, and the author omits no detail. The sun is already high when a young maid. servant ventures to come in and light a fire of twigs.