WOMAN. "How shall frayle pen describe her heavenly face, Woman, next to man, the noblest piece of the creation." -Aristotle. "Know thyself,' was said by a sage for sages, but it is quite as necessary a counsel to give to a lovely woman," writes Ouida. I would add, to give to all women. How often in a room you will observe that the women with least beauty, but with a certain something in their manner-a charm from a higher culture, wider knowledge, clearer perception, and more ready sympathy, seem to carry all before them. "A lovely woman, with perfect features and form, will be admired, no doubt, always; but her admirers will pass on unless she has some charm beside her beauty."- Ouida. "Women cannot over-estimate the value of purity and modesty. Those ladies who risk their health by going to theatres, &c., with too much of their bodies uncovered, should ponder over the following by Ben Jonson : Have you seen but a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touched it? Have you marked but the fall of the snow "There is no power on earth in the hands of God sometimes more mighty for achieving the noblest ends in the most pleasant way than a beautiful woman-when she is a woman, indeed, in all completeness of her divine dual nature-not a mere well-put-together, wellchiselled, well-coloured, and well-dressed piece of flesh and blood, in which virtues she may be matched, and over-matched, by many a plumy bird, or light-footed fawn upon the mountains."-Professor J. S. Blackie. "To woman, what? so slender, slim, and slight, 'Mid coarse-grained things of masterdom and might; More strong than fire or iron, as her dower."—Anacreon. BE cynical as you like, run down women as you will, prate about beauty being but skin deep, it is the power of powers, the gift of gifts, by which woman holds in subjection man. At all times, here, there, and everywhere, the chequered scroll of history tells the same tale; now, as heretofore, in all ages, "No age, rank, or station is free, To sweet, smiling Beauty, mankind bends the knee." Woman! what diverse opinions we hear about you. The majority of married men will say that they have no opinions, but contradictory states, oppose them, they are firm; give in to them they yield; yet how little we really know of your nature, and its Do power of development, if allowed greater freedom of action. not mistake me; I am no advocate for strong-minded women, for women to do men's work, but agree with the main idea in Legouve's Historie des Femmes, "Equality in difference is its key-note. The question is not to make woman a man, but to complete man by woman." "The difficulties of friendly intercourse between men and women are so great, and the false sentiments induced by our present system so many and so subtle, that it is the hardest thing in the world for either sex to learn the truth concerning the real thoughts and feelings of the other. We have subjected women for centuries to a restricted life. She can pay back the injury with interest. And so she does, item by item. Through her, in a great measure, marriage becomes what Milton calls, a drooping and disconsolate household captivity;' and through her influence over children, she is able to keep going much physical weakness and disease which might, with a little knowledge, be readily stamped out she is able to oppose new ideas by the early implanting of prejudice; and, in short, she can hold back the wheels of progress, and send into the world human beings likely t; to wreck every attempt at social reorganisation that may be made, whether it be made by men or by gods." In the Westminster Review for August 1888, Mona Caird gives us a brief glance at the history of marriage. How, at one time "the mother was the head of the family, priestess, and instructress in the arts of husbandry. . . . The cave in which the mother took shelter and brought up her family was the germ of our 'home.' The family knew only one parent, the mother; her name was transmitted, and property-when that began to exist-was inherited through her, and her only. A woman's indefensible right to her own child of course remained unquestioned, and it was not until many centuries later that men resorted to all kinds of curious devices with a view of claiming authority over children, which was finally established by force, entirely irrespective of moral right. "The transition period from the mother-age to the fatherage was long and painful. It took centuries to deprive the woman of her powerful position as head of the family, and of all the superstitious reverence which her knowledge of primitive arts and of certain properties of herbs, besides her influence as priestess, secured her. Of this long struggle we find many traces in old legends, in folk-lore, and in the survival of customs older than history. Much later, in the witch persecutions of the Middle Ages, we come upon the remnants of belief in the woman's superior power and knowledge, and the determination of man to extinguish it. The awe remained in the form of superstition, but the old reverence was changed to antagonism. We can note in early literature the feeling that women were evil creatures eager to obtain power, and that the man was nothing less than a coward who permitted this low and contemptible influence to make way against him. . . . "On the spread of Christianity and the ascetic doctrines of its later teachers, feminine influence received another check. 'Woman!' exclaims Tertullian with startling frankness, thou art the gate of hell!' This is the key-note of the monastic age. Woman was an ally of Satan, seeking to lead men away from the paths of righteousness. She appears to have succeeded very brilliantly! We have a century of almost universal corruption, ushering in the period of the Minne-singers and the Troubadours, or what is called the age of chivalry. In spite of a licentious society, this age has given us the precious germ of a new idea with ⚫ regard to sex-relationship, for art and poetry now began to soften and beautify the cruder passion, and we have the first hint of a distinction which can be quite clearly felt between love as represented by classical authors and what may be called modern, or romantic love-as a recent writer named it. This nobler sentiment, when developed and still further inwoven with ideas of modern growth, forms the basis of the ideal marriage, which is founded upon a full attraction and expression of the whole nature. were "But this development was checked, though the idea was not destroyed, by the Reformation. It is to Luther and his followers that we can immediately trace nearly all the notions that now govern the world with regard to marriage. Luther was essentially coarse and irreverent towards the oppressed sex; he placed marriage on the lowest possible platform, and, as we need scarcely add, he did not take women into counsel in a matter so deeply concerning them. In the age of chivalry, the marriage tie was not at all strict, and our present ideas of 'virtue' and 'honour' practically non-existent. Society was in what is called a chaotic state; there was extreme license on all sides, and although the standard of morality was far severer for the woman than for the man, still she had more or less liberty to give herself as passion dictated, and society tacitly accorded her a right of choice in matters of love. But Luther ignored all the claims of passion in a woman—in fact, she had no recognised claims whatever; she was not permitted to object to any part in life that might be assigned her; the notion of resistance to his decision never occured to him-her role was one of duty and of service; she figured as the legal property of a man, the safeguard against sin, and the victim of that vampire, 'Respectability,' which henceforth was to fasten upon, and suck the life-blood of all womanhood. . ... were "The change from the open license of the age of chivalry to the decorum of the Philistine régime was merely a change in the mode of licentiousness, not a move from evil to good. Hypocrisy became a household god; true passion was dethroned, and with it poetry and romance; the commercial spirit, staid and open-eyed, entered upon its long career, and began to regulate the relations of the sexes. We find a peculiar medley of sensuality and decorum: the mercenary spirit entering into the idea of marriage, women bought and sold as if they were cattle, and were educated, at the same time, to strict ideas of purity' and duty, to Griselda-like patience under the severest provocation. Carried off by the highest bidder, they were gravely exhorted to be moral, to be chaste, and faithful and Godfearing, serving their lords in life and in death. To drive a hard bargain and to sermonise one's victims at the same time, is a feat distinctly of the Philistine order. With the growth of the commercial system, of the rich burgher class, and of all the ideas that thrive under the influence of wealth when divorced from mental cultivation, the status of women gradually established itself upon this degrading basis, and became fixed more and more firmly as the bourgeois increased in power and prosperity."-Mona Caird. One of the means to secure better assorted unions, is, for woman to be so trained that she is independent of man's help; it may be difficult, but is worth the struggle. Women ought not to be trained trusting solely to their marriage for a livelihood, they ought not to be tempted to marry, or or remain with a man they have got to hate for the sake of the means of subsistence. Woman must be trained to do many things she is as capable of doing as man. It will, of course, increase the struggle of life, but not if they intelligently co-operate together in carrying on the game of life. They must be educated together and work together; make friendships, irrespective of sex. Half, nay two-thirds of the miserable marriages arise from the fact that a man and woman cannot be intimate together as friends; the world, their world, seeing them together settle that they mean marriage, and they themselves get led |