thoughtful and genial intercourse with books, and there comes by degrees what seems almost an instinct to guide us in our companionship with them-leading to the good and truthful, and turning us away from the foolish, the false, and the pernicious. Even moderate experience, let it only be docile, thoughtful, and affectionate, will win for you an almost intuitive sense in judging what books you may take to your heart as friends, and friends for life: it will give also that confidence, most valuable in the days of multitudinous publications, the confidence in determining what books, and they are very many, it is good to be immutably ignorant of.

Reflecting on what a book can do and ought to do for you-how it may act on your mind, and your mind react on it and thus holding communion, you can travel through a wilderness of volumes onward, onward through time, wisely and happily, and with perfect vision of your way, as the woodman sees a path in the forest-a path to his home, while the wanderer, whether standing or staggering, is lost in blind and blank bewilderment.

Literature, according to this conception of it, is to be employed for culture of character-manly character and womanly character. I speak of them separately, not because it is necessary so to do with reference to that which is essential literature, but because attention has lately been drawn to the subject of the social position of woman, and there is heard at least a sound of conflicting opinions and opposing theories. It is a discussion into which I mean not to enter, but only to touch upon in its connection with my present subject. Let me say, in the first place, that I question whether it is proper, or even practicable,

so to detach womanhood from our common human nature as to make it a topic of distinct disquisition; it seems to me a little too much like a naturalist's study of some subject in zoology-the form and habits of some other species of created things. Again, as to all controversies respecting the equality of the sexes, or relative superiority or inferiority, I have only to say, that to me they are simply odious, wrong, I believe,-in faith, in philosophy, and in feeling. Why should our minds be perplexed with modern speculations on this subject, when we have inspired teaching, which, in a few words, if we will but look at them, will show us the whole truth: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make her an helpmate for him." "God doth not say," observes an old English divine, "it is not good for man to be alone," "he doth not say it is not good for this or that particular man to be alone; but it is not good in the general, for the whole frame of the world, that man should be alone."* Thus we find the creation of woman, and that providential law which preserves the equal numbers of the sexes, resting on the divinelyinstituted principle of companionship, not alone of marriage, not alone of mother and child, but the manifold companionship of woman, single or married, companionship involving, of necessity, reciprocal dependence, but having nothing to do with equality or superiority or inferiority on one side or the other. There is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity, or equality, or similarity, the law which reconciles similitude and dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which

*Donne, vol. iv. P. 19.

what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on the other, for,

Heart with heart and mind with mind,

When the main fibres are entwined,

Through Nature's skill,

May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.*

Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were represented in our first parents, and so, however since disturbed, it remains as the ideal for all the generations of men and women. There was adduced another law, when the words were pronounced to the woman, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee;" and thus dominion was mingled with companionship-dominion of one sex over the other, which no sophistry can evade, for it is divine and to endure with the earth and the race. Having its origin in evil, it grows with evil, and the woman sinks down into the slave, and the man into her mere imbruted tyrant; but goodness can still find the beauty of the primeval law of. companionship undefaced by the element of dominion; for the penalty of dominion may, like the curse of labour, be converted into a blessing. As willing, dutiful labour. brings gladness more than sorrow with it, so shall the fulfilment of the law of obedience win a glory of its own, brighter than any achievement of power. It is not by clamouring for rights, it is not by restless discontent, but it is by tranquil working out of the heaven-imposed law of obedience, that woman's weakness is transmuted into strength-a moral, spiritual power which man shall do homage to. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any

*Wordsworth. The Grave of Burns.

earthly passion will but distort her being; she struggles all in vain against a divine appointment, and sinks into more woful servitude, and the primeval curse weighs a thousand fold upon her, and the primeval companionship perishes. But bowing beneath that law which sounded through the darkening Paradise, she wins for her dower the only freedom that is worthy of woman-the moral liberty which God bestows upon the faithful and obedient spirit. It is from the soil of meekness that the true strength of womanhood grows, and it is because it has its root in such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering its blossoms and its fruits upon the world. Her influence follows man from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere of it is the whole region of humanity. We marvel at the might of it, because its tranquil triumphs are so placid and so noiseless, and penetrating into the deep places of our nature. It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery, and the strife was for a traveller's cloak; the quiet moon had naught to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast, but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the earth, silently sways the tides of the ocean.

There probably can be found no better test of civilization than the prevailing tone of feeling and opinion with regard to womanhood, and the recognition of woman's influences and social position. There may be the rude use of woman in barbaric life, or the frivolous uses of an over-civilized society. There may be the high-wrought adulation of an age of chivalry, which, so far as it is a sentiment of idolatry, is at once false and pernicious; or there may be that wise and well-adjusted sense of affectionate reverence of womanhood, which is thoughtful

of the vast variety of human companionship-matronly, maidenly, sisterly, daughterly. In woman, there may be a true sense of sex, its duties and its claims, meekness with its hidden heroism; or there may be the unfeminine temper, fit to be rebuked by the Desdemona model.* Such a rebuke may be apposite where female character disfigures itself by obtrusiveness and self-sufficiency and pedantry. But, as far as my observation goes, that is not the state of society here; on the contrary, there is needed an effort much more difficult than repressing the froward; and that is, to lift modest, intelligent, sensitive womanhood above the dread of the ridicule of pedantry. Manly culture would gain by it as well as womanly. I heard lately from a woman's lips one of the finest pieces of Shakspeare criticism I ever met with; admirable in imagination and in the true philosophy of criticism, and yet uttered in conversation in the easy, natural intercourse of society.† Such should be the culture of woman, and such the tone of society, that these fine processes of womanly thought and feeling may mingle naturally with men's judgments.

There may be a social condition in which womanly

*With regard to the Desdemona model, it must also be remembered that it is not the only model of womanly character which the poet has left to the world; on the contrary, he has given others of equal worth and beauty, varied to the infinite variety of womanly duty. Indeed, what a woman ought to do often depends upon what man does, and very often, too, on what he leaves undone so that, while it may be her duty to bow "like the gentle lady married to the Moor," man's wrongs or his omissions may call her to other dutiesgoing forth, like Imogen, for womanly well-doing in the open and rude places of the earth.

† Mrs. Kemble.

H. R.