October 8.Hamlet.

"What may this mean,That thou, dead corse, again in complete steelRevisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?"

he was so possessed by the verbal magic of the phrase that he could attend no more to the rest of the play.

Perhaps it is some penetrating assonance in that "complete steel"—in those sibilant repetitions of "revisit'st thus the glimpses"—that makes its witchery. Poe carefully analyzed the science of it—which is no science at all, but the inscrutable magic of inspiration. Such lines as

"Came up through the lair of the lionWith love in her luminous eyes"

are built upon that theory of liquid consonants and open vowels, and it has no magic at all, while "To Annie"—which was written without conscious plan—is full of it.

"Her grand family funerals" is instinct with that prickling delight of the magic of words, as is "the wizard rout" of the bodiless airs that blew through her "casement open to the night."

Tennyson's famous alliteration,

"The moaning of doves in immemorial elmsAnd the murmur of innumerable bees"

lacks glamour. One scents the intention.

"Ay! Ay! oh ay!The wind that blows the brier"

recaptures the elusive charm, because of its wild, unconscious lyrism.

Fancy these absurd, ignorant young writers talking of style having "gone out"! Apparently they suppose it means "fine writing," in which nothing is more lacking than style. The essence of style, I suppose, is in the inspired, instinctive choice of words which present suddenly to the mind apictureof what the writer is talking about. The wholeclouof Hamlet's phrase is that "glimpses of the moon." It makes one see the vague, intangible momentariness of the apparition. Sir Thomas Browne's famous "drums and tramplings of three conquests" gives just that flashing picture of the banners and rolling sounds of those long vanished invasions. And Keats's

"Casements opening on the foamOf perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn"

presents the indescribable to the eye.

There is, of course, that other element of musical quality, and Hamlet's phrase is delicious for its strange, broken sibilations, but without thepicturethe alliterations and vowel sounds are but dead things. All the fine, rolling, organ-like sonority of Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine would be tedious without the impressions of light and colour that palpitate through the lines. For style I can think of no better modern example than the concluding paragraph in Lafcadio Hearn's paper on the dragon-fly in the volume called Kotto:

"... then let me hope that the state to which I am destined will not be worse than that of a cicade or of a dragon-fly;—climbing the cryptomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in the sun,—or haunting,with soundless flicker of amethyst and gold, some holy silence of lotus pools."

Old Mr. A—— was most interesting to-night at dinner on the subject of the various Hamlets he has seen—apparently every actor of any importance who has attempted the part in thelast sixty years; not only the English-speaking ones, but German and French as well. After dwelling upon all manner of details of the varied dress, business, scenery, and so forth, of the different men who have attempted the role, I asked him which of them all he considered to have been the best, and he decided after some hesitation that not one of them satisfied him completely. "Not one of them all," he concluded, "seemed to me to have a clear, comprehensive grasp of the essentials of the part. Each appeared to try to express some one phase of it, but you felt the thing as a whole escaped them." Which is, perhaps, not to be wondered at, since, so far, it appears, as a complete conception, to have escaped every one. No one of the Shakespearian scholars has expressed what definite meaning the play in its entirety conveyed to his mind.

Mr. A——'s talk interested me immensely, much more than any of those long-winded mystical triumphs of verbiage the Germans perpetrate. I have seen but two eminent actors in the part. Booth's Hamlet was, of course, only a noble piece of elocution,not an interpretation, and without vitality. Mounet Sully—but then all Frenchmen believe Hamlet mad, despite his express warning to Horatio—

"How strange or odd so'er I bear myself,As I, perchance, hereaftershall think meetTo put an antic disposition on..."

And of his confidence to Guildenstern that he is but

"Mad nor'-nor'-west. When the wind is southerlyI know a hawk from a hernshaw."

Of course, I've a theory of my own about Hamlet. It seems to me that the difficulty most persons experience in endeavouring to penetrate what they call "the mystery" of the Prince's character arises from the fact that they read the play either carelessly or with some prepossession, to fit which they bend all that he says or does. The German critics blunder through forgetting how essentially sane and unmystical was Shakespeare in every fibre of his mind. To him the cloudy symbolism of the second part of Faust would have sounded very like nonsense. His interest was in man—the normal, typical man and hispassions of hate, love, ambition, revenge, envy, humour....

To me the key to Hamlet seems to be a proper regard for the attitude of the mind of the seventeenth century toward the belief in ghosts. The Englishman of Shakespeare's day hardly doubted their existence, but was unsettled as to the nature and origin of spectres. Whether they were truly shades of the departed ones which they resembled, or were merely horrid delusions of the mind, projected upon it by some malign and hellish influence, they were not clear.

Hamlet says:

"The spirit that I have seenMay be the devil: and the devil hath powerTo assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,Out of my weakness and melancholy,(as he is very potent with such spirits)Abuses me to damn me: I'll have groundsMore relative than this...."

Personally, my method of endeavouring to clear vexed questions is to make an effort to conceive of my own emotions and actions in a like difficulty. To understand Hamlet I try to imagine what my frame of mind would be if P—— had died, suddenly andtragically, during my absence. Hastening home in all the turmoil of grief and shock I find H—— has grasped all P——'s fortune and has promptly married M——, whom I had expected to find as afflicted as I. Naturally I would be deeply horrified and offended and greatly puzzled over such a situation. When one injects the warmth and power of one's own emotions into a situation by personifying it with one's own kinspeople one begins to realize Hamlet's condition of mind prior to the appearance of the Ghost. A ghostly visitation not being imaginable nowadays, one may suppose one's self having a vivid and circumstantial dream, making all these curious conditions clear by an explanation of hideous criminality. The hysterical distraction of Hamlet's interview with the Ghost seems natural enough when one pictures one's own horror and incredulity on awaking from such a vision.

Of course, a reaction would follow the first red lust for denunciation and for revenge of the deep damnation of the taking off of the helpless victim. One would be continually paralyzed in the very act ofvengeance by the remembrance that one had no better authority than a dream for proof of crime in those one had always loved and trusted. The thing would seem so incredible, and yet the dream would explain all the puzzling facts so clearly. To a young and noble mind, evil in those one loves appears impossible. One would be always fighting the thought—which pulled the very ground of confidence from under one's feet—and yet always laying traps to prove one's suspicions true, as the jealous notoriously do; wishing yet fearing to know the truth. Hamlet's varying fits of violence and indecision seem natural enough under the circumstances, and not a sign of madness nor of eccentricity of character. He is called the "Melancholy Dane," but to a young confiding heart the first revelation of the possibility of filth and criminality in those near in blood and love causes distrust of all the world; arouses a mad desire for escape out of a cruel existence where such spiritual squalour is possible. If one will bring the situation home to one's self in this way—vivifying it with one's own heart—Hamletno longer seems a strange and alien soul, but one's very own self caught in a web of horrid circumstance, and doing and being just what one's self would do and be in like case. Temptation to suicide, murder, "unpacking one's heart with words," bitterness to, and distrust of, the innocent Ophelia, treachery, doubt, indecision,—all are inevitable temptations. Looked at in this way, there is no mystery at all in the play if one reads it straight and simply, and from the human point of view—which view was always Shakespeare's, I think.

The R——s are home this week from California, and full of a surprising tale of their experience in renting and trying to live in a haunted house. They had no idea of its unpleasant character when they took it. Indeed they decided upon it principally because of the sunniness of the rooms and its generally cheerful character. The only suspicious feature was the very moderate price; but that appears to have aroused only gratitude instead of suspicion in their minds.

The sounds they heard, which finally drove them out of the house, were such commonplace ones—the clinking of medicine bottles, the mixing of stuff in saucers—that one hardly believes they could have invented them. Invention would certainly have conceived a more dramatic excuse for abandoning a house. Also, they solemnly aver that it was only upon their giving up the lease that they heard the story of the almost incredible tragedy of the former owner's death.

There certainly must be some manifestations such as are commonly known as "ghostly." I never have come across any personally, but the testimony is too frequent and persistent for doubt. Some phenomena have undoubtedly been observed of which the laws are not yet understood. The psychologists profess to be working in this direction, but the psychology of our day is still in about the condition of astronomy and chemistry in the days of the thirteenth-century astrologers and alchemists—mere blind flounderings. We need a psychological Copernicus badly. I am convinced that what are commonly called"superstitions" are really observed results of unknown causes. When I was a child the negroes always warned one that it brought bad luck to go near a stable when one had a cut finger. Nothing could seem more blindly uncorrelated, and yet it is now known that the germ of tetanus breeds only in manure, which shows that their observation was correct, though they had no conception of germs, or microbes. It was an old superstition, derided by the medical profession, that there was some merit in hanging red curtains at the windows of a smallpox patient; yet recently some interesting discoveries have been made as to the effect of red light upon sufferers from this disease.

Again there is the old-wife's belief that the howling of a dog presages death. I saw no sense in that until I was brought in contact with death for the first time, and then discovered that a person near the end, and immediately afterwards, emitted a powerful odour, very like the smell of tuberoses. In two cases within my experience this odour remained in the death-chamber, despite persistent airing and cleaning, forfully a year. My sense of smell is extremely acute, and no one seemed to remark this odour but myself, nor have I ever heard or seen any mention of the phenomenon being noticed by others; but naturally a dog, whose sense of smell must be a thousand times more acute than mine, is aware of this strange, half repulsive perfume, which has the effect upon his nerves produced also, apparently, by moonlight and by music.

If fresh rose leaves are shut closely into a drawer until they have thoroughly dried and crumbled, they will be found, when removed, entirely scentless, but the drawer will retain for years some intangible emanation which they have given off, and this will permeate any object left in the drawer. Recent delicate experiments have shown how the violence of emotion will affect the weight of human beings, and no doubt, in supreme crises of feeling, living bodies may lose this weight by the throwing off of some emanation which may linger for a long time in the immediate surroundings. It has been discovered that many objects retain luminosity, after being long exposed to powerful rays; a luminosity invisibleto our sight, but sufficient to make dim photographs upon highly sensitized plates. The "ghosts" are very probably explicable on some such theory as this. Some individuals are like these extremely sensitive plates. The emanations thrown out in the condition of intense emotion affect them, and give them an impression of sounds or sights which appear, in our present state of ignorance, to be supernatural. Of course, any psychologist or scientist would pooh-pooh this hypothesis of mine, if it were made public, but equally they would have sniffed fifty years ago at a guess at wireless telegraphy, or the Roëntgen ray, or the radioactivity of radium. After all, however, they are right in thinking that guesses are not very valuable unless one has the industry to demonstrate their accuracy.

If there is any one thing more particularly repulsive to me than another it is the way the average clerical person speaks of religious things. One would suppose that such matters, if one really believed them, would be the profoundestsentiments of one's nature, and be mentioned with the reserve and reverence with which the lay person treats the deeper sentiments, such as love, honour, or patriotism.

A little pamphlet came by mail to-day, which proved to be a sort of begging letter from a community of Protestant clergymen, who are undertaking to imitate monasticism in America. Under a heading of a cross is this text, "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your worldly things?" And there follows an appeal for assistance in building a monastery on the Hudson. The language of this pamphlet is the usual language of begging letters, only with that flavour of smug religiosity and bland business-like dealing with matters of the soul which amazes the lay mind.

This community of, presumably, able-bodied men who desire to reap of our worldly things naively sets forth in the following programme the manner in which they intend to occupy their time:

5A.M.Rise.5.30 to 6.Meditation in Chapel.6.Morning Prayer and Prime.6.50 to 8.Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist.8.Breakfast.9.30.Terce and Intercessions.12M.Sext and None.12.30P.M.Dinner.1 to 1.20.Recreation (in common).4.45.Evensong.5.15 to 5.45.Meditation.6.Supper.6.30 to 7.15.Recreation (in common).8.30.Compline.10.Lights extinguished.

And it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion that one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil! That many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that this community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable land, and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a monastery.

Of course, there are worthless idlers everywhere, but very few of them in our practical day assume their indolence as a merit, or call upon their neighbours to support them, in the name of the deeper sentiments of life.

Hare, in "A Pair of Spectacles" remarks cynically, when asked to help an indigentwidow, "Oh, I know that indigent widow; she comes from Sheffield." One knows these sturdy beggars. They come from out the Middle Ages, when it was still felt that there was some special virtue in abandoning the obvious duties of life to take up others more appealing to the Saint; more appealing precisely because they were anything but obvious.

The very name of Saint is a stench in my heretical nostrils. I never knew or read of one who was not a vain egoist, with all the cruelty, obstinacy, and selfishness of the egoist. Read the Lives of the Saints. Not one of these absurd chronicles but is a repulsive tale of an insane vanity trampling on the rights and feelings of others to achieve notoriety. St. Louis is a sample of the type: renouncing his duties to his unlucky wife, squabbling with every other monarch unfortunate enough to be associated with him, and wrecking the expeditions in which he joined because of some petty qualm about his meagre, unimportant little soul.

The person who extorts my reverence is not Saint Elizabeth, but that poor boy,her husband, bearing the torments of her hysterical squeamishness with such noble patience and chivalry. One can picture that tired, sleepy young fellow, busy with his duties of government all day, dragged out of his proper slumber to behold his ridiculous wife climbing out of bed to lie on the cold floor in her nightgown, while the attendants stood about and crossed themselves in admiration.

St. Theresa seems to have been a sort of Moyen-Age Hedda Gabler; no better than an ecclesiastic flirt. Go through the whole list and the story is always the same. One never hears of a person with a sense of humour—which implies a sense of proportion—setting up as a saint. The breath in the nostrils of these gentry is the stare of the unthinking multitude, who are awed by anything out of the ordinary. And yet it takes so much finer patience, so much greater self-abnegation, to do the plain duties of life. I feel far more like crossing myself when I look at the humble commuter, who has sat on a stool all day, and travels with his arms full of parcels to that cheap, draughty cottage in the cold duskof Lonelyville, to listen patiently to Emily's recitals of Johnny's cut finger and Mary Ann's impudence. It is upon such as he that civilization and the world's happiness and sunshine depend. He has done a man's duties; upon him depends a helpless woman, and innocent children. His tedious, petty drudgeries rise to nobility compared with the lives of these fat and lazy grubs with their complines and sexts and primes.

St. Theresa seems vulgar to me contrasted with the anxious Emily cheapening chops at the butcher's, and fighting around the bargain counter to make her laborious commuter's meagre salary stretch over the needs of her family. It requires a finer and sweeter, a more saintly nature to walk the floor patiently with a teething baby than to pose as a saint on the floor to no one's benefit but one's own.

Ah, those humble, lovely souls bearing the whips and scorns of Time, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes—their commonplace daily halos make the saints' diadems look like imitation jewels.

Back from the gates of the City of Life there runs a great highway, whose beginning is in the land—east of the sun and west of the moon—where the unborn dwell. It is a broad and well-trodden road; beaten smooth by the feet of the hurrying generations that tread sharp upon one another's heels as they press forward out of grey and airless nothingness into the warm atmosphere of existence.

By the side of this road lies a chimæra, with woman's breasts couched upon lion's paws. It is the old direful Questioner of Thebes; the Propounder of Riddles; the prodigious Asker of Enigmas. Before entering the gates of the City the jostling multitude must pause in their furious haste towards life and listen to her as she propounds to each generation her problem. Every generation guesses at the riddle with fear or hope, with timidity or courage, as its nature may be, and then rushes on within the gates, not knowing if it has guessed aright, but with the task laid upon it ofliving out its life by the light of that answer, let the result be what it will.

The Sphinx lies watching the generations whirled past her into existence. She listens to the cries, the turmoil, the bitter plaints of those within the walls who believed that they had solved her problem a century ago, and as she listens she smiles her cold, incredulous smile. Not yet have they divined her secret, if one may judge from their loud protests, and this new generation pouring in among them has but small patience with their failure. The newcomers are quite sure that they at last have answered the immortal conundrum correctly. They have found it quite easy, and they mean to show their silly predecessors how simple it is to find happiness if one has only the correct formula.

All the preceding guesses have been wrong?—well, but it is just because they were wrong that the application failed. Here is the right one at last, triumphantly evolved by the new heir of all the ages, and it will be soon seen how criminally, how almost incredibly mistaken the previous generations have been in their foolishattempts to live by such palpably absurd theories of existence.

Make way!—you silly old folk—make way for the young lords of life who come bearing truth and wisdom to the world! Who come to inaugurate a reign of peace and plenty and delight!

The old generation, nearing the City's lower gate,—beyond which lies another road, equally broad and well-travelled, but gloomier and more airless than the one by which they came,—shake their heads doubtingly at these assertions. They were quite as confident in their time, and yet, somehow, things did not work out as they expected. No doubt their own guess was quite right; they are almost sure of it; but many unforeseen exigencies interfered. People were obstinate. The formula was perfect, but people were so very wrong-headed that it never had a proper opportunity of proving how infallible it really was. And so difficulties in the application arose, and—But the young newcomers push them, still babbling and explaining, out of the further gate, and set at once about regenerating the unfortunate citywhich has been forced to wait such a weary while for this the perfect solution of all problems.

And the old Questioner lying without the gates stares with her long, calm eyes into the white mist from which yet more generations are to come, and she smiles her fixed and scornful smile.

It was after this fashion our century, nineteenth of the era, came in—flushed, happy, confident. It came an army with banners, every standard blazoned in letters of gold with its magic device—"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

How it hustled the poor painted, formal, withered, old eighteenth century out at the nether gate! Smashing its idols, toppling over its altars, tearing down its tarnished hangings of royalty from the walls, and bundling its poor antiquated furniture of authority out of windows. All doors were flung wide; the barriers of caste, class, sex, religion, race, were burst open and light poured in. The gloomy Ghettos were emptied of their silent, stubborn, cringing population; forged by the hammer of Christian hate through two thousand years intoa race as keen, compact, and flexible as steel. The slave stood up free of bonds; half exultant, half frightened at the liberty that brought with it responsibilities heavier and more inexorable than the old shackles. Woman caught her breath and lifted up her arms. The old superstitious Asiatic curse fixed upon her by the church was laughed scornfully into nothingness. She was as free as the Roman woman again. Free to be proud of her sex, free to wed where she chose, free to claim as her own the child for whom she had travailed to give life.

A vast bonfire was made of the stake, the wheel, the gyve; of crowns, of orders, of robes of state. All wrongs were to be righted, all oppressions redressed; all inequalities levelled, all cruelties forbidden. Men shuddered when they thought of the crimes of the past, when they talked of Calas. Such a crime would never be possible in this new golden age. Only of oppression and cruelty was vice bred. Given perfect liberty and perfect justice the warring world would become Arcadia once more. Lions if not hunted, and ifjudiciously trained by the constant instilling of virtuous maxims, would acquire a perfect disgust for mutton, and lambs would consequently lie down beside them and would grow as courageous and self-reliant as wolves.

What a beautiful time it was, those first thrilling days of the new era! How the spirit dilates in contemplating it, even now. The heart beat with the noble new emotions, the cheek flushed, the eyes glistened with sensibility's ready tear. It was so pleasant to be good, to be kind, to be just; to feel that even the bonds of nationality were cast aside, and that all mankind were brothers striving only for pre-eminence in virtue. It was a new chivalry, a new crusade. Only, instead of lovely princesses to be succoured, or sepulchres to be saved, it was the rescue of all the humble and suffering, a crusade against the paganism of the strong. The heart could hardly hold without delicious pain this broad flood of universal kindness.

It was then that Anarcharsis Clootz presented to the National Assembly his famous "deputation of mankind."...

"On the 19th evening of June, 1790, the sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little planet has not often to show. Anarcharsis Clootz entering the augustSalle de Manègewith the human species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia come to claim place in the grand Federation, having an undoubted interest in it.... In the meantime we invite them to the honours of the sitting,honneur de la séance. A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds; but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French dialect, his words are like spilt water; the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day.... To such things does the august National Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its regenerative labours."

It was at this time the big words beginning with capitals made their appearance and were taken very seriously. One talked of the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Ideal, and felt one's bosom splendidly inflated by these capitalized mouthfuls.There were other nice phrases much affected at the time—the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,la Republique de Genre Humain. The new generation was intoxicated with its new theory of life, with its own admirable sentiments.

Discrepancies existed, no doubt. The fine theories were not always put into complete practice. While the glittering phrases of the Declaration of Independence were declaring all men free and equal, some million of slaves were helping to develop the new country with their enforced labour. The original owners of the soil were being mercilessly hunted like vermin, and the women of America had scarcely more legal claim to their property, their children, or to their own persons than had the negro slaves. Nor did the framers of the Declaration show any undue haste in setting about abolishing these anomalies.

The National Assembly of France decreed liberty, equality, and fraternity to all men, and hurried to cut off the heads and confiscate the property of all those equal brothers who took the liberty of differing with them.

But it was a poor nature that would boggle at a few inconsistencies, would quench this fresh enthusiasm with criticism. After all, mere facts were unimportant. Given the proper emotion, the lofty sentiment of liberty and good-will, the rest would come right of itself.

A new heaven and new earth, so it seemed, was to be created by this virile young generation who had rid themselves of the useless lumber of the past. The period was one of universal emotion, exhibiting itself in every form: in iconoclastic rages against wrong—rages that could only be exhausted by the destruction of all the customs, laws, and religions that had bound the western world for two thousand years; it showed itself in sanguinary furies against oppression—furies which could be satiated only by seas of blood; in floods of sympathy for the weak that ofttimes swept away both strong and weak in one general ruin. It was displayed in convulsions of philanthropy so violent that a man might not refuse the offered brotherhood and kindness save at the price of his life. The cold dictates of the head were ignored. Theheart was the only guide. Is it any wonder that driven by the wind of feeling and with the rudder thrown overboard the ship pursued an erratic and contradictory course. Seen in this way one is no longer surprised at the lack of consistency of theDeclaration des Droits de l'Homme, that declared "All men are born and continue free and equal in rights"—that "Society is an association of men to preserve the rights of man"—that "freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights," and yet that France, crying aloud these fine phrases, slaughtered even the most silent and humble who were supposed to maintain secret thoughts opposed to the opinions of the majority. It is no longer astonishing to read the generous sentiments of our own Declaration and to remember the persecutions, confiscations, and burnings that drove thirty thousand of those not in sympathy with the Revolution over the borders of the New England States into Canada, and hunted a multitude from the South into Spanish Louisiana. One is no longer amazed to hear de Tocqueville declare that in no place had he found so little independence of thought as in thiscountry during the early years of the Republic. By liberty—his adored liberty—the revolutionary sentimentalist meant only liberty to think as he himself did, and the whole history of man records that there is nothing crueller than a tender heart ungoverned by a cooler head. It is in this same spirit that the inquisitor, yearning in noble anguish over souls, burns the recalcitrant. It is plain to him that such as are so gross and vicious as to refuse to fall in with his admirable intentions for their eternal welfare can be worthy of nothing gentler than fire.

But whatever the discrepancies might be, the whole state of feeling was vastly more wholesome, more promising, than the dry formalism, the frivolous cynicism which it had annihilated and out of which it had been bred. The delicate, fastidious, selfish formalists of the eighteenth century were naturally aghast at the generation to which they had given birth. It was as if an elderly dainty cat had been delivered of a blundering, slobbering, mastiff puppy, a beast which was to tear its disgusted and terrified parent in pieces. No doubt they asked themselvesin horror, "When did we generate this wild animal that sheds ridiculous tears even while drinking our blood?" Not seeing it was the natural child and natural reaction from the selfish short-sightedness of "Que ne mangent ils de la brioche?" from the frigid sneer of "Apres nous le deluge."

This torrent of emotionalism to which the nineteenth century gave itself up is amazing to our colder time. It manifested itself not only in its public policy, in its schemes for universal regeneration, but it completely saturated all the thought of the time, was visible in its whole attitude toward life. Madame Necker could not bear the thought of her friend Moulton's departure after a short visit, so that he was obliged to leave secretly without a farewell. She fainted when she learned the truth and says, "I gave myself up to all the bitterness of grief. The most gloomy ideas presented themselves to my desolate heart, and torrents of tears could not diminish the weight that seemed to suffocate me"—and all this about the departure of an amiable old gentleman from Paris to Geneva!

They had no reserves. The most secret sentiments of the heart were openly discussed. Tears were always flowing. Nothing was too sacred for verbal expression. They wrote out their prayers, formal compositions of chaste sentiments, and handed them about among their friends as Italian gentlemen did sonnets in the Quattro Cento. On anniversaries or special occasion they penned long epistles full of elegant phrases and invocations to friends living under the same roof, who received these letters next morning with the breakfast tray, and shed delicious tears over them into their chocolate.

"A delicate female" was a creature so finely constituted that the slightest shock caused hysterics or a swoon, and it was useless to hope for her recovery until the person guilty of the blow to her sensitiveness had shed the salt moisture of repentance upon her cold and lifeless hand and had wildly adjured her to "live"—after which her friends of the same sex, themselves tremulous and much shaken by the mere sight of such sensibility, "recovered her with an exhibition of lavender-water"or with some of those cordials which they all carried in their capacious pockets for just such exigencies. Nor did the delicate female monopolize all the delicacy and emotionalism. The Man of Feeling was her fitting mate, and the manly tear was as fluent and frequent as the drop in Beauty's eye. Swooning was not so much in his line; there was less competition, perhaps, for the privilege of supporting his languishing frame, but a mortal paleness was no stranger to his sensitive countenance, his features contracted in agony over the smallest annoyance, and he had an ominous fashion of rushing madly from the presence of the fair one in a way that left all his female relatives panting with apprehension, though long experience might have taught them that nothing serious ever came of it.

Thus the Nineteenth Century entered upon its experiment with the verities, beginning gloriously; palpitating with generous emotion; ready with its "blazing ubiquities" to light the way to the millennium. The truth had been discovered, and needed but to be thoroughly applied to ensure perfect happiness. By 1840 thetide of democracy and liberalism had risen to flood. The minority were overawed and dumb. To suggest doubts of the impeccable ideals of democracy was to awaken only contempt; as if one should dispute the theory of gravity. It waschose jugée. It did not admit of question. The experiment was in full practice and the new theory, having swept away all opposition, had free play for the creation of Arcadias.

Alas! Thus in the eighteenth period of our era had Authority cleared the ground. It had burned, hanged, shut up in the Bastille all cavillers, and just as the scheme had a chance to work it crumbled suddenly to pieces in the blood and smoke of revolutions. Democracy had no fear of tragedy from the very nature of its principles, but it had decreed liberty, and liberty began to be taken to doubt its conclusions. There began to arise voices bewailing the flesh-pots and the lentils of the ruined House of Bondage. Democracy had brought much good: that was not denied, but alas, what of the old dear things it had swept away, the sweet loyalties, the ties between serverand served. The enormous social and political edifice reared by feudalism had had black dungeons, noisome cloacæ, no doubt, but what of its rich carvings, of its dim, tender lights filtered through flowered traceries? Where was its romance, its pageants and revels? The rectangular, ugly, wholesome building, which democracy had substituted as a dwelling for the soul of man, with its crude, broad light flooding every corner, failed to satisfy many who forgot all the bitter inconvenience of the ancient castle, remembering in homesick longing only its ruined beauties and hoary charm.

Science in its hard unsentimental fashion commenced to demonstrate the fallacy of the heart's ardent reasoning. She stripped the lovely veil from nature's face, and showed the tender springing grass of the fields, the flushed orchard blossoms, the nesting bird, the painted insect floating in the breeze,—all, all engaged in a ferocious battle for life—trampling on the weak, snatching the best food, always either devouring or devoured. It had been decreed with thunderous finality that thefeeble should be by law placed on equality with the strong, and this was announced as the evident intention of beneficent nature. Science, however, relentlessly demonstrated that nature was not beneficent; that in fact she was a heartless snob, and that to "Nature's darling, the Strong," she ruthlessly sacrificed multitudes of the helpless. Democracy had made itself the champion of the humble, had cursed the greedy and powerful; science proved that the humble and unaggressive were doomed, as was proved by their not surviving in the terrible struggle for life that was raging in all forms of nature, and of which the human mélee was but an articulate expression. The conviction that humanity had once known perfect equality, and that freedom had been filched by the unscrupulous, was shown to be quite unfounded. Rousseau's Contrat Social was made absurd by Darwin's Descent of Man. All research tended to prove that from the earliest Pliocene it was not the weak or the humble, but he who

"Stole the steadiest canoe,Eat the quarry others slew,Died, and took the finest grave,"

who had founded families, developed races, brought order out of chaos, had made civilizations possible, had ordained peace and security, and had been the force of upward evolution.

It was thus that the freedom which the heart had given to the head was used to prove how fallible that generous heart was.

Then out of all of this groping regret, out of this new knowledge, there arose, with excursions and alarums, Carlyle; the first who dared frankly impeach the new theory and decry its results. Through all his vociferousness, through all his droning tautology, his buzzing, banging, and butting among phrases like an angry cock-chafer, through the general egregiousness of his intolerable style, there rang out clear once again the pæon of the strong. Here was no talk of the rights of man. His right as of old was to do his duty and walk in the fear of the Lord.

... "A king or leader in all bodies of men there must be," he says. "Be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, and position is fittest of all to do it."

For the aggregate wisdom of the multitude, to which Democracy pinned its faith, he had only scorn.

... "To find a Parliament more and more the expression of the people, could, unless the people chanced to be wise, give no satisfaction.... But to find some sort of King made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the people, if not their spoken wishes yet their dumb wants, and what they would at last find to be their instinctive will—which is a far different matter usually in this babbling world of ours" ...thatwas the thing to be desired. "He who is to be my ruler, whose will is higher than my will, was chosen for me by heaven. Neither, except in obedience to the heaven-chosen, is freedom so much as conceivable."

Here was the old doctrine of the divine right of the strong man to rule, come to life again, and masquerading in democratic garments.

No revolution resulted. Democracy did not fall in ruins even at the blast of his stertorous trumpet, but the serious-minded of his day were deeply stirred by his words,more especially as that comfortable middle-class prosperity and content, to which the democrat pointed as the best testimony to the virtue of his doctrines, was being attacked at the same time from another quarter. Not only did Carlyle scornfully declare that this bourgeois prosperity was a thing unimportant, almost contemptible, but the proletariat—a new factor in the argument—began to mutter and growl that he had not been given his proper share in it, and he found it as oppressive and unjust as we had found the arrogant prosperity of the nobles intolerable.

That old man vociferous has passed now to where beyond these voices there is peace, but the obscure mutterings of the man in the street, which was then but a vague undertone, has grown to an open menace. The Sphinx smiles as she hears once more the same cries, the same accusations. We of the middle classes, who threw off the yoke of the aristocracy, clamoured just such impeachments a century back. We are amazed now to hear them turned against ourselves. To us this seems an admirable world that we have made; orderly, peaceable,prosperous. We find no fault in it. It has not worked out, perhaps, on as generous lines as we had planned, but on the whole each man gets, we think, his deserts.

We ask ourselves wonderingly if the aristocrat of the eighteenth century did not, perhaps, see his world in the same way. He paid no taxes, but he thought he did his just share of work for the body politic; he fought, he legislated, he administered. Perhaps it seemed also a good world to him; well arranged. Perhaps he was as indignant at our protests as we are at those of to-day. We thought ourselves intolerably oppressed by his expenditures of the money we earned, by his monopoly of place and power; but we argue in our behalf, that as we pay the taxes we should decide upon the methods of the money's use and have all the consequent privileges. What, we ask ourselves angrily, do these mad creatures, who are very well treated, mean by their talk of slavery—of wage-slavery? How can there be right or reason in their contention that the labourer rather than the capitalist should have the profit oflabour? Does not the capitalist govern, administer, defend?

Attacked, abused, execrated, we begin to sympathize with those dead nobles, who were perhaps as honest, as well-meaning, as we feel ourselves to be; who were as disgusted, as scornful, as little convinced by our arguments as we by those who accuse us in our turn of being greedy, idle feeders upon the sweat of others. Perhaps to him the established order of things seemed as just and eternal as it does to us. We begin to have more comprehension of that dead aristocrat.

For a hundred years now democracy has had a free hand for testing its faiths and ideals. Let us reckon up the results of this reign of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Out of the triumphant bourgeoisie has grown a class proud and dominant as the nobles of old days. They have wealth, luxury, and power, such as those nobles never dreamed of. Capital is organized into vast, incredibly potent aggregations. Labour in its turn has organized for itself a despotism far-reaching, unescapable, which the old régime would never at itshaughtiest have ventured upon. The two are arrayed against one another in struggles of ever-increasing intensity.

The Brotherhood of Man is still a dream. The continent of Europe is dominated by two autocratic sovereigns, who overawe others by the consistent and continuous policy only possible to a despotism. The republics of France and of South America are the prey of a horde of adventurers who only alternate despotisms; the armaments of the world are so pretentious that each fears to wield so terrible a weapon. The great nations are dividing the weak among themselves as lions do their prey. All nations are exaggerating their barriers and differences. Russia is repudiating the Occidental languages and civilizations which she at first received so gladly. Hungary has abandoned the German tongue, and the Hungarians, Czechs, and Bohemians, held together by the bond of Austria, are restive and mutually repellent. The Celt revives and renews his hatred of the Saxon, and in Ireland and in Wales the aboriginal tongues and literatures are being disinterred and taught as a means of destroyingthe corporate nationalism of the British Isles. The Bretons disclaim their part and interest in France. The Spanish empire has fallen into jealous and unsympathetic fragments. The Hindus are clamouring for an India for the Indians. All are rivals; envenomed, and seeking domination. And America,—America, the supreme demonstration of the democratic ideal,—what of her? America has embarked upon imperial wars: refuses sanctuary to the poor and oppressed as inadmissible paupers, and laughs at the claims to brotherhood and citizenship of any man with a yellow skin.

The church, which is most opposed to individual liberty of thought, has been reconquering great territory in the very citadels of free conscience. One large body of Protestants is repudiating its protests against irresponsible authority, and basing its claims rather upon appeal to ancient precedent.

Science has one by one torn in pieces and scattered the iridescent bubbles of democracy's sentimental visions. The Ghetto is open, but the Jews are still persecuted.A Calas is no longer sacrificed to bigoted churchmen, but an intolerant army make possible the Affaire Dreyfus. Zola, after a century of democracy, is called upon once more to take up the work of Voltaire. Woman is still waiting for political equality with man. But perhaps the most surprising result is man's change in his attitude towards himself.Man, who spelled himself with reverent capital letters, who pictured the universe created solely for his needs,—who imagined a Deity flattered by his homage and wounded by his disrespect—Man, who had only to observe a respectable code of morals to be received into eternal happiness with all the august honours due a condescending monarch, had fallen to the humility of such admissions as these....

"What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;— ... Poor soul here for so little,cast among so many hardships filled with desires, so incommensurate and so inconsistent; savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives, ... infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the attributes of the Deity; rising up to battle for an egg or die for an idea.... To touch the heart of his mystery we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy, the thought of duty, the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God; an ideal of decency to which he would rise if possible, a limit of shame, below which if it be possible he will not stoop.... Not in man alone, but we trace it in dogs and cats which we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster and the louse, of whom we know so little"—

Alas, Poor Yorick! How a century of liberty has humbled him. It is thus the successors of Rousseau, of Chateaubriand, of the believers in the perfectibility of man, speak—saying, calmly, "The Empire ofthis world belongs to force"—and that "Hitherto in our judgments of men we have taken for our masters the oracles and poets, and like them we have received for certain truths the noble dreams of our imaginations and the imperious suggestions of our hearts. We have bound ourselves by the partiality of religious divinations, and we have shaped our doctrines by our instincts and our vexations.... Science at last approaches with exact and penetrating implements ... and in this employment of science, in this conception of things, there is a new art, a new morality, a new polity, a new religion, and it is in the present time our task to discover them."

We must not forget to consider a little the amusing change our century has seen in the alteration of its heroic ideals. For the sentimental rubbish, the dripping egotism of a Werther, of a Manfred, in whom the young of their day found the most adequate expression of their self-consciousness, we have substituted the Stevenson and Kipling hero—hard-headed, silent, practical, scornful of abstractions, contemptuous of emotions, who has but two dominantideals, patriotism and duty; who keeps his pores open and his mouth shut.

The old democratic shibboleths still remain on our lips, are still used as if they were truisms, but in large measure we have ceased to live by them, we have lost all our cocksureness as to their infallibility. We give frightened sops to our anarchical Cerberus. We realize that despite all we so proudly decreed the strong still rule and plunder the weak, and weak still impotently rage and imagine a vain thing of legislation as a means of redressing this endless inequality.

Much of good we have given. How could an ideal so tender, so beautiful, so high of purpose, fail of righting a thousand wrongs?

How could those sweet, foolish tears fail to water the hard soil of life and cause a thousand lovely flowers of goodness and gentleness to bloom? That we have not solved the riddle of the Sphinx, that we have not found the secret of happiness, is hardly cause for wonder or shame. Neither will our successors find it, but it is interesting to speculate as to what clue they willuse to guide them in the search. It is plain that our ideals, our formulæ, are being cast aside as inadequate, but the new century is coming in with no programme as yet announced. It is thoughtful, silent; it avoids our drums and shoutings and vociferous over-confidence.

What will be its Time-Spirit, since ours plainly will not serve? Will the wage-earners shear the bourgeoisie of their privileges as we shore the nobles a century ago—or will liberty sell herself to authority again in return for protection against the dry hopelessness of socialism, or the turmoil of anarchy? Or will the new generation evolve some new thought, undreamed of as yet—some new and happier guess at the great central truth at which we forever grasp and which forever melts and eludes?

In the midst of all these excursions and alarums of war, and preparation for war, a sudden and great silence has fallen upon the everlasting discussion of the relations of the sexes. Before the stern realities of that final andbloody argument of Republics, as well as of Kings, further dissection of the Women Question has been deferred. The most vociferous of the "unquiet sex" have been regarding respectfully the sudden transformation of the plain, unromantic man who went patiently to business every morning in a cable car, and sat on a stool at a desk, or weighed tea, or measured ribbon, into a hero ready to face violent annihilations before which even her imagination recoils. The grim realisms of life and death have made the realism of such erstwhile burning dramas as The Doll House shrink into the triviality of a drama fit only for wooden puppets. Sudden and violent readjustments of ideas are apt to be brought about when human relations are jarred into their true place by the thunder of cannon. War legitimatizes man's claim to superiority. When the sword is drawn he is forced to again mount that ancient seat of rule from which he has only recently been evicted; or rather from which he has himself stepped down. The democracy of sex at once becomes ridiculous—the old feudal relation reasserts itself.

It is interesting to note that there has not been one feminine voice raised to protest against the situation. The entire sex, as represented in this country, has, as one woman, fallen simply and gladly into the old place of nurse, of binder of wounds, of soother and helpmeet. Not one has claimed the woman's equal right to face villainous saltpetre, or risk dismemberment by harbour mines.

I believe this to be because woman prefers this old relation. I believe that if man were willing she would always maintain it; that it depends upon him whether she returns to it permanently or not. I believe that her modern attitude is not of her own choosing—that man has thrust that attitude upon her. For the oldest of all empires is that of man; no royal house is so ancient as his. The Emperors of Japan are parvenus of the vulgarest modernity in comparison, and the claims of long descent of every sovereign in Europe shrivel into absurdity beside the magnificent antiquity of this potentate. Since the very beginning of things, when our hairy progenitor fought for mastery with the megatherium, andscratched pictorial epics upon his victim's bones, the House of Man has reigned and ruled, descending in an unbroken line from father to son in direct male descent. His legitimacy was always beyond dispute; his divine right to rule was not even questioned, and was buttressed against possible criticism not only by the universal concurrence of all religious and philosophic opinion, but by the joyful loyalty of the whole body of his female subjects. Moses and Zoroaster, St. Paul and Plato all bore witness to his supremacy, and the jury of women brought in a unanimous verdict in his favour without calling for testimony.

Women yet living can recall a day when they forgot their pain for joy that a man-child—heir to that famous line of kings—was born into the world. They can remember a time when their own greatest claim to consideration rested upon the fact that they were capable of perpetuating the royal race. They recollect a period when even from his cradle the boy was set apart to be served with that special reverence reserved for those whose brows are bound with the sacred circlet of sovereignty—when a particulardivinity did hedge even the meanest male; a tenfold essence being shed about all those who were of the House of Aaron.

Why then—since all this is of so recent existence, since man's rule was founded so deep on woman's loyalty—has he been swelling the melancholy ranks of Kings in Exile? For that he has ceased to reign over woman does not require even to be asserted. It is self-evident.

When was this amazing revolution effected? Who led theemeutethat thrust man from his throne? It is a revolt without a history; without the record of a single battle. Not even a barricade can be set up to its credit, and yet no more important revolution can be found in the pages of the oldest chronicles. So venerable, so deep-rooted in the eternal verities seemed the authority of man over woman that the female mind, until the present day, never doubted its inevitableness. Indeed, as is the case with all loyal natures, she was jealous for the absolutism of her master, and was quick to repair any such small omissions as he himself might have made in the completeness of his domination. All of hersex were trained from their earliest infancy to strive for but one end—to make themselves pleasing to their rulers. Success in the court of man was the end and aim of their existence, the only path for their ambition, and no other courtiers ever rivalled these in the subtle completeness of their flattery. Man's despotism, of course, like all other tyrannies, was tempered by his weaknesses, but while woman wheedled and flattered and secretly bent him to her projects she did not question his real right to govern.

Here and there through the past there arose a few scattered pioneers in recalcitrance. One of the first to deny the innate supremacy of the male was a woman who herself wore a crown. Elizabeth Tudor had a fashion of laying heavy hands upon her rightful lords whenever they displeased her, and she appears to have rejected the whole theory of feminine subordination. John Knox—strong in the power of the priest, whose sublimated prerogatives man had skilfully retained in his own hands—could and did dominate Mary Stuart even upon the throne, but when he blew from Geneva his "First Blast of the TrumpetAgainst the Monstrous Regiment of Woman," and called all the ages to witness that the rule of a female was an affront to nature that trenchant lady who held the English sceptre forbade him ever again to set foot in her domains, and before he could do so, in his need, he had to digest a most unwholesome dose of humble pie.

Elizabeth, however, was a unique personality and had few imitators. The literature of her day abounds with expressions of supreme humility and loyalty from the one sex to the other. Elizabethan poets deigned to play at captivity and subjection to the overwhelming charms of Saccharissa and her sisters, and turned pretty phrases about her cruelty, but this was merely poetic license of expression. All serious, unaffected expression of conviction, such as was to be found in the religious writings of the time, and in the voluminous private correspondence, which gives us the most accurate description obtainable of the real actions and opinions of our ancestors, never suggested a doubt of man's natural and inalienable superiority, mental, moral, and physical. So undisturbed was this conviction,down almost to our own day, that the heresy of Mary Wollstonecraft gave the severest of shocks to her own generation. So heinous seemed her offence oflèse-majestéin questioning man's divine right that one of the most famous of her contemporaries did not hesitate to stigmatize her as "a hyena in petticoats."

History gives us but one record of a general outbreak. In the thirteenth century the Crusades had so drained Europe of its able-bodied men that the women were forced to apply themselves to the abandoned trades and neglected professions. They shortly became so intoxicated by the sense of their own competency and power that when the weary wearers of the cross returned from the East they were at first delighted to discover that their affairs were prospering almost as well as ever, and then amazed and disgusted to find the women reluctant to yield up to their natural rulers these usurped privileges. Stern measures were necessary to oust them. Severe laws were enacted against the admission of women into the Guilds—the labour organizations which at that period governed allthe avenues of industrial advancement; and the doors of the professions were peremptorily slammed in the women's faces. Such episodes as these, however, were detached and accidental. Female treason never dared unrebuked to lift its horrid head until within the present generation.

The emancipated new woman has various methods of accounting for the humbling of this hoary sovereignty. Some find it only a natural concomitant of the general wreck of thrones and monarchical privilege—in other words, that it is but one phase of advancing democracy. By some it is supposed that in this Age of Interrogation man's supremacy, along with all other institutions, has been called upon to produce an adequate reason for being, and producing no answer that seems satisfactory, he has been summarily forced to abandon pretensions which rested merely upon use and wont. It is said by some that woman has been examining with coldly unprejudiced eye the claim of man to rule, has been measuring his powers against her own and has not been daunted by the comparison. The more noisy declare that shehas stripped him of his royal robe and that, like Louis XIV., minus his high heels and towering peruke, she finds him only of medium stature after all; that she has turned the rays of a cynical democracy upon the mystery encompassing his Kingship and refuses to be awed by what she sees there; that it is because of this she begins to usurp his privileges, thrust herself into his professions, shoulder him even from the altar, and brazenly seating herself on the throne beside him she lifts the circlet from his brows to try if it be not a fit for her own head.

The weakness of all such explanations is that they do not take into account the fact that woman is not by nature democratic. Whatever political principles the occasional or exceptional woman may profess, the average woman is in all her predilections intensely aristocratic;—is by nature loyal, idealistic, an idolater and a hero worshipper. Strong as the spirit of democracy may be, it could not by itself alone in one generation change the nature of woman. The explanation must lie elsewhere.

In the language of a now famous arraignment—"J'accuse" man himself.

No ruler is ever really dethroned by his subjects. No hand but his own ever takes the crown from his head. No agency but his can wash the chrism from his brow. It is his own abdication that drives him from power—abdication of his duties, his obligations, his opportunities. Ceasing to rule, he ceases to reign. When he ceases to lead he wants for followers, and the revolt which casts him from power is only the outward manifestation of his previous abdication of the inward and spiritual grace of kingship. When man ceased to govern, woman was not long in throwing off the sham of subjection that remained.

Like other subjects, woman required of her master two things—panem et circenses,—bread and circuses. When the industrial changes brought about by the introduction of machinery put an end to the old patriarchal system of home manufactures, man found it less easy to provide for his woman-kind—more especially his collateral woman-kind—and without any very manifest reluctance he turned her out into the world to shift for herself. Here was a shock to her faith and loyalty! The all-powerfulmale admitted his inability to provide for these sisters, cousins, aunts, and more distant kin who had looked up to him as the fount of existence, and had toiled and fed contentedly under his roof, yielding to him obedience as the natural provider and master. Woman went away sorrowful and—very thoughtful.

This alone was not enough to quite alienate her faith, however. Woman was still, as always, a creature of imagination—dazzled by colour, by pomp, by fanfaronade. She was still a creature of romance, adoring the picturesque, yielding her heart to courage, to power, to daring and endurance—all the sterner virtues which she herself lacked. The man of the past was often brutal to her—overbearing always, cruel at times, but he fascinated her by his masterfulness and his splendour. She might go fine, but he would still be the finer bird. When she thought of him she was hypnotized by a memory of gold, a waving of purple, a glitter of steel, a flutter of scarlet. He knew that this admiration of hers for beauty and colour was as old as the world. From primordial periods the male has recognizedthis need of the female. The fish in the sea, the reptile in the dust, the bird in the forest, the wild beast in the jungle are all aware of their mates' passion for gleaming scales, for glowing plumes, for dappled hides and orgulous crests of hair. They know, they have always known, that no king can reign without splendour. Only man, bent solely upon his own comfort and, it would seem, upon the abandonment of his power, deliberately sets himself against this need of the female, which has become imbedded in her nature through every successive step up in the scale of evolution. He alone fatuously prides himself on the dark, bifurcated simplicity of his attire, intended only for warmth and ease and constructed with a calculated avoidance of adornment. To avoid criticism he has set up a theory that a superior sort of masculinity is demonstrated by the dark tint and unbeautiful shape of garments (as if the fighting man, the soldier—who is nothing if not masculine—were not always a colourful creature); and chooses to ignore or resent woman's weakness for this same gold-laced combatant, and for the silken, picturesque actor.

"J'accuse" the man of abandoning his mastership and becoming a bourgeois in appearance and manner through a slothful desire for ease. There can hardly be a question that Louis le Grand's red heels and majestic peruke were uncomfortable and a bore, but his sense of humour and his knowledge of men were such that his bed curtains were never untucked until his lion's mane had been passed in to him on the end of a walking stick, and was safely in its place. He could imagine how unimposing the King of Beasts might be innégligé. He knew that to be reverenced one must be imposing. Louis the Unfortunate found it far less tedious to abandon stateliness, and work wigless and leather-aproned at his locksmith's forge, while his feather-headed queen played at being a dairy-maid at Trianon, forgetting that the populace, which had submitted humbly to the bitter exactions of the man who dazzled them, seeing the bald head and leathern apron would get abruptly up from its knees and say: "What! submit to the pretensions of a locksmith and a dairy-maid—common folk like ourselves—certainly not!"and proceed to carry their sovereign's suggestion of equality to the distressingly logical conclusion to be found at the mouth of the guillotine.

"J'accuse" man of carrying further this democracy of sex by adding rigid plainness of behaviour to ugliness of appearance, forgetting that a woman, like the child and the savage, love pomp of manner as well as of garment, and that what she does not see she finds it hard to believe. Every wise lover soon learns it is necessary to reinforce the tenderness of his manner by definite assurances of affection several times in every twenty-four hours. Then, and then only, is a woman sure she is loved.

How can she believe man heroic unless he use the appearance and manner of the hero?

Sir Hilary of Agincourt, returning from France, found his lady from home, and he and all his weary men-at-arms sat there—mailed cap-à-pié—throughout the entire night until she returned to welcome them home and receive their homage. What if at other times Sir Hilary may have been something of a brute? Lady Hilary, flatteredby this fine piece of steel-clad swagger, would, remembering it, forgive a thousand failures of temper or courtesy.

When El Ahmed held the pass all through the darkness while his women fled across the desert, and his foes feared to come to hand grips with him, not knowing he stood there dead,—propped against the spear he had thrust into his mortal wound to hold himself erect—there was no female revolt against the domination of men who were capable of deeds that so fired women's imaginations.

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