in my mind that Mr. Matthews, in his ignorance of the nom de plume, was thinking of taking a certain Mr. John. Oliver Hobbes as that second wife.

Let me here say something in connection with that terrible tirade that was launched forth by a certain Molly Elliott Seawell, a writer herself of novels of no common order. She said: "If all that women have ever done in literature were swept out of existence the world would not lose a single masterpiece." I was amused the other day by a lady's remark that it was our own president, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, who was the author of this attack. "Do you think," I said, when I had recovered from laughter sufficiently to speak, "that the president of the National Council of Women could say such things without suffering impeachment?"

I am not discouraged by such remarks, although I think it absurd to say that women have produced no masterpieces; yet I am perfectly willing to admit that they have produced no genius of the very highest rank- the rank of Dante, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Goethe. But do you know the same thing precisely has been said of American literature? Is it not interesting that they say both of American literature and of woman's literature, if I may coin the phrase, that they have produced some clever and delightful writers, but no genius of the very highest rank? Mr. James Bryce has a good deal to say of this in his work on America, and he puts a good deal of the onus on the shoulders of our hurried, interrupted, unrestful life; but he thinks that America in time will settle down to create the highest kind of literature. That time will come when America (and the same thing is true of woman) shall no longer feel the necessity of proving her right to be.

I am cheered by the words of Emerson:

The scholar of the first age received into him the world around, brooded thereon, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out

from him truth and poetry.

*

*

Well, woman is still in her first age. She is slowly awakening from a long sleep, and is just beginning to look about her and see the world around. She is still brooding thereon. I am sure the time is not far distant when she shall translate life into forms of perfect truth and poetry.

WOMAN IN THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS ADDRESS BY ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS OF NEW YORK.

BY MARY LOWE DICKINSON.

READ

The place of woman anywhere has rightly been called a sphere. You can not escape from her. The farther you walk away from her, the nearer you are to meeting her on the other side. Leave her side, she will confront you in the first novel you take up to divert your mind from her.

There can be no intellectual republic where women are concerned; they are always tyrants. Yet those who have been most tyrannical over the passions, the emotions, the love, the thoughts of men have not been stabbed in literature by their victims, but immortalized. Is it not curious that while Cæsar has a Brutus, Charles I. a Cromwell, and George III. a Washington, Laura should have a Petrarch, Beatrice a Dante, and Shakespeare's inconnue his magnificent sonnets?

"Know thyself;" it is a great and wise command; but do not hope to know yourself by looking into your own heart. Some one must look for you; nay, not for you, because an outsider, however clear-sighted, is liable to mistakes, but with you, that the point of view may be neither his nor yours alone. Columbus did more than discover America to Spain; he discovered her to herself. She would never have known what she was, what she was capable of, had she not come in contact with the resources of the Old World. Equally in literature, woman has never shown that she understands herself; she has never attempted to analyze her own nature. Some Columbus has always done that for

her; always revealed her not only to the world but to herself.

Homer rose in reverence as she passed, humbled by the sense of her power even when she used it willfully; Petrarch exalted her, Dante adored her, Shakespeare loved her; Henry James studies her, Maupassant thought her wicked but interesting, Tennyson tolerated her; Thackeray graciously refused to look beneath the surface of her gentle little heart when it seemed to be gentle; Scott heroined her, Wordsworth commended her, Byron hated her; Hawthorne admired her, Crawford pities her, Howells photographs her; Goethe was sorry for her, Punch caricatures her; Burns smiled at her, Moore succumbed to her, Dickens laughed at her, Heine married her at last; Tolstoi plants her in sunshine and waters her with his tears, only to tear her up by the roots in the end; Victor Hugo idealized her, Bourget dissects her; Balzac understood her; but in literature as in life no man has ever ignored her, and in literature as in life I seek in vain for any man whose opinion of her could be characterized by saying simply that he "liked her." There are no Platonic friendships in books, as there are none but dangerous ones in life.

Oddly enough, woman has never tried to exalt, or excuse, or wonder at, or caricature, or hate, or photograph, or study, or dissect herself. Even when she tries to paint an ideal woman she fails lamentably; her Romolas, and Dinahs, and Dorotheas are horribly cold, and fall infinitely below the incomparable pictures men have drawn of idealized or idolized women. She excels in philanthropic theories, when she cares to espouse the cause of an "Uncle Tom;" she writes graceful verses, charming letters, beautiful descriptions, admirable essays, very clever criticism; but when it comes to novel-writing we find a curious psychological problem as men have understood women better than women understand themselves, so women have understood men, not better than men understand themselves, but better than women understand women. Charlotte Bronté

is not half so clever in trying to make us admire her poor and homely Jane as in winning our interest, without trying to, for Rochester; George Eliot's large, calm, generous portrait of the beautiful Romola pales before her minute drawing of the degenerate Tito. This is less in quantity than the success of men in delineating women, because woman has not been permitted until lately to know one-tenth part as much of the masculine mind as men know of the feminine heart. But, that their power of observing and understanding men is constantly increasing, that they will eventually excel in drawing men as men excel in drawing women, is shown by the marvelous cleverness of many recent novels, notably those of Mrs. Clifford and the lady who calls herself John Oliver Hobbes.

True, the method will probably always differ; the man dissects, the woman evolves. Tolstoi takes Anna Karénina at her zenith and traces her degradation; George Eliot takes Tito as a seedling and develops him in baleful atmosphere, until the crisis is his fall; Thackeray takes Becky Sharp at her best and lets her degenerate; Charlotte Bronté takes Rochester at his worst and permits him to improve. And what is the comparative result? The man's portraiture of woman is finer than the woman's portraiture of man. An artist said recently of the scenery in Alaska and Norway: "You like Norway best, because there you sail into the scenery, while in Alaska you only sail along it." So we may say that men have sailed into women's hearts from time immemorial, while women have only sailed along men's minds, on the very outermost edge. Yet assuredly the time will come when, understanding each other better, they will not like each other less; and woman's place in literature may yet come to be that of a superlatively correct observer of the folly, the chivalry, the weakness, the nobleness of men, as man's place has so long been that of the cleverest, most subtle, most keen, most generous observer of the woman herself.

ORGANIZATION AS A MEANS OF LITERARY CULTUREADDRESS BY CHARLOTTE EMERSON BROWN OF NEW JERSEY. READ BY JULIA PAULINE LEAVENS,

The title that has been assigned me brings two things that appear to be widely separated into close and dependent relationship.

We have two questions to answer: "What does literary culture involve and signify?" and, "What relation does it sustain to organization?"

Exact definition, where definition is possible, is always valuable; but there are some things too delicate, too intangible, too ethereal to be expressed in formal words. Who can define the fragrance of a rose, the sentiment of a national flag, the charm and power of music, or of a great painting like Millet's Angelus? Such things bring a depth of meaning to our souls that we can not define, and that no language except that of the heart can express.

This is true in part of what we call literary culture. Here definition does not define, and yet analysis may approach definition. What is literary culture? It involves several elements. It implies familiarity with literature, or at least with some of its general departments. In our day, when books are multiplied as the forest leaves, no one person can read all that has literary merit. Selections must be made, otherwise a superabundance of reading will lead to superficiality of knowledge. One may cultivate literature in poetry, another in fiction, another in history, another in criticism, another in language, and so on to the end, but every person of literary culture must be a student of literature. Nor will hurried reading answer the purpose. Works of literary merit must have thoughtful, discriminating, critical study. Those who read books as swallows skim the air are inviting literary dissipation rather than culture; and there are too many readers of this class.

Mental discipline and the full control of one's own powers constitute very largely all true culture. The