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to be divorced, continue to live with him, and suffer him either to desert you or to assault and brutally ill-treat you." And (4) either party should be entitled to a divorce where the other has incurred a sentence of five years' penal servitude. A WOMAN'S VIEW.

The same subject is discussed from two very opposite points of view in the North American Review for June, by Miss Elizabeth Bisland, and in the Free Review for July, by Mr. Dunton. Miss Bisland, whose paper is very brief, says a good many things which are worth while bearing in mind. She starts from the principle that the maternal instinct of woman has been the greatest factor in the evolution of civilisation. The natural instinct of the male parent is to dine off his offspring, whereas the female instinctively defends her young, and has been painfully endeavouring throughout the ages to wean her mate from indulging in his cannibalistic propensities at the expense of his own offspring. Miss Bisland says:

To effect this result of an equal care and affection for the offspring, all the energies of women have been bent for ages. She has fought polygamy with incessant hatred; not only for its injury to herself, but for its constant menace to her children. The secret strings of the woman's heart are wrapped about the fruit of her own flesh, but the desire of the man is to the woman, and this desire she has used as a lever to work her will not consciously, perhaps, not with reasoned forethought, but with the iron tenacity of blind instinct. Reasoned will may be baffled or deflected, but water can by no means be induced to run up hill; and so while woman has been apparently as fluidly yielding as water-to be led here and driven there according to the will of her master-she has stuck to her own ends with a silent persistency that has always tired out opposition at last. She has, like Charity, suffered all things, endured all things; she has been all things to all men. She has yielded all outward show of authority; she has submitted to be scoffed at as an inferior creation, to be sneered at for feebleness and shallow-mindedness, to be laughed at for chattering inconsequence, and to be regarded as a toy and trifle to amuse man's leisure hours, or as a dull drudge for his convenience, for ends are not achieved by talking about them. All the ages of masculine discussion of the Eternal Feminine show no reply from her, but to-day the world is a woman's world. Civilisation has, under the unrelaxing pressure of endless generations of her persistent will, been bent to her ends. Polygamy is routed, and the errant fancy of the male tamed to yield itself to a single yoke. She has, "with bare and bloody feet climbed the steep road of wide empire," but to-day she stands at the top-mistress of the world. Man, with his talents, his strength, and his selfishness, has been tamed to her hand. The sensual, dominant brute with whom she began what Max Nordau calls "the toilsome, slow ascent of the long curve leading up to civilisation," stands beside her to-day, hat in hand, her lover-husband; tender, faithful, courteous, and indulgent. This is the conquest that has been made, the crown and throne achieved by the silent, uneducated woman of the past.

VICTORS THROUGH SACRIFICE.

Miss Bisland is aghast at the thought that there should be any women, new or otherwise, who would propose to fling away the instrument by which they have achieved this miracle. A woman, she holds, can only conquer by sacrifice, and must gain her ends by submission, not for her own sake, but for the sake of her children:

However the modern woman may swagger about her individuality, may talk of her "spiritual needs," and deplore the stupid tyranny of man who demands sacrifices from her in return for his tenderness, protection and support, the fact is not changed, that however much she may be man's intellectual equal, er spiritual superior, the exigencies of motherhood put

her at his mercy. She can not be entirely self-dependent except at the cost of the welfare of the offspring.

WHAT IS A MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE?

Mr. Dunton, who writes in the Free Review, takes exactly the opposite view of the question. In an article noticing Mrs. Fawcett's attack upon Grant Allen's "Woman Who Did," he maintains that the present marriage system is the most immoral thing in the world:

The rights are on the husband's side, the permanent and exclusive right to sexual intercourse with the wife, and the right to the control of her children; and on the wife's side, the right to maintenance for herself and her children at the husband's expense. She has not the exclusive right to sexual intercourse with her husband, the reason probably being that this would leave a preponderance of rights on her side and would raise the question, "What does the woman do that she should be maintained by the man?" Really, one holding a brief for marriage should be the last to mention these shameful rights which no man or woman not utterly destitute of refinement would dream of enforcing. If this marriage contract is not immoral, there is no such thing as sexual immorality. What is the marriage certificate whose possessor considers herself so far above an Herminia Barton, if not a Government license to practice as a courtesan on a limited scale with certain regulations as to the form of remuneration and other details? The leading principle of free love, that men and women should not be forced to live together where they wish to live apart, even though they once upon a time were willing to cohabit, has such primâ facie reasonableness about it, that the burden of proof must rest with its opponents.

The only argument which he will allow in its favour is that the interest of the offspring which proceed from it demand that it should be indissoluble.

How the Poor Sempstress is Ousted. ment, which is creeping up to social grades once thought THE steadily rising tide of precariousness of employhigh and dry beyond its reach, is illustrated in Mr. Sparrow's Quiver article on woman labour in London:

It is difficult to say whether it is a good or bad thing that making fine underclothes is passing almost entirely from the hands of the poorer class. It is a striking sign of the continuance of bad times, that the wives and sisters of clerks and tradesmen undersell their starving sisters, and snatch the bread from their mouths to put it into their own. Not only fine sewing, but making the fringes for toilet-covers, the braiding of aprons, night-cases, etc., the jet beading for trimming, even the buttonholing of cuffs and collars is eagerly besought by numbers of trim and neatly dressed persons in reduced circumstances; while the heads of such establishments as that they are besieged with applications for similar work from governesses past their prime, and teachers whose teaching days are over, but who hope to eke out a pitiable existence by a means not hurting to their pride. So. it is gradually being taken from the working woman, and given to those with whom, at least it is presumed, there will be less risk of disease or infection. Hence the working woman is driven to manual labour.

Two articles in Our Day will be read with interest by many who are unfortunately outside the range of its circulation. The one is that in which the Rev. H. P. Douglas gives a résumé of the teaching of Dr. GeorgeD. Heron, the sociological Christian whose books are beginning to obtain a hearing on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Douglas says of Dr. Heron:

He has given a distinctively Christian interpretation to historical, political, theological and social doctrines which have never before received it.

The other is Mr. W. B. Murray's character sketch of Dr. Parkhurst.

LEADING ARTICLES IN THE REVIEWS.

SOME IMPRESSIONS AND OPINIONS:

BY M. ALPHONSE DAUDET AND OTHERS.

IN the Humanitarian for July Mr. Sherard records a recent interview which he had with Alphonse Daudet after his return from London. The great French novelist makes several suggestions which will be read with interest by his innumerable admirers in all parts of the world.

THE INDIVIDUALITY OF LONDONERS.

M.

Naturally, he began by asking about London. Daudet was not impressed by the immensity of our population, and that for a reason which is very interesting:

In London everybody is so active, so occupied, that the vastness of the crowd does not impress one with that sense of awe which proceeds, for instance, from inert, inactive crowds, or from masses of people all moving in one direction, lancées en bloc. These are the crowds which impress, which frighten. In London, so strongly is the individuality of each human atom marked, that in contemplating the individual one overlooks the agglomeration.

POVERTY IN LONDON AND PARIS.

Asked as to the gulf between the rich and the poor in Paris and in London, M. Daudet said that in both cities the gulf between the carriage folk and those who never rode could not be bridged. Carriage folk live a life between heaven and earth, and know nothing whatever of life on this earth. In Hyde Park they do not seem to notice the bison-like backs of the poor outcasts lying on the grass as they emerge from the rich green of the lawn.

I cannot say that I observed, in comparison with Paris, whether the appearance of the crowds in the streets of London was a prosperous one or the reverse. I did, however, notice,

as I leaned forward in my hansom, certain caricatures of wretchedness, more monstrous than any to be seen in Paris, for in London the livery of the very poor seems to be patched together out of remnants of luxury ragged shawls, shapeless hats with drooping flowers or plumes, tattered parasols, gaping high-heeled boots. In Paris, poverty seems to wear its true livery more than is the case in London.

HEREDITY.

After London, Mr. Sherard asked M. Daudet what he thought of heredity. He said he thought there was something in it, although not as much as Ibsen made of it. M. Daudet wrote a play once, called "L'Obstacle," in order to answer this terrible theory of hereditary madness, under which it is sought to crush certain people. Environment, excessive conglomeration, has an unhealthy influence, and too much misery withers and degrades. Dire poverty does not fatally drive to crime, but its influence is always an evil one. and environment, M. Daudet went on to speak as Having thus disposed of heredity requested upon early marriages.

AGAINST WOMEN WHO DID.

He approves of them provided they are not reckless or foolish, and strongly opposes the concubinage, that parody of marriage which is openly recognised in France. The following passages may be commended with advantage to Grant Allen and others:

In a life of concubinage both the woman and the man have used up all that is good in them, and leave it without illusions-those charms of life. almost invariably had a past, she has come from other lovers The female concubine has into the parody of marriage. her, has been jealous of the past, and anxious as to the present. Her spouse has suspected He has had to pardon, to overlock many things. His respect for womankind has been diminished if not abolished. As to

37

the woman, it is even more absolutely impossible for her to be happy in true married life.

M. Daudet went on to state his absolute disbelief in the possibility of reformation for the woman who had fallen. He thinks that a life of concubinage degrades à man, but much less than a woman, for women are regulated by a law of receptivity which makes their condition quite different. M. Daudet is almost brutally frank in asserting the prejudices which make this condition so different.

KEEP GIRLS IN THE DARK!

When Mr. Sherard asked him whether the principles of physiology should be taught to boys and girls, M. Daudet answered that boys did not neel to be taught, because they learned everything from the schools, the streets, and the newspapers; but he continued :

As to young girls-no. I would teach them none of the truths of physiology. I can only see disadvantages in such a proceeding. These truths are ugly, disillusioning, sure to shock, to frighten: to disgust the mind, the nature of a girl.

Which surely is all wrong, and that M. Daudet should apparently be incapable of seeing the concrete blasphemy against human nature which is involved in such an assertion, is a curious illustration of the extent to which the conditions of which he speaks are capable of distorting the vision of one sex when judging the other.

MORE DRUNKENNESS BECAUSE LESS WINE.
From the vice of incontinence to the vice of intemper-
ance the transition is easy. M. Daudet expressed his belief
that drunkenness is largely on the increase in France
owing to the ruin of vineyards. Drunkards were genial and
gay in France formerly, now they are sad and wicked;
instead of drinking wine they swallow filthy absinthes
and vermouths, etc. In London it seemed to him that
drunkenness was confined to one part of the town, and
that part was Whitechapel, where one night everybody
he met seemed to be under the influence of liquor.
M. Daudet seems to have been unfortunate in his visit to
Whitechapel.

ANOTHER VIEW BY THE CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES.
The Rev. W. J. Ward, the Chaplain to the Forces,
writes in the same number of the Humanitarian a paper
on "How to Deal with the Purity Question."
boldly dissents from M. Daudet's doctrine that girls
should be kept in ignorance and handed over to the
Mr. Ward
tender mercies of what he euphemistically calls the
delicacy" of their husbands. Mr. Ward says:-

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Let no one imagine that the new knowledge would do away
with modesty and innocency in man or woman.
innocency does not exist in the nation, if by innocency we
mean the absolute theoretical ignorance of the sexual life. Or,
This so-called
if it does, it exists only in the case of a few girls of the middle
and higher classes; and to these knowledge would prove a
priceless boon, for it would in many cases prevent girls throwing
themselves away upon heartless libertines at the bidding of
ambition, or of parents seeking for a good alliance. There
would be few indeed to walk over the precipice, if they realised
beforehand the consequences of their act.

But what is the state of affairs now? The children do
know with an imperfect and evil knowledge of their own
discovering. Bred in the dark heat of semi-ignorance and
imagination, monstrous growths of lasciviousness infest the
minds of boys and girls at school. The mother would blush to
know her boy's tales to his fellows; the father to hear what
his daughter hears at school. Amongst the lower classes
child immorality is rampant, and boys of fourteen and fifteen
-aye, and girls too-are often hopelessly immoral.
young man thinks it manly, healthy, natural, necessary to be
The

impure. The girl looks upon it as a rightful pleasure, only denied her hypocritically in public; a venial sin, unless found out. Neither know that all the best and healthiest life of the nation is, and lives, pure. So foul are their surroundings they would not believe it, if you told them.

But let them be educated from childhood in the knowledge of their coming bodily powers and trusts. Let them learn what in due course there will be committed to them, when their maturity and position warrant it, namely the solemn duty and privilege of continuing the life of the nation, and adding to its well-being and greatness by becoming the parents of healthy children. Let them be taught that to violate this trust, to break this confidence reposed in them by God and the nation alike, is so foul a crime, that it should make the man or the woman that commits it an outcast from society, and a felon and a traitor in the eyes of all. Let this be, and the nation's blood will no longer be poisoned at a thousand inlets.

Meanwhile for the sake of the adults of the present generation let the County Councils and other authorities arrange for free lectures, to be given by doctors and others known to be competent in every town and village. Let women lecture to women, and men to men. This would prove an inestimable benefit to the nation at large.

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"Young men erroneously suppose," writes W. Winwood Reade, "that there is something voluptuous in the excessive déshabille of an Equatorial girl. On the contrary, nothing is so moral and repulsive as nakedness. Dress must have been the invention of some clever woman to ensnare the passions of the men" ("Savage Africa," p. 546). In one savage community "only harlots clothe themselves, and they do so in order to excite through the unknown; " among others clothing is worn exclusively at festivals and dances, the object of which is to stimulate the passions of the men. Genuine "innocence" has an incomparable charm which mere pretenders cannot hope to rival; and appreciation of this dower has led men to require in their brides an infantine ignorance of the most important of physiological functions, which has done immense injury in other ways, even when unsatisfied curiosity has not been goaded into surreptitious exploration, nor incomprehensible feelings found vent in rash experiments fatal alike to integrity of body and purity of mind. The artificial repression which such claims impose often defeats its own object, where it has seemed most successful; for conjugal initiation in these cases is apt to be attended with painful emotions, with disgust and aversion rather than reciprocated passion.

It is easy to see what bearing this has upon the question of the carefully protected ignorance which Alphonse Daudet desiderates for young women.

THE POSITION OF TURKISH WOMEN. MR. RICHARD DAVEY in the Fortnightly Review gives an account, apparently based on a close observation, of the present position of Muhammedan women in Turkey. He asserts roundly that the vast mass of the thirty millions of Turkish women are little better than animals. This is brought about by many causes, among which he gives a high place to the facilities of divorce:

The case with which a divorce can be obtained in Turkey leads to many abuses, and creates a state of affairs not unlike our prostitution.

Most of the beggar women in Constantinople—and they are innumerable-are divorced women whose frequent exchange of husbands has brought them to the level of the most unfortunate

of their Christian sisters. They have got to be too old to find even a fellow beggar to mate with, and usually end their days in abject misery and blindness in some deserted cemetery. Fuad Pacha said many years ago that the emancipation of Turkey must begin by the emancipation of Turkish women, and I hold that the question of the East is the question of

women.

If the question of the East is the question of women, that is only another illustration of the fact that the East is very much like the West. Turkish women, therefore, would gain enormously if they were able to exercise the same rights and privileges which are enjoyed by their sisters in the West:

Only the master of the house can bear witness against his women, and in this year of grace 1895 it is absolutely necessary in Turkey for two women to give evidence as witnesses against a man; the declarations of one female are not legal.

He quotes a correspondent, who says:

You have no idea of the superstition which reigns among the Muhammedan women throughout the entire empire. Nothing is done without consulting a witch, a hodja, a seer, a fortune-teller, or a palmist. These rascals-many of whom are very interesting on account of the traditions they still possess of the dark arts of bygone civilisations-literally rule the harems. They are the doctors and the confessors of the

Women.

Among other evils which prevail, he calls special attention to the slave traffic which is carried on in all parts of the Empire

Although, during the past thirty years, the slave markets of Constantinople and of the other large Turkish cities have been formally closed, the slave traffic, especially in females and children of both sexes, is still active to-day. It is carried on surreptitiously, especially at Tophané, immediately under the eye of his Imperial Majesty, whose palace of Yildz dominates this quarter of the city, and also in certain obscure, but wellknown places, in the heart of Stamboul. I have a letter before me from Miss J. an English lady, who is at present a governess in a Turkish family. It is dated as recently as March 10th. She says: "Since I last wrote to you I have had a very painful experience. Last week some six or eight very pretty little slave girls, mostly daughters of Bulgarian refugees, the eldest about fourteen years of age, were brought to this house for sale."

MRS. GRUNDY IN BREECHES;

OR, A MALE MRS. LYNN LINTON.

IN the Fortnightly Review for July there is an article which the Editor has done well to publish if only to revive the drooping faith of any desponding persons in the persistent survival of moral courage in our midst. The article is entitled "Against Oxford Degrees for Woman," and it professes to be written by Professor Thomas Case, M.A. Probably there may be a real Professor Thomas Case, but in reading the article it is difficult to shake off the suspicion that this name is but a nom de plume for Mrs. Grundy masquerading in male attire, or still more awful thought, that Mrs. Lynn Linton has a counterpart of the other sex. Professor Thomas Case, therefore, whether he be Mrs. Lynn Linton reincarnated as a man, or Mrs. Grundy in a bifurcated garment, deserves the gratitude of all of us, who are too apt from time to time to forget the kind of nonsense that a quarter of a century since was regarded as incontrovertible argument against the admission of women to the universities.

PROFESSOR T. C. SHAKES HIS HEAD. Professor Thomas Case tells us he has been a teacher in the university for more than a quarter of a century, and in that capacity he desires to offer his humble opinion that the admission of women, even to University examinations

remains a dangerous experiment. He admits that he has not been in the position to ascertain the facts, but he submits in a case of this kind, rumour is almost as bad as facts, and if there are reports of dangers and difficulties arising from the presence of women at Oxford, then their very presence is a peril. Translated into blunt Saxon it comes to this: if any one has a mind to tell lies about women at Oxford or elsewhere, their presence should be objected to. This gives an unfair advantage to the liars. Even University Professors, before they put about rumours which they submit are almost as bad as facts, should at least take the trouble to ascertain the truth of what they are talking about. This Professor Case has not done, but he can speak about certain things, even although he has never had anything to do with women's education in Oxford.

WHERE HAS THE CHAPERON GONE TO?

The following passage is delicious:

By private arrangement many, perhaps most, Oxford Professors and Lecturers admit women to their lectures. At first, the chaperon was a feature. One day, at the beginning of a term, I saw a crowd of young ladies waiting outside the gate of a college, leaning against the main gate and blocking up the wicket. They were waiting for their chaperon to take them into the college for a lecture. As the lecturer was popular, many young men came to the gate and had literally to elbow their way through the crowd of young women. Finally, the chaperon arrived breathless, and in the girls went with her. It did not strike me as a seemly scene at the gate of a college for men. But I should like to ask, in my innocent ignorance, whether the chaperon is any longer required at all before girls go into a lecture in a college, or at the schools, or at the museum; or is she sometimes present, and sometimes conspicuous by her absence?

Surely it is not difficult to answer this question. The unseemly scene which thrills Professor Thomas Case with such horror would never have occurred if the girls had been allowed to go in without the presence of a chaperon, who ought never to have been dreamed of.

NOT TRUE, BUT THAT'S NO MATTER PROFESSOR T. C. But there are worse horrors to afflict the soul of the Professor, not, however, of very recent occurrence, as may be seen from the following revival of the old story about Edipus:

Some years ago an undergraduate, in an undergraduate's paper, referred to the presence of women at a lecture on Sophocles in an Oxford College. The play was "Edipus Rex," who had the misfortune to marry his own mother. The point of the undergraduate was that the young ladies present smiled at the equivocal allusions to the double relationship of mother and wife in which Jocasta stood to Edipus. All Oxford was scandalised. The fact was denied, and the undergraduate was rusticated. Now, the question of fact is not the point. The point is that a mixed audience of young men and women on such an occasion is an uncomfortable thing.

Here again we have Mrs. Grundy in excelsis. The question of fact we are told is not to the point-evidently not to Professor Case; but the ordinary humdrum British public will see in the fact that the undergraduate was rusticated for bearing falo witness against his sisters, that there is no evidence to prove that men and women could not listen to a lecture on Sophocles with perfect propriety.

WHAT ARE WE NOT COMING TO?

Undaunted, therefore, by the fact that his facts are only exploded libels, Professor Case proceeds, holding up his hands in holy horror:

I knew intimately a young man who, during his whole career, worked for Honours in Natural Science day by day in

the same laboratory and in close communion with several young ladies. He was also invited to the hall for ladies, in which one of them lived. Now, it is pretty plain that in the future a hall for ladies, conducted on those principles-which are rather smart than old-fashioned-might some day develop into a match-making institution, without the consent of parents. But I do not pretend to understand those mysteries. My point is that in Oxford, even as it is at present, young women not only sit with (or without?) chaperons at lectures lasting an hour, but stay in and move about laboratories for hours every day with young men, necessarily unattended. Not long ago I heard a young man and a young woman engaged in conversation in a room darkened for the purpose of studying optics. 66 TO PUT IT PLAINLY."

How truly awful! Even this is not all. Professor Case some years ago succeeded, worse luck, in preventing women attending medical examinations in Oxford, but he ruefully deplores the fact that he could shut women out of medical examinations, but was not able to prevent their studying biology. Listen to the lament of poor Mrs. Grundy:

They extend to biology, in which the study both of organs and their functions involves delicate details, while the whole subject of artificial, natural, and sexual selection is, to put it plainly, nothing but breeding. Yet the Schools of Anatomy and Physiology are at this moment open to women, who accordingly not only go in for the Examinations by leave of the University, but also, without the leave of the University, can attend lectures and work in laboratories at the Museum, at the will of each individual teacher.

A DEAR OLD RIP VAN WINKLE.

The funny thing about it all is that Professor Case seems to imagine that the fathers and mothers whose sons and daughters are studying at Oxford did not know anything about this until he mounted on the house-top of the world and proclaimed in their ears the awful and terrible facts that young men and young women met each other in Oxford as if they were civilised Christians. instead of being immured apart from each other as if they were still in the Zenana stage of development. He says:-

This state of things is, I imagine, unknown to the public. They fancy women immured in the halls, and admitted only to Examinations by the University. They do not realise the freedom, at the pleasure of lecturers, with which women enter the colleges of men, attend lectures, work in laboratories, and hear and study with men things quite proper for men alone, but unedifying to a mixed class of young people.

The only consolation which he used to have was that the number of woman students might be few, but alas, they are increasing and multiplying, and as the women multiply they become more and more unmanageable. No wonder the poor man falls aghast and piles up the agony in this fashion :

We may even go further and predict that, as the University becomes more and more mixed, as young men and women are more and more mingled in lecture-rooms, laboratories, and social gatherings, at the arbitrary will of individuals beyond the control of the University, and as the public begins to know more of the real state of things, respectable parents will dread to send their daughters, or even their sons, to this kind of Middlesex Club, into which the University will degenerate as the numbers of men and women become more and more equal. As for the University, it could not prevent the New Woman. from coming, nor manage her when she arrived.

Of course, it is only human nature that many young women will come out of curiosity or mere amusement, or with no definite aim or motive, or with the mischief of youth. They will, therefore, be more difficult to manage with young men ; not only from their greater quantities, but also from their lesser qualities.

Professor Thomas Case then proceeds to reckon up the young women of the present day, and in fact to deliver judgment concerning the sex in general, in a fashion which is refreshing and entertaining. After summing up their various deficiencies, he says:—

At any rate, that unfortunate product of our times, the modern novel, proves that women possess a facile and fatal flux of words, a feminine delight in all the foolish sentimental affectations of modern literary style, and a childish belief that a novel is the proper place for discussing all the most difficult problems of morals and politics, religion and the universe, mixed up with the latest fashions, and the unimportant affairs of unimportant people.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that as women must be pure vessels, they must not be allowed to enter a university which for twenty-five years has enjoyed the benefit of Professor Thomas Case's inspiring and elevating presence. He says:

As

Morally, a Women's University is still more necessary. God has not found "some other way to generate mankind," it is vital that a woman should be a pure vessel. On this point it would be immoral to mince matters. A wife is much more the mother of a child, both before and after its birth, than the husband is the father. The law of divorce, in condemning her more easily, is only following the inexorable law of nature, which absolutely demands her purity. Her life, her character, her thoughts, her mind, follow as so many consequences. Here lies the fallacy of Plato, when he argued that men and women ought to have the same education, because they only differ in sex. They only differ in sex, but this difference involves so many necessary consequences as to make all the difference, and to require differences in education, intellectual and moral. Of intellectual differences I have spoken. Two differences follow in moral education. First, a man may hear and read many things which a woman should not. Secondly, it is disgusting that they should hear and study obscenities together. It is a lamentable fact that girls now read books which make their mothers blush. But that they should in lecture-rooms study Aristophanes and Juvenal, in laboratories anatomy and physiology, with young men, is disgraceful and unnecessary. In a Woman's University I feel sure that its government would have to decide what studies are fitted for female morality, and would find that many books proper for men were improper for women, and many subjects were proper for women to study with women which would be improper for women to study with men.

Here, indeed, is fize old crusted port.

CROMWELL'S WOMEN FOLKS.

MISS SHEILA E. BRAINE writes an interesting article, illustrated with many portraits, on the "Women of the Cromwell Family" in Good Words. She says:-

It would be interesting to trace how far the women of his family influenced Oliver Cromwell. One asks what the mother was like who trained his early youth. Six of his sisters attained maturity; he had a wife he respected, daughters whom he tenderly loved. What share had they in throse wild and deep ambitions which shook an entire realm to its foundations? The ladies of the Cromwell family possessed a dignity and strength of character, joined, in some cases, to great sweetness of disposition, which speaks well for the feminine portion of our race at that period. Nor were they by any means lacking in spirit. A granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, highly indignant at the way a fellow-traveller had been abusing her famous relative, demanded a private interview as soon as the coach stopped, and challenged him to fight. The irate dame obser manage a sword, yet she cou living, and so clearly meant

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was tendered without delay. Another spirited lady, a descendant of the Protector, filled the post of waiting-woman to the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II. The story runs that, while engaged in the performance of her duties one 30th of January, the Prince of Wales came into the room, and sportively remarked: For shame, Miss Russell; why have you not been at church, humbling yourself with weepings and wailings for the sins on this day committed by your ancestor?" To this Miss Russell answered with composure: "Sir, for a descendant of the great Oliver Cromwell it is humiliation sufficient to be employed as I am, in pinning up the tail of your sister!"

The courageous lady who wished to fight a duel with her fellow-traveller was so remarkable and eccentric a character that she deserves more than a passing mention. Some forty or fifty years before the occurrence of this episode, Cromwell sat discussing important affairs of State, and holding a little girl between his knees. Some of the members of the Privy Council objecting to her presence, he said curtly: "There is not a secret I would trust to any of you that I would not trust to this child." Upon this "highly commended" granddaughter Oliver's unique personality seemed to have stamped itself with peculiar force. Little Bridget Ireton was extraordinarily like her famous relative; and although he died before she was ten, she never forgot his teaching.

Such a sturdy little mortal was bound to develop into a strong-minded woman; and Bridget's maturity did not belie the promise of her spring. She married Mr. Thomas Bendysh of Gray's Inn, and Southtown, Yarmouth; but we are not told much about her until after she became a widow. One of her three biographers, Hewling Luson, thus describes the eccentric dame: "She was certainly, both without and within, in her person and in her spirit, exactly like her grandfather the Protector. Her features, the turn of her face, and the expression of her countenance, all agree very exactly with the excellent pictures I have seen of the Protector in the Cromwell family....She had strong and masculine sense, a free and spirited elocution, much knowledge of the world, great dignity in her manner, and a most engaging address. The place of her residence was called the Salt-Pans (near Yarmouth). In this place, which is quite open to the road, I have often seen her in the morning stumping about with an old straw hat on her head, her hair about her ears, without stays, and when it was cold an old blanket about her shoulders, and a staff in her hand; in a word, exactly accoutred to mount the stage as a witch in Macbeth. Yet if at such a time she were accosted by any person of rank or breeding, the dignity of her manner and politeness of style, which nothing could efface, would instantly break through the veil of debasement which concealed her native grandeur; and a stranger to her customs might become astonished to find himself by a princess, while he was looking at a mumper." This hardy lady worked among her men at the Salt-Pans like one of themselves. At the close of the day she ate a hearty meal, took a nap, then dressed herself in civilised raiment, and set off to pay visits. Her best dress was a thick grey silk, with a black silk hood or scarf; when hoops came into fashion, nothing would induce her to wear one. With a fine disregard for the petty restrictions of society, Mrs. Bendysh started to make her calls at nine, ten, or eleven at night; with the result that she frequently arrived at her friends' houses as they were going to bed. So far from retiring discreetly, she usually stopped till It says much for the affection and esteem with which the worthy lady was regarded, that no one thought of remonstrating. She was in truth a most entertaining person; nothing could be more racy and interesting than her conversation, particularly when she got on the subject of her grandfather. She would then, no matter how late the hour, insist upon the family singing a psalm, after which she mounted her old mare and departed homewards. As they both became advanced in years the mare was persuaded, though with difficulty, to draw a chaise, which the old lady drove herself.

one.

Absolutely fearless, and mindful neither of bad weather nor lonely roads, the venerable dame jogged placidly home, loudly singing a psalm or one of Dr. Watts' hymns.

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