it can only do by assimilating the elements which contribute to its own individual growth. The process of mental assimilation is carried on by thought, and you may as well expect the barren stone to put forth blossoms and fruits because the rains of heaven descend upon it, and the sun spreads its light and heat around it, as to expect a mind without thought to be enriched or elevated by reading the works of the kings of thought. If Mr. Ruskin seeks only to teach modesty and humility, he is correct; but we cannot admit of any priesthood of thought-it is the great privilege of humanity. And, indeed, Mr. Ruskin tells us as much when he bids us, after having listened to our teachers so that we may enter into their thoughts, to make the yet higher advance-even into their hearts: first, to go there for clear sight, and then stay with them till we share their "mighty passion." He is not afraid of the word passion, or still more abused term "sensation ;" and, in his opinion, it is not less sensation but more we want. Mr. Tennyson's beautiful lines naturally recur to us; we are almost surprised not to see quoted ""Tis life not death for which we pant, 'Tis life wherewith our nerves are scant, People are far too apt to take for granted that passions can only be bad, and are therefore to be ignored or repressed altogether; "an old, mischievous, monkish doctrine," says Mrs. Jameson, in one of her books. "I don't mean to say," she adds, "that principle is not a finer thing than passion; but passions existed before principles-they came into the world with us-principles are superinduced. There are bad principles as well as bad passions. Good principles derive life and strength and warmth from high good passions; but principles do not give life-they only bind up life into a consistent whole. One great fault in education is, the pains taken to inculcate principles, rather than to train feelings." The ennobling difference between one man and another-between one animal and another—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another; and the "essence of all vulgarity lies in the want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity there is a deathful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heartin the diseased habit-in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy-of quick understanding-of all that, in deep insistance on the common, but most accurate term, may be called the tact, or touch, faculty of body and soul: that tact which the mimosa has in trees-which the pure woman has above all creatures-fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond reason, and the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine what is true; it is the Godgiven passion of humanity which alone can recognise what God has made good." Next, Mr. Ruskin insists on no feeling possible to humanity being stigmatised as wrong; it can only be wrong when undisciplined, or expended in a paltry cause; its nobility is in its force and justice. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a juggler tossing golden balls—a mean curiosity, as of a servant prying into his master's business-and an ignoble anxiety betrayed over an idle tale; and there is a noble anxiety watching the fate and destiny of nations-and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand, and the things which "angels desire to look into." It is the narrowness, selfishness, and minuteness of the sensation which Mr. Ruskin sees among us, which is to be deplored; and he has some hard things to say of England as a nation, and how, through the "insanity of avarice," it has become "simply and sternly impossible" for it to understand any thoughtful writing. He calls England "a money-making nation; despising literature, despising art, despising science, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on pence ;" and we must refer those who desire to see how he proves these to be "no harsh wild words" to page 74. It is not our vice, selfishness, or dulness of brain, which Mr. Ruskin laments, but our "unreachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from the true schoolboy's, in its incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no master;" and, though we might find some exaggerations if we followed out the suggestions contained in these pages, we should have a better chance of obtaining a real "advance in life"-in life itself-not in the mere trappings of it. Having established in the first lecture that well-directed moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a power which is, in the truest sense, kingly-a kingship consisting in a stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state than that of others, enabling us therefore to guide or to raise them-Mr. Ruskin proceeds to consider "what special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, may be rightly possessed by women; and how far they also are called to a true queenly power. Not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty, induced by such benignant power, would justify us in speaking of the territories over which each of them reigned as 'queen's gardens.'" "And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far deeper question, whichstrange though this may seem-remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of its infinite importance. We cannot determine what the queenly power of women should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power should be; we cannot consider how education may fit them for any widely-extending duty, until we And there never was a time when wilder are agreed what is their true constant duty. words were spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this question— quite vital to all social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the manly nature-their different capacities of intellect or of virtue-seem never to have been yet measured with entire consent.. We hear of the mission and of the rights of woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights of manas if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind, and of irreconcileable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong-perhaps even more foolishly wrong-is the idea that woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most foolish of all As if he could be errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!" In order to obtain a clear idea of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office with respect to man's, and how their relations, rightly accepted, increase the vigour, and honour, and authority of both, Mr. Ruskin advises us to consult the wisest and greatest men, to appeal to them when our knowledge fails us, and receive the united sentences of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinion. He refers on the point in question, to Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Dante, Chaucer, &c., and bids us notice, at the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes, he has only heroines. 66 Coriolanus, Cæsar, Anthony, stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities; Hamlet is indolent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear,' is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only; Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance-followed, comforted, saved by Rosalind. Whereas, there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose. Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless, conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity. "Then observe, the catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is none. "Observe further, among all the principal figures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman, Ophelia; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence also in proportion to the power for good which they they have abandoned. Such, in the broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, incorruptedly just and pure examples, strong always to sanctify, even when they In Sir Walter Scott's heroines Mr. Ruskin finds endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power; a quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring selfsacrifice to even the appearance of duty; so that it is with him, as with Shakespeare, the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches over or educates his mistress. Mr. Ruskin considers Dante's great poem bears the same testimony, and that if he had time he could show us why Chaucer wrote a legend of good women and no legend of good men, and how Spencer's fairy knights are sometimes deceived and vanquished, but the soul of Una never darkened; and then he asks, "Whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious and idle view of the relations between man and woman; nay, worse than fictitious and idle; for a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible; but this, their ideal of women, is, according to our common idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is not to guide, not even to think for herself! The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter?" Are these great men, Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, &c., &c., merely dressing dolls for us, Mr. Ruskin asks; and then bids us remember, that the buckling on of the knight's armour by his lady's hand was no mere caprice of a romantic fashion, but the type of an eternal truth; and he wishes Coventry Patmore's lines were learned by all the youthful ladies of England. "Ah, wasteful woman! she who may On her sweet self set her own price, How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift, Had made brutes men, and men divine.". There is not much difficulty in receiving thus much, respecting the relations of lovers; but what Mr. Ruskin seeks to impress is the fitness of the continuance of such a relation, throughout the whole of human life; that the reverent tender duty given to one whose affection is still doubtful, and whose character is but partially discovered, should not be withdrawn, when the affection has been freely returned, and the character so sifted that life's happiness has been intrusted. Mr. Ruskin holds that the foolishness of speaking of the "superiority" of one sex over the other is without excuse, for they cannot be compared in similar things, each having what the other has not, and being completed by the other; alike in nothing, the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give. The man's power is active, progressive, defensive; woman's intellect is for arrangement and decision. In considering the kind of education which is to fit her for these, Mr. Ruskin places first and foremost such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health and perfect her beauty ; "the highest refinement of that beauty being unattainable without splendour of activity and of delicate strength; to perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too far, only remember that all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart." She is to have "Vital feelings of delight. There are deadly feelings of delight; but the natural ones are vital, necessary to very life. And they must be feelings of delight if they are to be vital. Do you think you can make a girl lovely, if you do not make her happy? There is not one restraint you put on a good girl's nature-there is not one check you give to her instincts of affection or effort-which will not be indelibly written on her face, with a hardness which is all the more painful, because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded on the memory of happy and useful years full of sweet records; and from the joining of this with that yet more majestic childishness, which is still full of change and promise; opening always, modest at once, and bright with hope of better things to be won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age where there is still that promise—it is eternal youth. Thus then, you have first to mould her physical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, to file and temper her mind with all knowledge, and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural tact of love. All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men; and yet it should be given, not as knowledge, not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel and to judge. It is of no moment as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages, or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted with this science or that, but it is of the highest that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought, that she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws, and follow at least some one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter valley of humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves for ever children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore." Mr. Ruskin then goes on to say that it does not signify for her to know many dates of events, or the position of cities, or the names of celebrated persons; but it does signify for her to enter with her whole personality into the history she reads, to trace the hidden equities of Divine reward, and the "fateful threads of woven fire which connect |