Part 5 (1/2)

Man e, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity

Blessings upon all the books that are the delight of childhood and youth and unperverted e and which it is so wholesorowth of selfishness and egoiseur,' 'does not reht, the first books which he relished and devoured? Has never an old dusty cover of soht back to your ain, in fancy, seated in the green ht, where you read it for the first ti, and noble pictures, have been prepared for the modern child!--pictures, which time and all the damp and cold of after life cannot obscure, to those who have enjoyed thee of childhood and youth, and early enius, whose cothens and purifies the heart

But the young are lamentably debarred, in these days of excessive, and non-educating, learning, fro syination, which the best books of the past and of the present ht exert upon them Their school tasks and exa worry about '_ es, and universities, there is no ti which is done, is largely perfunctory Speaking fro experience, I do not think that one out of twenty of university students, even of those who elect courses in English Literature, has read and assile work This is a state experience Many have studied literature, as the phrase goes, but have no literary education, however well they may have 'passed' in the kind of work done And such students pursue the study of elocution, with a sufficiently pitiable result They have never had awakened in the the life of a work of genius, and consequently can do nothing in the way of vocal interpretation They cannot give through the voice, however well trained itas I do, in the iested, I must, as a natural consequence, believe in the co-education of the sexes, in the opening to woone, and in the removal of all obstacles to the exercise of the powers inherent in 'distinctive wos will do hest sense of the word, that is, the spiritual sense, than all other agencies combined A true h the mutual influence of the sexes upon each other Theyin the fa up to and through the university Boys at hoirls without affectionate brothers, are at a disadvantage At no less disadvantage is either sex when separated froe, or university For it is only at this period of their lives, and in such relations, that they can be fitted, if fitted at all, to walk the world together,

yoked in all exercise of noble end

Theof his finer spiritual insight, owesclearness to the feminine element of his nature; and unless this element be developed in due proportion to the intellectual eleht and wrong, justice and injustice On this side of his nature, the rays of an unclouded woenial vitality, and thus ior, and subtlety to the intellectual side 'You cannot think,' says Ruskin (Sesa on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashi+on It is the type of an eternal truth--that the soul's armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails' On the other hand, woree to which she is perhest interests, to sympathize with all his noblest aieneration of the world That which is especially distinctive in her nature, reater breadth and solidity of intellectual culture; and this can beafforded the opportunity to ht, and to have a larger share with him than she has hitherto had, in the fruits of the world's intellectual and nition and realization which are near at hand, of wohest good of a hu, will have an especially beneficial influence in the s of all the relations of human life There are nuenerous s, and cheerfully according those rights, but who are, in enerous and inconsiderate toward their wives, and that, too, without being in the least aware of it They would be very much surprised if any one were to tell them so And why is this? It is, no doubt, in endered by the whole past constitution of society--a feeling that has becorained as to be an unconscious one--that woman has peculiar duties which she hts, apart from these peculiar duties, depend upon the arbitrary will of e, areto the influences of their home-life When a father shows no estimate of the her current subjects of interest, nor consults her about the weightier ards her (and this he may do in all kindness) as one whose sole business it is to look well to the ways of her household, the son's ideal of wohest Happy indeed is he whose home education has been such that 'faith in womankind beats with his blood' That, by itself, is a liberal education

Fears are entertained by er co-operation with man in the affairs of the world, will tend to unsex her, to render her _races which have hitherto been regarded as constituting the chief charlory of her sex She may, indeed, have less of mere _femineity_, but, in its stead, she will certainly have more womanliness, in the best sense of the word (by virtue of which she is a specially co power in the world), if she is reared and educated with the other sex, and allowed her full share in all the great interests of huious Under such circu

A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command,

than if she be excluded from those interests and lead the restricted life she has ever been obliged to lead by the conventionalities and regulations of society

The great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini, 'the prophet and spiritual hero of his nation,' and, indeed, of the whole modern world, wrote in 1858: 'Seek in woman notof your intellectual and moral faculties Cancel from your mind every idea of superiority over her You have none whatever

'Long prejudice, an inferior education, and a perennial legal inequality and injustice have created that apparent intellectual inferiority which has been converted into an argument of continued oppression Like two distinct branches springing fro from the common basis--Humanity There is no inequality between the men--diversity of tendency and of special vocation

'Are two notes of the same musical chord unequal or of different nature?

Man and woman are the two notes without which the Human chord is impossible They fulfil different functions in Humanity, but these functions are equally sacred, equally ht of God which He has made the soul of the universe

'Consider woman, therefore, as the partner and companion, not hts, your aspirations, your studies, and your endeavors after social amelioration _Consider her your equal in your civil and political life_ Be ye the two hus that lift the soul towards the Ideal we are destined to attain'

William Lloyd Garrison, in an introduction to 'Joseph Mazzini, his life, writings, and political principles,' writes:

'Mazzini's concern for the rights of man was never, on any pretext, in a purely o he inculcated the equality of the sexes in regard to all civil and political irand impulses which led hieneric respect for woman amounted almost to sanctitude: it was the erant in purity, devout in aspiration, and self-sacrificing in love'_

It has never been a ret to me that so little is known of Shakespeare's personal history--the circumstances of his outer life

Of what his interior life e can have no doubt Itwithin itself all the great characters, men and wo-cap of Fortunatus, I would wish to knohat manner of woman, in all particulars, was Mary Arden, the poet's mother The ifts to the world, have been the greatest, and , have oftener, no doubt, been ifts, to their mothers than to their fathers

The radiant shapes of the women of Shakespeare's Dramas certainly had their source in the fe weibliche_, of his nature, and this element was as certainly, I cannot but think, derived from, and quickened by, his mother In ithout doubt, his earliest play, Love's Labor's Lost, Biron, I am quite sure, expresses Shakespeare's own opinion of the peculiar power of women (A IV S

III):

From woht Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world

This was as certainly Shakespeare's own opinion about woman as what Biron says (A I S I) was his own opinion about study:

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books

These earthly Godfathers of heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixed star, Have no hts Than those that walk and wot not what they are