Part 3 (1/2)

I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge of what has been and to your feeling of what should be. You cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armour by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fas.h.i.+on. It is the type of an eternal truth-- that the soul's armour 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 honour of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely lines--I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of England:-

”Ah, wasteful woman!--she who may On her sweet self set her own price, Knowing he cannot choose but pay - How has she cheapen'd Paradise!

How given for nought her priceless gift, How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, Which, spent with due respective thrift, Had made brutes men, and men divine!” {24}

Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout the whole of human life.

We think it right in the lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is to say, we think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do but partially and distantly discern; and that this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when the affection has become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how ign.o.ble this is, as well as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that marriage,--when it is marriage at all,--is only the seal which marks the vowed transition of temporary into untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love?

But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding function of the woman reconcilable with a true wifely subjection? Simply in that it is a GUIDING, not a determining, function. Let me try to show you briefly how these powers seem to be rightly distinguishable.

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the ”superiority” of one s.e.x to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give.

Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary.

But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle,--and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise; she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial;--to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and ALWAYS hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home--it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household G.o.ds, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,--so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a n.o.bler shade and light,--shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea;--so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold gra.s.s may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; and for a n.o.ble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.

This, then, I believe to be,--will you not admit it to be,--the woman's true place and power? But do not you see that, to fulfil this, she must--as far as one can use such terms of a human creature--be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise--wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the pa.s.sionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service--the true changefulness of woman. In that great sense--”La donna e mobile,” not ”Qual pium' al vento”; no, nor yet ”Variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made”; but variable as the LIGHT, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may take the colour of all that it falls upon, and exalt it.

(II.) I have been trying, thus far, to show you what should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for these?

And if you indeed think this a true conception of her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her to the other.

The first of our duties to her--no thoughtful persons now doubt this,--is to secure for her 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.

There are two pa.s.sages of that poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from all others--not by power, but by exquisite RIGHTNESS-- which point you to the source, and describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, but the last is the one I wish you specially to notice:-

”Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown; This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own.'

'Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse; and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle, or restrain.'

'The floating clouds their state shall lend To her, for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see, Even in the motions of the storm, Grace that shall mould the maiden's form By silent sympathy.'

'And VITAL FEELINGS OF DELIGHT Shall rear her form to stately height, - Her virgin bosom swell.

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, While she and I together live, Here in this happy dell.'” {25}

”VITAL feelings of delight,” observe. 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 not 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 of effort-- which will not be indelibly written on her features, 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.

This for the means: now note the end.

Take from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly beauty -

”A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet.”