Seldom in any

honour, who then does most to rectify and restore. case is the want of smoothness her fault. When the satirist, on hearing it said that marriage is the end of a man's troubles, asked "Which end?" he did not bethink himself that shadows in conjugal life, as well as everywhere else, come of Light, and that the shadows men are most familiar with are those which are cast from themselves.

The work which makes good wives in private life is very easily defined. In the aggregate it consists in whatever rests upon love and kindness, and is done in sincerity and unselfishness, according to the requirements of the time and place, and thus includes every possible form of activity that can be played forth either in word or deed on behalf of another. The useful and the ornamental, the plain and the pretty, the poetic and the prosaic, the commonplace and the rich and glorious, are alike indispensable, and are needful in equal proportions to the prosperity and the comeliness of the world. The wife who

scrubs the floor, or bakes the bread, or in any other way looks after the useful, so that her work is done in whole-heartedness and fidelity of purpose, is in her own way quite as admirable an illustration of the helpmate as the artist or the musician who delights her husband with pen or pencil; and if the latter can do no more, the former is the more admirable of the two.

When a man of sense is inclined to ask a woman to become his wife, the first mental question he puts to himself is, Does she make a good daughter, revering her parents, and to the extremest of self-denial? and the second is, Does she possess the economic virtues? How many a home is cheerless and uninteresting, not through any fault or neglect on the part of the wife, but purely through her deficiency in the supreme attributes summed up in that one capital little phrase! Great efforts are made nowadays to promote the "higher education" of women, and all concerned may be congratulated on their success. Were classes for a little more "lower education," a little extra discipline in the fine arts of thrifty and salubrious household management, promoted with corresponding energy, perhaps we should hear less frequently of household overthrow. Not that the economic virtues are the beginning and the end. The work of a true wife is always peculiarly distinguished by its method and completeness being such as cannot be got from a stranger for money. The married woman, that is to say, who deserves the incomparable title, is not the one who never does anything but what the servants could do quite as well in her absence, or that professionals would undertake on receipt of a fee, or who at all events fails

to give to the results of the work quite a new, and without her, an impossible complexion. The best things, thank God, of every kind, are those which no money can buy; whence it is that His own most precious blessings are granted, He tells us, "without money and without price." Whatever may be the particular shapes of the work done by a loving wife on behalf of home, obviously the true value of the work is intrinsic, and not contingent on other people's fancies, which as likely as not may be ungenerous. No living things are so much misunderstood as women; for the simple reason that men are prone to think of them from a low and often unworthy platform of observation, considering themselves competent to criticise and decide, when they have not yet learned how to appreciate, or what is almost as hard, how to see, the art of accurate seeing, imagined by the superficial to be so easy, being in truth one of the last acquired, and then only through much effort. How frequently are women, whose hearts are full of tender love, put down as deficient in affection because they happen not to behave in this way or that, or to do so and so ! To be demonstrative is by no means incompatible with sincere affection, and a warm temperament cannot be otherwise; but we may remember that the balm of Gilead trees have no scent, and that the most beautiful crystals are those which are discovered only upon fracture of the containing pebble. If her primary characteristic, lasting through life, be sedulousness to please, we may rely upon the faithfulness and the single-heartedness of the entire spirit and disposition, and accept, as perfectly trustworthy and generous, whatever particular activities may be the outflow, though not precisely abreast of one's own desires. A special feature in almost all distinguished women who have incited men to what is virtuous and exemplary, has been that with all their powers of mind and frequently high attainments, with all their dignity and right to command, they have never failed in courtesy, the preservation of good temper, and the use of mild and softening forms of speech; and have erred rather on the side of endurance, forbearance, and forgiveness. None are so well aware as the women who do real service to the world, that when once the courtesies of life are ignored or neglected there is little room for kindly influence; not to mention the overstepping of the bounds of civility-the act specially characteristic of the incurably vulgar-since when these are once violated, never any more is there possibility of return to the sweet graces of primitive tenderness and affection. Gentleness, the eldest born of peace, sooner or later infallibly engenders love, and the one who is loved can always easily

govern, so that peace becomes in truth the essential of the enduring dominion which all women covet so passionately, but which so many women go exactly the wrong way to obtain. Is it not assured that "to the counsellors of peace there is joy," and that "in the abundance of peace there is delight"?1 The woman to whom dispute and contentiousness are on first principles repugnant may always be trusted. Leave her to her own ways. They are sure to work right. Nothing in married life is more important to men, as a matter of self-interest alone, than that they should always give their wives, when honourable, ample credit for good intentions and undeviating sincerity; content to let them take their own courses in all matters where any kind of principle having reference to the higher or emotional part of our nature, or to good management, is concerned, since not only are women much misunderstood, but so constituted that no man will probably ever be able to understand them. It is only the strongly characteristic qualities of the two sexes that are intelligible, reciprocally, to the opposite one. Very curious is it, at the same time, though perfectly natural, that these strongly characteristic qualities should be cognizable only in minor degree to their actual possessors. No man can thoroughly appreciate manliness; no woman can thoroughly appreciate womanliness. Happily there is a meeting-ground common to both. The symmetry of their natures, the true bond of equality, consists in the simple and indivisible Christianity which, bridging over all differences, and reconciling all discords and disparities, unites them alike for time and eternity. Girls think it is grand to have the admiration of a lover. The glory of a woman's life, so far as relates to men, consists not in this, but in the solid confidence of her husband; in his reliance on her intelligence and truth, in his esteem for her piety and household virtues. She gains her position by constant cultivation of what she perceives he most values in what is worthy of their mutual regard. Valued in turn herself, no thankfulness, no fidelity, no solicitude, no intensity of devotion is superior to that of a faithful wife. Whether married or single, there is nothing more wonderful in creation than the respondence of women. Chameleon-like, whatever fair colour may be cast upon them, they reflect it, giving for every kind word, and for every little sign of love and confidence-and woman's eye is quick to catch the slightest-full measure of return, "pressed down, and running over." Upon a woman never falls in vain a smile from the man she loves. The more

1 Prov. xii. 20; Ps. xxxvii. 11.

that he loves her the more he is loved again, and both find as the result that in the truest and deepest love consists the truest and profoundest wisdom. Women who anticipate matrimony must remember not alone that enduring dominion comes only of gentleness, but that the golden rule of the art of pleasing is to cultivate to the utmost the delicate faculty far more distinctively feminine than masculinecalled "tact" the nice and skilful doing of exactly what is right at the happy moment, and which, being always on the alert, never forgets. It is desirable, however, that women, married women especially, should remember the twofold character of tact, which consists not only in doing what is right and wise at the happy moment, but in sedulous care not to run counter to strong prejudices. A woman of tact never draws too largely upon the small stock of patience men can usually lay claim to, and never seeks to effect her purpose by trying to drive; and if by inconsiderateness she has excited him to the use of intemperate language, she is quite as careful not to retaliate. Mild and generous-hearted men are prone to exaggeration of language as well as rough and heartless ones. If a woman allows herself to say anything sarcastic or violent in reply, miserable results must almost certainly ensue. Men frequently forget what they themselves have said, but seldom what is uttered by their wives. They are grateful, too, when they come to reflect, for the forbearance shown to them, conscious often that they are in the wrong, though caring not to confess it.

That we do not seek in these chapters to dwell at greater length than can be helped upon what is ugly and painful in human nature, seeing that there is nothing to gain by the contemplation of it, has already been said. Yet it is impossible at this point to help remembering, with sorrow, that the world contains no small proportion of non-peaceful women, noisy and tempestuous ones, spitfires, scolds, and termagants, women reckless in speech, and offensive and irritating in unrestrained manner, and that these likewise have done work for the world, but with the selfsame difference that pertains to the action of sunbeams and that of tornadoes. Dastardly and infamous as is the crime of "wife-beating," statisticians have yet to reckon how much of it has come of the feminine tongue, and of provoking manners and customs. In this connection may be noted also, with freshening pain, that when selfish, dishonourably ambitious, foolishly jealous, incensed by the contumely or even the success of a hated rival—a case not rare among the vulgar classes-women can show themselves

to be quite as persevering and tenacious of purpose as the pure and gentle are when the heart is given to good and pious things. When a bad-hearted woman is bent upon the vindictive, how insinuating she can be!—how artful, and sly, and deceitful! Once and again, after a quarrel, she has been known to affect to "make it up," simply in order to secure opportunity for administering bitter speeches in celestial accents. Then what in good women is superb foresight and penetration degenerates into low cunning; and then it is that, revengeful as bad men can be, the world is shocked by the discovery that there is no rancour that can be compared to a bad woman's. History supplies many a frightful example-the most revolting perhaps in the hateful and hated Catherine de Medicis, "a serpent in her subtlety, no less than in the venom of her hate, and sometimes even in the treachery of her embrace." In singular accordance of name, if nothing more, stands Catherine II. of Russia, the thirty-four years' dissolute, splendid, scandalous czarina whose hands were stained with the blood of her own husband. How comes it that a woman goes to such terrible extremes in evil? Spending more of their time alone, it would seem, in part, that they brood more profoundly and continuously over cherished ideas, this being true of good women and kindly ideas quite as much as the contrary; added to this, in the evil-disposed, it would appear that with loss of shame there is always growth in recklessness, just as a man of fair birth and education, if he loses caste and character, is more difficult to reclaim than an ignorant clown ;-principally, perhaps, it is that in cases of extreme wickedness there is always more or less distortion of the reasoning faculty, in woman particularly easy. Men, accustomed from their school-days to think rather than to act as women do, primarily from the impulses of the heart, are less liable to abrupt intellectual twists and lesions; and although they may in practice throw virtue overboard, they are still swayed in a measure by the logic of the masculine mind. They hesitate before proceeding to a point which has nothing to offer but punishment and final disgrace. Women, on the other hand, ask no questions, but once abandoned to evil, go as far as it may lead, finding a deadly charm in the excitement, and content with it. The most profitless of all incentives to action is hate, and the most ruinous is revenge; hence we find that it is these two which underlie the worst crimes committed by women, whereas in men the motives to extreme wickedness are always bound up in less or greater degree with some notion of personal advantage.