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What is, in fact, proposed is that women, while continuing to do all their own work, shall take an increased share in that of men—or, if the expression be preferred, in that which is open to both men and women. The obvious result would be that the work which women only can do must be increasingly neglected. How much and how grievously it is already neglected is too clear from the terrible statistics of infant mortality, and probably also from the evidence of physical degeneration in adults. The health and vigour of the nation are at the present time too obviously suffering from the extent to which, in the wage-earning classes, at any rate, women have become breadwinners.' I do not, of course, mean that this is the only cause of the evils in question, but that it is one of their main causes can, I think, hardly be denied. Whatever tends to throw on women more than their natural share of the burdens and struggles of life must act unfavourably upon the children.

I know that this and other kindred evils are very naturally brought forward as showing the need of more feminine and motherly influences on public affairs. As to the need of such influence I most earnestly agree. It is the very ground of my whole protest; for if women are to exercise it they must before all things remain feminine and motherly. Call them away from home-from their own comparatively limited but (perhaps for that very reason) deeper and more lasting range of influence, into the wider arena of political strife and of the multifarious daily business of the outer world-and you may find that you have forfeited the very qualities of which you were in search; or, rather, you may gravely impair that which, thank Heaven, can never be entirely forfeited.

For what is it that makes or keeps women feminine and motherly? Why do we expect to find in women a tenderness, a gentleness, and a detailed consideration and understanding of the needs and sufferings of others, along with a rapidity and sureness of instinctive judgment and a delicate sense of moral fitness, not to be found in anything. like the same degree in men of the same social position and opportunities? Because they are born so, will be the reply of most people. Largely, no doubt, the difference is innate, and depends upon conditions beyond our ken or control. To that extent I thankfully believe it to be indestructible. But we want, for the purification and elevation of our national life and action, not the irreducible minimum of womanliness. We desire, not the lowest, but the highest and purest type of womanhood to be preserved and perpetuated amongst us. Who can doubt that this depends largely upon social and educational influences, and upon the nature of the feminine ideal we accept as distinct from, and complementary to, the masculine ideal?

The purest and noblest type of womanhood is assuredly-and

'No one who has worked among the poor can have failed to notice the discreditable readiness of many men to live upon the earnings of their wives.

this is what, I fear, we are in some danger of forgetting-largely developed by the experiences and habits of motherhood and sisterhood, whether actual or ideal. That is to say, women are, or have been, from their childhood trained to bestow a very large proportion of their time and attention upon the art of family life. From the doll stage onwards the habit of watching over and cherishing the helpless, and especially the suffering, is exercised and encouraged. As long as the lot of wife and mother-or, as an alternative, that of Sister of Charity and Mother in Israel-was regarded as the ideal destiny for women generally, the virtues of patient, self-forgetful devotion and tenderness, with all the accompanying qualities which we call specially womanly, were fostered by every surrounding influence. But it is idle to suppose that these qualities will flourish equally well in an atmosphere of ambition for success in professional or political careers. Dare we say even now that there is no falling off in the appreciation by girls of the beautiful possibilities of domestic life? Can we honestly say that the free and applauded entrance of women on careers more or less public has not lessened their readiness to undertake the heavy, though precious, burdens of maternity?

If it be true, as we can scarcely doubt, that some such grievous perversion of natural feeling is going on, the causes of it must certainly be far deeper and wider than can be reached by any electoral arrangements. But the existence of a serious danger is reason enough for avoiding everything which may in even a slight degree tend to aggravate it, and this particular danger must obviously be increased by whatever tends to exalt political and public careers in the estimation of women as compared with the exercise of motherly and specially feminine influences.

It is not from any wish to exclude women from taking their share in public life that we dread the suffrage. We desire, while preserving the old domestic ideal, to extend its action beyond the narrow limits. of particular families, and beyond the actual relation of parent and child, so as to purify and elevate the whole of our national action through its influence-by its own methods. To this end our first care must be to see that girls shall still be trained to motherliness from infancy, and that all our expanding views of education, all our modern facilities for extending it, shall be regulated by this distinct aim. Maternal instincts may, indeed, be innate in all good women, but it does not follow that their right development is independent of training. Appreciation and admiration alone are not sufficient to preserve them. The art of family life, like all other arts, needs steady practice and study. It consists in the continual application to all the details of daily home life of those principles of goodness, beauty, and truth which underlie all right action, but the working of which, by continual practice in that which is least,' comes to be more instinctively recognised, if less intellectually grasped, by the half of

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humanity whose duties lie nearest at hand, and in whom the sense of duty has a more or less conscious root in physical instincts. It does not seem possible to cultivate merely intellectual faculties to the utmost without in some degree sacrificing the swiftness and clearness of moral instincts. At any rate, the womanly gift of instantaneous moral judgment must greatly result from the fact that in family life observation, quickened by affection, supplies so much practice in the rapid and almost unconscious application of ethical standards, apart from the slower process of reasoning out the connection between welfare and virtue. That slower process is doubtless quite as important as instinctive judgment, and, indeed, is indispensable as a support and corrective to it. My point is that if we begin to aim at qualifying women to take a share in public life on the same level with men, not to say-which Heaven forbid !—in opposition to or rivalry with them, we shall run a serious risk of blunting the weapon with which a more domestic training so wonderfully furnishes them, for promptly dividing truth from error, reality from pretence, purity of motive from self-seeking, however plausible or disguised. By the keenness and especially the detachment of feminine judgment many a man is kept from sinking to the level of worldly or professional or business codes of conventional morality. While home is a sanctuary, the world of business and politics is continually open to a purifying and elevating influence. I thankfully believe that this influence can never be wholly lost. I gravely fear that it may be lowered by the throwing down of all protecting barriers between women and the rough outer world.

The sanctuary which every rightly ordered home must be is not a mere school of housekeeping and ornament, but a centre of calmness and peace, from which the greatest and deepest as well as the minutest things of life wear an aspect not less but more impressive than they can have in the market or the street. I would have women, to the extent of their ability, study and form a deliberate judgment upon the concerns of their country and of the world at large. If their sheltered position as home-builders naturally prevents their becoming familiar with the precise working of political machinery, their view of the goal to be aimed at may be all the more distinct. From their bird's-eye point of view the end may be kept well in sight, while the means by which it is to be worked out are chiefly left to the men who are in the thick of the battle. From such a central but retired position- true to the kindred points of heaven and home-may radiate influences far stronger as well as purer than could ever be exercised by comrades in the field. Where all are striving, none can be umpire. I would have an Egeria in every house to act not only as inspirer, but as moderator and guide of the patriotic zeal of the men whose hearts, after all, she holds in her hands.

We cannot eat our cake and have it. The world will move, and in striving for new virtues and new powers for good some of the old defences must, I readily acknowledge, be left behind. Yet no one will deny that the process, however beneficial, is a dangerous one. It may be that my apprehensions are exaggerated; it may be that there are real needs, imperfectly visible to my eyes, for some further alteration of our traditional balance and adjustment of functions as between men and women. It may be that the gains of such readjustment will outweigh the losses, and that new virtues may be developed by it without serious injury to the old loveliness of life. But it cannot be right that such readjustment should be made or stimulated on any but the broadest grounds of national expediency, or without the hearty concurrence of the half of the nation most immediately concerned.

CAROLINE E. STEPHEN.

AN ATTEMPT TO REVIVE THE

DRAMATIC HABIT

A BRIGHT October morning with a touch of hoar-frost on the trees, only just beginning to don the livery of their autumn sleep, and there in the Abbey of Westminster, at the foot of Henry the Fifth's tomb, four red roses and a card-' In Memory of Agincourt.' Again, a month later, a wintry November evening, dimly outlined in the gathering shadows of the smoke and fog-three women praying at the shrine of the Confessor, on St. Edward's Day. Once more, a summer afternoon in a provincial town of England, after a matinée of one of Shakespeare's historical plays, I overheard an old countryman addressing the manager: God bless you, sir, for showing us them 'istory plays; they have taught me 'ow we English became what we are and 'ow we can keep so.'

These are but few of the many incidents that point to the awakening of the people to a larger view of the possibilities of our national life. That awakening seems to seek expression in the desire to render service to Britain, whether in the sphere of art or of literature, or of national defence. As an incentive to such service there seems a growing desire on the part of the people to listen once more to the stories our fathers have told us, of wisdom in council and mighty

deeds in war.

In conjunction with this national feeling comes the craving of the artist to connect his work with the traditions of a time when ugliness in our towns was the exception and not the rule. In the words of Ruskin and of Morris, the Renaissance of art in England, which seems about to come upon us, is springing partly from a recognition of the necessity of taking up the story of the wonder and the beauty of life where our fathers left off. Our system of education has to learn the limitation of the term ' utility,' that the measure of a thing's value is not solely how much money can be got out of it.

Drama, of all the arts, is in a sense the most obviously national and popular, as a means for expressing the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and aspirations of all classes of the community. It borrows from all the other arts, and therefore can stimulate and arouse interests

Vol. LXI-No. 360

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