devoted mothers would undoubtedly be spared them.

really at the touch of intelligence that the higher kinds of love arise to beauHow all these powerful citadels of tify human life. Perhaps the simplest error ever came to be attacked at all is way of arriving at a solution of the one of the mysteries of our life, for the problem is to find out what principally more rounded and complete the system stands in its way, and to try little by of evil the less chance one might little to overcome it. First and foresuppose would there be to get outside most among the obstacles are the it and view it apart from the self that cramped ideals of life that are so has been formed under its influence. general, and especially the ideals of That is probably why reforms do married life. It comes to this: that almost invariably come from without a woman has to purchase the gratificaand not from within the circle of tion of her affections at the expense of oppression. It is to human genius- her whole nature, and very often the the power of standing without, and man has much to suffer also from the bringing, as it were, an intelligence narrowing influences of a conventionfrom another sphere to bear upon the ally arranged marriage. problems of this one-that we forever The more love there is in the world, owe our salvation. Once the word the better for the world, provided it from above has been spoken, the seed does not confine the sympathies within of reform has been sown. For the the circle of the home. Two sides of injured and the insulted the deliverer the nature required to be satisfied and has come. developed: the intellectual and the How is the existing crisis to be got emotional; but the present world over without injury to women and the offers a stern alternative: One or the race from the too great strain of com- other, which will you have? The petition upon their undeveloped system? woman of to-day should answer without also the sacrifice of those "both." Thus an entirely new ideal feminine qualities which are good to of marriage will be a condition of the keep, and without the artificial division new order, if that new order is to of women into two ranks-the one to embrace the best reforms that can be remain single and to devote themselves made, and yet to conserve the best to work outside the home, and the qualities that the past has brought other to be relegated to the fireside and forth. In this new ideal the words the nursery? To be satisfied with this "duty" and "right" would give place last solution would be to abandon our to "freedom" and "equality," while brightest hopes and ideals, and probably (almost as a consequence) a large family to court defeat by the antagonism would be regarded as a bitter wrong, which it would set up between the above all to the woman, but also to the intelligent and the affectional sides of children and to society. Little is to woman's nature-an antagonism which be hoped while the majority of women should be avoided at all hazards, as it are doomed to this burden of incessant would tend to create two somewhat child-bearing, a system which, if it gruesome types of womanhood, the were not so common and therefore so one all mind and no heart and the unconsidered, would seem to be the other all heart and no mind. In the long run, too, heart, would even tend to disappear altogether in favor of a stupid instinct; for, after all, it is

cruelest and most degrading bondage under which a human being can suffer; one which makes motherhood into a blight and a curse, and stands in the

way of all hand-in-hand advancement their cries may be faint but they will for men and women. On these points be heard and caught up by those who of course arises a network of questions are more happily placed, those who are and problems, each requiring separate moving forward to the front of the discussion; though they should not be battle and conquering by endurance discussed without regard to the intimate and sacrifice new ground for themway in which they hang together and selves and their sisters. Such women affect each other, the difficulty of the will sow the good seed which will ripen. solution of one generally being the into a harvest of well-being to be chaotic state of all the rest.

reaped hereafter, and the day is coming. when their spiritual children of future generations will rise up with one accord and call them blessed.- Westminster Review.

But of this we may be assured: that every step we take in the improvement of our general social condition, makes just that much easier the question of the future activities of women, and vice versa. The spread of education, while conducing to the solution of that question, will aid in the dispersion THE DULLNESS OF MUSEUMS. of prejudice, and in effecting such a fundamental improvement in our social arrangements as shall remove from the shoulders of the worker, be he in what so-called "class" he may, the burden of excessive labor for inadequate payment.

Oh! the dullness of museums!-I speak on behalf of the General Public. Full of interest to the expert, there is no concealing the fact that to the general public a museum, of whatever nature, is most intolerably dull, as I Such a state of affairs may be hard know by personal experience. To me, to attain, but surely with the help of for example, a collection of blue china goodwill, knowledge and patient exper- is dullness itself. I do not understand iment it is not unattainable; and if it blue china, and its peculiar beauties were attained, if the present crazy race are lost on me, while the experts for wealth were slackened by the caunot sufficiently feast their eyes on removal of the fear of poverty and the it, and are longing to nurse every teaabsurd mammon-worship of the cen- pot and stroke every plate in the collectury, women, married or single, might tion. then safely take their part in the Can anything be duller than a outside work of the then more brotherly collection of coins when viewed by and gentler world, which their pres- those who are absolutely ignorant of ence would tend always to make more numismatics, know next to nothing of brotherly and more gentle. Such is modern and nothing at all of ancient the ideal to be worked for and hoped history, and can only appreciate a coin for. Meanwhile many women and the by its intrinsic value. larger-hearted men will strive to realize it, and in the process, a nearer and nearer approach must always be made to the type of the ennobled humanity of the future.

All can make some effort toward the ideal, even if their own lot is cast in the deepest of the old dungeons;

They would perhaps admire a doubloon or a fiveguinea piece, but would think very little of a daric. A botanical collection would indeed be the driest of dry subjects to those who know nothing of botany, nor would an outsider be very much more interested if he were to walk for an hour in a botanical garden

where the plants were absolutely grow- Zoological Gardens themselves soon ing. Stay for a while in a geological pall upon the sight, and visitors abanmuseum, and watch the demeanor of don the beasts and gather round the those who pass through it. Putting band, tired even of watching the aside the actual students of geology, elephants and camels carry successive who can be detected at a glance, there loads of children along the path and is not one in a hundred who is one back again. There is, however, one whit wiser on leaving than on entering, exception, namely, "feeding time,' nor, indeed, who has tried to be wiser. when even the music yields to a greater Stones, bones, and fossil shells, plants, attraction, and every one rushes to see and animals leave no further impression beasts and birds fed. on the mind of the general visitor than that some of them are very big, and all of them are very ugly.

Now, this apparently unimportant proceeding gives a clue to the construction and organization of museums Even in art galleries, much of the which will attract the general public, same indifference prevails. Go to the and, after attracting the people, will National Gallery, or to the sculpture arouse their attention, and excite and galleries of the British Museum, and retain their interest. The creatures watch the people as they wander among which are exhibited in a museum the priceless treasures of brush and which will be acceptable to the public chisel. The general visitors stroll must be represented as doing somelistlessly through the building, utterly thing, not as staring straight in front failing to appreciate a single beauty of them. Note, for example, the crowd of canvas or marble, and sometimes which will throng the window of a openly avowing that they wonder why shop in which is a wheel doing nothing people should make such a fuss about but turn round and round. "Toddy's' faded pictures and battered statues. demand to "shee the wheels go To their eyes the grand contours of wound" is the natural expression of the Theseus torso and the divine grace this universal craving for action. Not of the Milo Venus are invisible, while only must the creatures be represented we have all read of the American visit- in action, but they must be shown as ors who derided the Medicean Venus acting their natural life. Thus it is as thick-waisted and splay-footed, their that people are soon tired of seeing eyes having been accustomed to the the elephants and camels acting as distorted figures and crushed feet of beasts of burden, but they are never their fashionable countrywomen. tired of seeing the animals feed.

The zoological galleries of a museum I have long thought that in the are scarcely less wearisome to the management of our museums we have untrained eye. At first, perhaps, some too much ignored the wants of the amount of interest may be excited by general public. If people only visited the lions, tigers, leopards, some of the museums for the purpose of study, monkeys and a few eagles. But the there would be no difficulty in the interest soon cools, and the eye becomes matter. But scarcely one in a thousand painfully wearied by the monotony of enters the door of a museum as a long rows of beasts standing on flat student, the remainder doing so simply boards, and of birds perched on short for amusement, and interfering terribly crutches, all "looking intensely no- with those who go there for study. If where, and staring with extraordinary the nine hundred and ninety-nine could earnestness at nothing." Even the be altogether ignored and excluded, as

Horace objected to and excluded the skeleton of the same species disarticuprofanum vulgus, the management of lated and laid out flat for the convena museum would be simple enough. ience of reference. Following in due But we cannot and ought not to ignore order are the skeletons of other mamthem, but to welcome them, to interest malia, showing how the same limbs as them, and try to lead them on to those of man can, by simple modificasystematic study. For this purpose, tions (or "differentiations"), be emit is evident to my mind that we ought ployed for flying, running, leaping, to have three, if not more, absolutely climbing, and swimming. The examdifferent classes of museums, addressed ples given are the bat, the antelope to different mental conditions.

(Philantomba), the sloth, and the The first ought to be devoted entirely porpoise. Then there is an admirably to purely scientific purposes, and to chosen and beautifully displayed series be secured from interruptions by out- of preparations showing the progress of siders, who should be considered as dentition in the various mammals. the profanum vulgus, and treated as Next comes the series of objects which such. Then there should be a second exhibit the integuments and epidermal class of museum intended for those growths, including fur, bristles, spines, who are trying to learn the rudiments scales, horns, hoofs, talons, and so of science, and may in due time be forth. Next come the birds, which are promoted into the select band of regular treated in like manner, and when the students. Lastly, and quite as impor- series is completed it will form an tant as the two others, there should be almost perfect epitome of the comparaa museum intended for the general tive anatomy of vertebrated animals. public, and teaching them in spite of Each bay has a brief and intelligible themselves. compendium of its contents; there are Of the first kind of museum, we typecharts of each organ, and, more have mangnificent examples in the important than all, the different bones collection of the College of Surgeons, and other elements of the body are and in the private departments of the labeled in exactly the same manner, British Museum and Natural History so that there is not the least difficulty Museum at South Kensington, where in tracing the homologies of structure. all the scientific work is done in strict- throughout the whole vertebrated kingest privacy. Of the second order of dom. museums we have, or rather we shall But where is the museum for the genhave, a nearly perfect example in the eral public? We have none at present. new departments of natural history at ) Professor Flower, to whose energy, South Kensington. The bays which guided by vast experience, we owe the surround the great central hall are gigantic strides which are being made being fitted up so as to exhibit the in our national collection of zoology, outlines of the comparative anatomy of, considers that this systematic arrangethe creatures which are found in the ment teaches the A B C of the science. various galleries. So it may seem to him, whose mind has

The first two bays are given to the for years been saturated with the submammalia. At the head there is a ject. But it is not so to the ordinary skeleton of man, as the type with visitor, who must have made some which all other mammalia are to be progress in anatomy before he can apcompared. Then there is a skeleton of preciate the teachings which are prea baboon, and next to it another sented to his eyes.

For example, two of the most inter- Yet this mistake was not only repeatesting and instructive series of prepar- edly made, but was actually the rule. ations are those of the radius and ulna Even in the popular Indian hunting and the hyoid bones throughout the scene, where the tigers and leopards vertebrates. Now, what can Tom, were shown close together, nearly everyDick, and Harry (I exclude 'Arry as one spoke of the leopards as young representing the profanum vulgus) tigers," or sometimes as "small tigers." know or care about the radius and In several other parts of the exhibition ulna or the hyoid bones? I may go stuffed leopards were shown, and in farther. How many of the readers of almost every instance were called tigers this could point out the radius and by the spectators. After hearing these ulna of a bat, a cow, a whale, or a remarks, I could almost pardon the sparrow? How many per cent. know South African colonists for their invarwhere the hyoid bones are situated, why iable custom of calling a large leopard they are called by that name, or what by the name of tiger. Exactly the are the parts which they play in the same crime is committed by the economy of the different vertebrates? Guianan colonists, who call the jaguar So, instead of considering these invalu- a tiger, and the puma a lion. able preparations as being the A B C of comparative anatomy, I should be inclined to rank them as fifth or even sixth readers.

In the same Indian group there were two wild boars making off at their best speel. I did think that every one would know swine by sight, if only by It is difficult for any one who is their tails, but I actually heard them master of a subject to realize the sub-called beavers, not once, but several limity of ignorance which characterizes times. I might fill an entire number the general public on behalf of which with similar instances, and will only I am writing. It is equally difficult mention two of the most notable. to realize the absolute incapacity of the All those who visited the exhibition untrained eye. I well recollect, when must have been struck with the groups I was a lad, seeing an Oxford tutor illustrative of ostrich-breeding at the (since deservedly promoted to very Cape. One group represented the high rank in the Church) utterly parent birds, their eggs and young, astonished at learning that flowers had Not far from this group was the admirany connection with fruit, and another able series of models of the diamond who could hardly be made to believe mines. These, as a lady explained to that the plumy leaves and green and her offspring, were the holes in which scarlet berries of the asparagus could the ostriches laid their eggs. She had belong to the same plant that he was actually taken no note of the model in the habit of consuming at table. huts, washing machinery, table.huts, He really thought that his informant engines, tackle, traveling carriages for was playing a practical joke upon him. the soil, and the swarming human During the existence of the late beings which thronged the quarries, lamented "Colinderies" I paid several and really thought that the models visits simply for the purpose of noting were the actual nests of the ostrich. the comments of the visitors. Any one would have thought that the most uneducated eye could distinguish between stripes and spots, and that no one could mistake a leopard for a tiger.

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That any one who was evidently well educated should have betrayed such absolute want of observation and hopeless ignorance seems almost impossible, but I heard another remark which