fore, in this direction that we can discover the hindrances sought for. What here limits the woman, in a degree of which very various estimates have been formed, is education. I take this first in the limited field of language. So far as the attainment of first-rate skill in verse depends on the study of the master-writers of the world, those must be placed at a great disadvantage who, in the scriptural phrase, are rarely able to speak face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend, with those mighty spirits of old, the bare enumeration of whose names forms a kind of poem in itself—with Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Theocritus, with Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, and Horace-and who are equally debarred from the lessons in art and nature, hardly less invaluable, open to men in that consummate prose which in Thucydides marks the limits of severity in form, in Plato moves with a grace almost beyond the grace of poetry. There are those who would prefer years of blindness to ignorance. of these immortal pages. And, whilst fully aware that a very few great names in poetry may be quoted who knew "small Latin and less Greek," I must avow a conviction that an unacquaintance--not voluntarily, but enforced by circumstances with the masters of style and art is a serious material impediment (if we may so speak) towards cultivating one of the most difficult of arts. the loss of high and enduring pleasure thus inflicted on those most naturally capable of its enjoyment, this is not the place to enlarge.

On

Without, however, here entering on the general subject of female education, it may be remarked, that the fact that the two great treasure-languages of antiquity are closed to women appears to rest on a perfectly plain and obvious reason. It is simply that (for these not less than for all other objects) the period of a girl's education is three or four years too short. To close her studies at seventeen or eighteen would alone render it impossible that, as everything must be learned by that time, more than one or two even of the modern languages

shall have been mastered. And it must be very rare that the young lady of that age shall have reached sufficient force of intellect or knowledge of life, to appreciate the best productions of the literatures to which she has obtained the key. It would be but an Oriental style of flattery that could believe her capable of really grasping writers like Goethe or Lessing, Racine or Dante. And, were it common to teach a young girl the clumsily so-called "classical" languages, by nothing short of the miraculous could she gain that insight into the ways of life in ages so different from our own which would enable her to take the smallest pleasure in, much more to comprehend, Sophocles or Pindar. We put it to the conscience of male readers whether this would not be true of them. For understanding what a youth has learned (supposing the wish to exist), the two years next after twenty are worth any ten that preceded them. And though "women are so quick," yet it is doubtful whether their liveliness of mind can avail them in a matter which requires thought, study, and maturity as the materials on which quickness is to operate. Education partly gives us materials and, partly, skill to use them. So far as it gives skill, by cultivating and training the mind, women's education is ordinarily arrested at the point. before which skill cannot seriously be given. It is not true that a girl of seventeen can afford to shut up her books and amuse herself more than a boy of seventeen. It is not true that she is more eager to shut them up and amuse herself. But the modern world requires her to do so, and has led her to expect it since she was seven. We think the world makes this requirement mainly because men prefer flowers to fruits. And, when men mount their pulpits, they term the result of their preference "female frivolity."

But I shall resume this subject from a more general point of view at the end. Returning now from what (it is hoped) rather looks than is a digression: will it be maintained that the experience of life and of nature necessary to feed the poet's

mind is beyond female acquirement, or disproportionately arduous in its acquisition? The example of the highest poets, I submit, will hardly support this position. They have been men of vivid feeling, of large capacity, but their range of life has been often simply domestic. The "vision and the faculty came to Wordsworth, Schiller, and Shelley, for instance, with no furtherreaching knowledge of the world than was possessed by, or within reach of, their wives and sisters. Campbell, Byron, and Scott (whatever may have been playfully or paradoxically ascribed to their amateur experiences, as to Gibbon's, in the field) drew the fire and force of their battle-pieces from the study, not from the camp, as Milton described Paradise in his blindness. The fieldmouse and the daisy, no less than the moral drawn from each by Burns, were at the feet of the "belles of Mauchline;" the scenery of the valley of Hyperion was never beheld but by the inner eye of Keats in his London surgery. That experience" on which Goethe, and Byron within a smaller but a more energetic range, set so much store, so far as it was inaccessible to women, has added but little to the ultimate fame and popularity of those great poets; it might almost be said, that what they gained in ' knowledge of this world, was their loss in the other and better world of poetry. It is not, however, meant that precisely the same range of life has been open to women as to men. It would be undesirable for poetry if it were so; we should thus lose that difference in selection of incident and in colour which, in case of the most successful poetesses, adds a peculiar charm and interest to their work. Throughout this essay, I wish it to be distinctly understood that the last thing contended for is, that women should simply be echoes or repetitions of men. Their work must differ, and ought to differ, as their natures. What I ask is, why, within a province apparently open to the power of both sexes, cultivated by both, equal success should not be reached? And I do allege that, taking it at its best, the

obstacle of Experience is much too widely stated. Of the subject-sources of verse, by far the largest in number and the most important in essential value arise from human life, exhibited in its simple and elementary phases or passions, and, in modern times at least, from natural scenery in its ordinarily accessible aspects. And nine-tenths of these appear to have been open to the women who have devoted themselves to poetry, not less than to the men.

If lack of requisite experience cannot, as we have tried to show, be truthfully urged as a ground for the general absence of high excellence in female verse, neither can a disadvantage in social estimate be urged, we apprehend, in explanation. Even were the world's opinion unfavourable, that censure would not have impeded the course of a highlygifted nature, for poetry, if anything, has an overmastering power; nor would those vague obstacles, "domestic considerations," be likely to restrain the modern Sappho, if "the living fire, "which was intrusted to the harp of the "Aeolian damsel," had descended upon her later sisters. But, in fact, during what age of European civilization has public feeling rendered poetical fame disadvantageous to а woman? The sneer at learned ladies, so common in the mouths of the ignorant of both sexes, has never been directed against poetesses. Ancient Greece, it is a commonplace of moralists, refused woman her proper place, the direct assignment of which is often-though, in the opinion of so great and good a judge as Mr. Hallam, incorrectly-ascribed to Christianity. The period from which some modern writers have, hitherto to no purpose, endeavoured to remove the

respect and admiration which were paid to such predecessors, or thank us for an elaborate proof that the fame of a Barrett Browning-to deviate one instant from the rule of contemporary exclusion is not less durable and desirable than that of Ninon or Gabrielle.

To close this section of our subject with an argument beyond contradiction, the assent of society to the pursuit of poetry by women is proved by the vast number of poetesses who have lived during all periods of European civilization. It is true that their names would generally be unfamiliar even to well-informed readers. But the reason will not be obscure to those who have turned over the fugitive verses and miscellaneous "garlands" of the last and the preceding century.

It

With the pregnant exception, therefore, of Education, we hold that external circumstances are not responsible for what-compared with our poets-must be called the failure of our poetesses. In a very great degree the same exception must be extended to the female pursuit of the remaining Fine Arts. appears to me demonstrable by reference to facts, not less than by theoretical considerations, that power of hand to carve, fineness of eye to colour, and skill of ear for melody and harmony, are simply and absolutety the tangible or sensible exponents of power, fineness, and skill of mind to create or imagine. Hence, whilst the minds of women are irrationally excluded from education during the precise years when they are most capable of benefiting by it, it is clear that they will be at a similar disadvantage in regard to sculpture, painting (I wish it were permissible to revive the convenient old term painture), and music, as they are here held to be in regard to poetry. This point, however, I defer; even if the place thus assigned to education be disputed, the main argument will be untouched. Considering the number of women who have devoted themselves to the three commonlystyled Fine Arts, the female want of success only forms a more perplexing problem to those who maintain that,

not training or external facilities, but some indefinable instinct or trick of bodily temperament, or feeling unconnected with intellect, are the sources of excellence in them.

Turning, then, to these arts, it will be found that, although each art has experienced slight differences in its relation to those outward conditions which we may sum up under the word Society, and also differs in its own mechanical circumstances, yet, on the whole, these cannot be the hindrances to which we owe the dearth of the female Titian, Turner, Ghiberti, Flaxman, Handel, or Weber. I repeat this brief list, because the easily-recognised impossibility of matching it with a female equivalent forms a vivid proof of my first proposition. It is allowed that study of the human form has been often seriously difficult to women; yet it must be remembered that this obstacle, important at first sight, covers really only a limited sphere even in case of sculpture. In Greece great artists, so far as we know, were formed without any special study of this nature: models were about them in daily life; nor (assuming in our ignorance of these details that the tone of society may have more or less restrained the female members of citizen-families from the practice of art, although one or two names occur in the list of Otfried Müller) would it appear likely that the cultivated freed-women, who at one time are conspicuous in Athenian life, would have been debarred from learning or from putting to practical use the general lessons of form. Everyday life in Hellas, in fact, even if we exclude women from frequent presence at the great athletic contests, furnished ampler opportunities for such knowledge than were open to Donetallo or to Reynolds. The best model school or collection of casts from the antique is tame and powerless in comparison with what was in view of the Athenian, as she studied the marbles of Phidias in their first freshness and original site, or, like Socrates, "going down yesterday to the Piraeus," saw the

the "

bustle of the harbour with all its brown and active crowd of southern seamen, When, again, we pass to the great ages of early religious art, in painting and sculpture study of the human form was avowedly not practised, probably for a long time barely allowed to artists. Yet we know that then, at least, the social hindrances to female practice no longer existed; indeed, that those religious societies within which men like Angelico da Fiesole were formed, had an abundance of counterparts amongst women, whose names are not wanting in a field so naturally inviting to them as devotional art. A small painting of Virgin and Child" in our own National Gallery is ascribed to Margaret, sister of the two great Van Eycks; it is pleasing, but lacks force; but the ascription of it to Margaret, which, as conjectural, renders it unfair to argue from this work as typical, may perhaps be supported by the minute care given to the turned and mended tapestry in the background. Lastly, how small a portion does detailed knowledge of the figure, at least in England, play in modern art! Sculpture mainly gives us portrait-busts; painting, small dressed incidents from common life, portraits, or the many forms of landscape. Allowance made to the full for whatever greater impediments a woman may meet here, and in a few other points, as exposure to weather in case of landscape-study; yet we must in fairness. admit that certain peculiar attractions and facilities are presented by modern taste to our female Gainsborough or Leslie; gratification of the religious sentiment in the Middle Ages being balanced in our own by the predominance of home landscape or domestic scenes. We shall see that the same is true of poetry; and, as in poetry, like causes have been followed by like effects; it is neither the impulse nor the endeavour that are wanting. So far from this, there cannot be a stronger proof that women find nothing in art alien from their tastes or their social position, than the fact that more women than men practise painting-water

colours being of course included; whilst, again, there is no pursuit by which the large number in all classes, who depend on or desire to aid themselves by their own labour, may and do obtain a more respectable and satisfactory livelihood. Nor has it, I believe, been argued that these employments or amusements have any tendency to withdraw them from the share in life assigned to them or assumed for them by society.

Neither is the manual work an im

pediment. The amount of physical strength put forth in sculpture, whether modelling or carving (all the processes of rough-hewing, nay, indeed, too often the whole manipulation of the marble being carried out by workmen), is less than that required by most ordinary household labour; in fact, dexterity of finger and sensitive fineness of touch (qualities generally ascribed in a peculiar degree to the female frame) are far more needed in this art than muscular power. The technical processes of painting need no discussion.~ What we have again to ask is, Where, from the days of Phidias and Zeuxis to those of Flaxman and Turner, can a work of art by female hands, fairly rateable in the second class, be pointed out?

No lady, it may be safely asserted, would decline the honours paid to Mendelssohn or Bellini, more than those which rank great painters and great poets high on the list of the world's most cherished benefactors. It may be asserted, with equal safety, that few causes can be shown in the conditions of life natural to musicians, none in the usages of fashion or in the studies and experience required, which are hostile to the successful practice of this art by women. Education also is here a less overt hindrance; operating only by virtue of that general law which renders a completely cultivated mind dependent upon a complete training, and the art itself, like the rest, dependent upon complete mental cultivation. Indeed, as in some measure with painting, so much more with music, one invaluable external precondition of success has been secured by women in a degree

probably much beyond that which education assigns to men. It has been often noticed that almost all of the great musicians were the sons of men either professionally engaged or practically versed in music. To play well is, at any rate, not less essential to musical composition than ability to manage the pencil and mix colours is to painting. Now, far more women are trained to play or sing than men. Nor, I apprehend, speaking under submission to professional judgment, do the further mechanical details the knowledge of instruments and of the voice, or the theory of harmony and of composition -present any what may be called sexual difficulties. What they do require, is that the hard study of them should not be arrested at eighteen. There seems no reason why even management of the orchestra itself, that little world not always harmoniously composed, should not be committed to any woman capable of conducting it—as, indeed, it is already often devoutly subservient to the restingpauses and imperfect notes of the prima donna assoluta. Note also that men have not set up those exclusive pretensions in case of music which arrogance has occasionally impelled them to set up in regard to the other Fine Arts. Women have been at least for that hundred years which covers almost all that gives us pleasure in music-the chosen interpreters of melody. Nor, again, is there any sign that the great masters who redeem the eighteenth century from the charge of prosaicism (in many respects hastily and unfairly advanced against it) regarded their immortal works as beyond female comprehension. On the contrary, it is easy to give a long list, not only of songs, but of instrumental pieces, written for first performance by women. Mozart's lovely duet in B flat, for example, with its opening largo, grand and delicate as the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis, was composed for a female violinist. Music, in some ways the most singular and romantic of all those strange manifestations of the beautiful and the spiritual which we call Art, is the one which is most intimately dependent

on human aid, incessantly renewed, for its vitality. The Madonna di San Sisto or the Elgin frieze may be fancifully supposed to retain unbroken existence, and, when unobserved by any eye, stand proudly reserving their conscious beauty for the sympathies of the next spectator. The poets seem to be still alive, as we look at their immortal works where they rest awaiting us on our bookshelves. But how curious, when we come to think of it, is the fate of some opera of more than earthly beauty,let us say Weber's "Euryanthe," or the "Iphigenia" of Gluck-reduced for years by public apathy to the shadowy state of a folio score-imprisoned, we might call it, in the Limbo Musicorum! If the sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, or Weber are not entranced in the same land of sleep and silence, this is mainly due to the fingers and the feeling of women. There is also a very intelligible sense in which, looking at once to the large part taken in the realization of music by them, and to the emotional character of the art itself, music deserves the name it has often received, as the female art par excellence. How singular, then, that this should precisely be that art in which women have displayed the least creative power! Those partial exceptions which may be urged in case of poetry or of painting do not apply here. It is, I believe, correct to say that not one single successful composition for orchestra or for single instruments-not one page of a Lied ohne Wörte-not one song that has popularly outlived the first singer, far less an opera or an oratorio-has been produced by that sex to which musical ears are indebted for two-thirds of a pleasure so pure and so lofty that it has been taken as typical of the pleasures of Heaven.

Should the foregoing remarks be assented to, it has now been shown that those obvious external circumstances, often held adverse to female success in poetry, music, and the arts of form and colour, have been greatly overrated; whilst, in various ways, we have even found that they confer upon