at the same time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think that they must either be good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one; and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or voluble declaration of it.

As I pause, before ending my preface-thinking of one or two more points that are difficult to write of-I find a letter in The Times, from a French lady, which says all I want so beautifully, that I will print it just as it stands :

SIR,-It is often said that one example is worth many sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, which seems to me so striking just now, that, however painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it?

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. If our ménagères can be cited as an example to English housewives, so, alas! can other classes of our society be set up as an example-not to be followed.

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end: and whose bills of bygone splendour lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her purse!

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but too successfully.

Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, its delicacy. More and more were monde and demi monde associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in premières représentaions, in imitation of each other's costumes, mobiliers and slang. Living beyond one's means became habitual—almost nec essary for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, every one else.

What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brightest and highest.

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful when I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing "Anonymas" by name, and reading doubtfully moral novels, are in themselves small offences, although not many years ago they would have appeared very heinous ones, yet they are quick and tempting conveyances on a very dangerous highroad.

I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked up to from abroad-what a high opinion, what honour and reverence we foreigners have for their principles, their truthfulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the healthy youthfulness of their lovely children.

May I illustrate this by a short example which happened very near me? During the days of the émeutes of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him, when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed. "Vous êtes anglaise, nous vous croyons; les anglaises disent toujours la vérité," was the immediate answer, and the rioters quietly left.

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjust criticism if, loving and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life?

Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing better than to see a women nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were ;] as care, trouble, and refinement can make them.

It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from, as a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to us in our days of trouble.

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a new year's wish from

Dec. 29.

FRENCH LADY.

That, then, is the substance of what I would fain say conincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends; at all events, with certainty in my own mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them.

For other and older readers it is needful I should write a few words more, respecting what opportunity I have had to judge, or right I have to speak, of such things; for, indeed, too much of what I have said about women has been said in faith only. A wise and lovely English lady told me, when Sesame and Lilies first appeared, that she was sure the Sesame would be useful, but that in the Lilies I had been writing of what I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too true, and also that it is more partial than my writings are usually; for as Ellesmere spoke his speech on the intervention, not indeed otherwise than he felt, but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the Lilies to please one girl; and were it not for what I remember of her, and of few besides, should now perhaps recast some of the sentences in the Lilies in a very different tone: for as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, untowardly in some respects, fortunately in others (because it enables me to read history more clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have had but to believe the utmost good. The best women are indeed necessarily the most difficult to know; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of their children; they are only to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger; and, sometimes, seem almost helpless except in their homes; yet without the help of one of them,* to whom this book is dedicated, the day would probably have come before now, when I should have written and thought no

more.

On the other hand, the fashion of the time renders what ever is forward, coarse or senseless, in feminine nature, too palpable to all men :-the weak picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me acquainted with much of their emptiest enthusiasm; and the chances of later life gave me opportu nities of watching women in states of degradation and vir

* plan.

dictiveness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their household charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion; I have seen mothers dutiful to their children, as Medea; and children dutiful to their parents, as the daughter of Herodias: but my trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the natures that are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words of the Lilies unchanged; believing, yet, that no man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion.

What I might myself have been, so helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking; but what I am, since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him.

one; not a false That, it seems to

Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; a lover of order, labor, and peace. me, is enough to give me right to say all I care to say on ethical subjects: more, I could only tell definitely through details of autobiography such as none but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the word) faultless, lives could justify;-and mine has been neither. Yet, if any one, skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the human soul, cares for more intimate knowledge of me, he may have it by knowing with what persons in past history I have most sympathy.

I will name three.

In all that is strongest and deepest in me, that fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli.

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Marmontel.

In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Dean Swift.

Any one who can understand the natures of those three men, can understand mine; and having said so much, I am content to leave both life and work to be remembered or for gotten, as their uses may deserve.

DENMARK HILL,

1st January, 1871.

PREFACE FIRST EDITION.

▲ PASSAGE in the fifty-fifth page of this book, referring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the reader's ear since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, and think it wrong to cancel what has once been thoughtfully said; but it must not so remain without a few added words.

No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, and real reward, for all difficult work; and even were it otherwise, some experience of distinct peril, and the acquirement of habits of quick and calm action in its presence, are necessary elements, at some period of life, in the formation of manly character. The blame of bribing guides into danger is a singular accusation, in behalf of a people who have made mercenary soldiers of themselves for centuries, without any one's thinking of giving their fidelity better employment: though, indeed, the piece of work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, however useless, was no unwise one; and their lion of flawed molasse at Lucerne, worthless in point of art though it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much pay; and a better ornament to the old town than the Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade of those travellers who do not take guides into danger. The British public are however, at home, so innocent of ever buying their fellow creatures' lives, that we may justly expect them to be punctilious abroad! They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many souls flit annually, choked in fire-damp and sea-sand, from economically watched shafts, and economically manned