respectability, later heroism not availing to win back the lost regard unless that heroism led to a prompt demise. The man who cheats at cards still roams an exile, but the modern heroine by no means submits to atone for her follies by accompanying him. About ten years ago, she arose in her might and declined to accept judgement from a censorious and hypocritic world. "The Superfluous Woman" was one of the first books whose heroine declared her independence of the elder morals. She had her little fling, and then asked what we were going to do about it; and we sat with our astonished mouths open and had no answer ready. Grant Allen echoed with "The Woman Who Did," and she did very naughty things indeed; and once again we found ourselves out of our depth in the sudden liquefaction of all our old predilections. Since which time the modern heroine has taken the key of the fields, and is neither to hold nor to bind. The Hester Prynne of to-day would make scarlet letters fashionable, contract an excellent marriage, and shortly be leading mothers' meetings in Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale's popular church; and the very modernest heroine, like the protagonist of "Life's Shop-Window," would probably haughtily refuse altogether to be, in the old parlance, "made an honest woman of," and would reject mar riage entirely, as too cramping to her new-found liberty. Females of the very lightest character may set up as heroines in honourable heroic circles in our tolerant day, and we look forward with prickling interest to see what new form of delinquency these vigorous ladies will next render respectable by their potent patronage. These fantastic ethical excursions are in part a natural reaction against a weary period of Victorian virtue that almost amounted to virtuosity, and partly a sowing of literary wild oats by heady femininity, new to the liberty of the pen and not yet settled down to the sobered middle age of letters. But there are underlying reasons more serious than these: within the last half-century has occurred a silent, slow upheaval of all the bases of our attitude to life, and the gentler sex have not had any exclusive solidity of footing in the shifting of the moral centres of gravity. They too have been casting about for a new horizon, for new standards of behaviour and of personal responsibility, while science and its disquieting discoveries have been levelling the old heights and filling the depths. In the jumbling and readjustment of the patterns of thought, the old models have become inadequate to their needs. A period of flux is of course inevitable. Eventu ally, no doubt, the heroine who is the ideal of woman herself the expression of her own highest consciousness of aspiration for herself-will be very unlike the contrasted goddess and rogue; a very different person, too, from the fantastic, unclassifiable individual offered us now. She will clarify into something more admirable than the woman now imagined by women, for the modern heroine does not seem to have the elements fitting her to be the mother of heroes, or of heroines either, for that matter. If she is to be placed apart from all idealism, she will have lost something for which her new liberty will be small compensation. With all the calumny and scorn which men have heaped upon women, they have yet kept her an ideal. They have treated her much as the Italian fisherman does the image of his patron saint: smacked her when in a temper, but worshipped her and looked up to her as something better than themselves all the while. Now, an ideal, even when treated roughly, is a potent thing. It assimilates the holder of it to itself, as the green leaf turns a chameleon to its own tint; and all that we do and are of the best, results from our value of that immediate jewel of our souls. It is said that the possibilities of a race may always be tested by its attitude to its women. If its estimate of them is low and gross, its development will never be high. And the same is true of the individual. No really admirable man, or woman either, thinks meanly of women. The welter of European savagery in the Middle Ages got its strongest impetus upward through the dreams of chivalry; and if the real women were at all as the poets and painters imagined them, their influence is very comprehensible, for they certainly were the dearest creatures! Can one imagine the modern heroine drawing a race upward through sheer beauty of soul? No; even imagination has its limits. II "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST " HE striking feature of our altering conception TH personal responsibility. When the classic hero set out upon his enthralling adventures, his moral baggage was ordinarily so light that he could have tied it up in a handkerchief and carried it on his staff across his shoulder. The real equipment for his career was that some susceptible nymph or goddess had cast a favourable glance at his straight features, or his superb muscles, and had immediately presented him with a sword, or shield, or a Medusa's head, which gave him the most unsportsmanlike advantage over his antagonists. Or, if she had no such valuable gifts handy, whenever matters got a bit uncomfortable she rushed to the rescue in the shape of a cloud, or mist, or some natural phenomenon; and while he stood still, like a puzzled ox, the lady obligingly pulled him out of the hole he had stupidly got himself into, and he reaped all the credit to be had from the encounter. One was not a hero because of superior strength, or address, but because of having a friend among the higher powers. The stories of Theseus, Perseus, Achilles, and |