difficulty was, the moment one opened a hungry mental mouth, every writer on those two portentous topics immediately quenched appetite with dry ashes of uncorrelated facts, and one promptly and vociferously declined to go on with the meal. This at least was true until Woodrow Wilson and Barrett Wendell recognized what was lacking. Now I can rattle you off whole folios of information on these hitherto detested topics. Wilson's five big volumes are as vivid as a novel. One was driven to the consumption of midnight electricity in order to follow the adventures of that fascinating Virginian, George Washington, or neglected social duties to make sure which side won in the War of 1812.

Wendell, too, can take one unresistingly through all the wearying provincialism of early American letters, showing why we lay so far apart from the rich stream of English thought; why a seccant morality forbade the flowers of beauty to blossom upon our transplanted tree. It was merely a question of dry subjects being handled by minds sufficiently vigorous to digest a large mass of incidents, to point out the origins of facts and their tendencies.

It ought to be possible, dealt with in this way, to find even the modern novel interesting. That the general impulse visible in this form of literary

expression is toward the breaking down of the old accepted laws of behaviour is a clamant fact. Why this should be so it might be amusing, if not instructive, to discover.

Fundamental morals, of course, alter little from age to age: some general law of conduct being obviously necessary to make feasible the life in common. Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; nor lie, nor covet thy neighbour's wife, forever remain the four cornerstones of society. But while these basic rules must always serve as what a young Japanese poet, in a moment of lyric ardour, has denominated "the social glue," there is no one thing more subject to the vagaries of fashion than the smaller morals, so to speak, — those refinements of thought and behaviour which form the morals of the non-criminal classes, of such folk as ourselves, who have daily to beg that we be not led into temptation, but who rarely even contemplate any real egregiousness of conduct.

Can one imagine, for example, any two standards further apart - more separated by the whole diameter of thought-than those of, say, a wealthy young New Yorker who interests himself in reformwork in the East-side slums, and those of a young Roman patrician of the time of the great Julius? And yet both of these men would give adherence

to the simpler code, that murder, theft, lying, and cowardice were unthinkable temptations. The Roman would look upon the modern sociologist as a fantastic fool, and the earnest young reformer would consider the Italian as no better than a gross and selfish pagan; and yet both would be gentlemen, with a high sense of duty. These fashions in ethics must naturally find their expression in literature; that mirror of the human mind in which we see reflected not only our own faces, but the faces of all our ancestors. In which we behold the likenesses of those shadowy entities which stretch endlessly behind us, layer on layer of life; out of which we have emerged, ourselves by one more shadow,

and from which in turn other endless processions of figures are to appear. It is into literature, then, that we must look to find depicted our moral lineaments, and in it to see formulated the semblance of our ideals, and the ideals of those who have created us and our aspirations.

In our European civilization there has always been a deliciously contradictory attitude in the mind. of the male-until recently almost the exclusive maker of literature- toward his female. While never willing to admit her equality with himself, either mental or moral, he has yet constantly required of her, has constantly urged upon her, a

sublimation of behaviour which he was amiably reluctant to demand of himself or of his fellows. The ewigweibliche - the eternal feminine-of his dream has seesawed between the passionless goddess and the greedy child. Grey-eyed Athene,pure wisdom and justice,-" stern daughter of the voice of God," and that naughty blooming lady who came glowing from the sea to set all men by the ears, were equally his ideal of our unlucky sex. Naturally, it has kept us busy trying to assume both parts satisfactorily; and, considering how earnestly we have endeavoured to meet these conflicting demands upon our moral talents, it does seem hard that we have earned only a general and invidious reputation for capriciousness and incomprehensibility. "Souvent femme varie"? - One would think so indeed, under such stress for versatility!

In classic letters one finds the heroine, the ideal woman, varying from Antigone to Medea; from Phædra to Penelope; and, tucked in between these extremes of virtues and vices on the heroic scale, an endless chain of rosy, smiling, comfortable young persons, with the morals of rabbits and the mentality of butterflies. From the relish with which the authors lingered over the charms of these ladies' persons, and the piquancy of their daring improprieties, one rather suspects that on the whole the latter were

the ones they found most to their taste, though in loftier moments they imagined their heroines in nobler mould.

The coming of Christianity swept both types into the Index Expurgatorius, and substituted the hysteric saint of visions and self-macerations. Here was a brand-new character for the overworked female to enact; yet, in her facile good-nature, she threw herself into the required attitude with the old enthusiasm. The very quaintest heroine of all fiction is to be found in the Lives of the Saints; meanwhile the Early Fathers were calling her by the most opprobrious names,- damning her up and down,- and she patiently going into ecstasies and never answering back! No wonder the male of our kind has said we were incomprehensible!

But the nun, the mystic, and the saint grow shadowy at last, and who is this lovely lady we see stealing through the vague golden dawn of the Renaissance? Ah!- behold the "white feet of Nicolette" stepping shyly to meet that sweet knight Aucassin. Behind her follows golden-headed Guinevere, the Lily Maid of Astolat, the Lady of Shalott, and that fair company amidst whom we discern Beatrice, Iseult of the silver hands, bella Simonetta, and La Joconde. Personally, these are my favourites of all les belles dames de temps jadis, with their braided hair