few years ago are now admitted, or on the point of being admitted, within the pale of feminine action; and, on the other hand, things that were considered feminine at one time, as, for instance, in the middle ages, skill in medicine and surgery, are hotly condemned as feminine now.

un

To address a public meeting, or deliver a public lecture such as this, would have been till very recently (and is now in some circles) considered shockingly unfeminine; but it is not unfeminine to go on the stage; and to act in private, which often are semi-public theatricals, is accepted not only as feminine, but approved of by the highest authorities of female gentility. For women to mix with men in class-rooms, boardrooms, or committees, is regarded with suspicion, not to say alarm, by the devotees of Femininity; but the most rigorous do not dream of objecting to the mixture of the sexes in any place or scene of amusement, the ball-room, the theatre, or even the hunting-field. Must we, then, be content with these rules of genteel custom as the ultimate tests of what is feminine and unfeminine? Are there no essential and permanent characteristics of conduct and manners by which we may class them as feminine or unfeminine, gentle-not genteel-or ungentle? Let us substitute the word 'womanly' for 'feminine,' and see if that will not help us. What constitues womanliness? Are weakness of body and mind, helplessness, shallowness of thought and knowledge, frivolity of taste and pursuit, absorption in the art of men-pleasing,-are these, indeed, the essential characteristics of womanhood, and is she who combines them the type of the

perfect woman, nobly planned, To cheer, to comfort, to command? We must look for the answer somewhat deeper than the surface and

conventional rules of society; and going to the constitution of things, ask ourselves what special functions woman has to perform in this world as woman, apart from the function common to all human beings in virtue of their humanity. That function is motherhood, and the characteristics essential to its due performance must be the essential characteristics of true womanhood. It is in her motherliness that we find her womanliness. She may not be, or ever become, a mother, but she cannot be a perfect woman unless she possess all the attributes which belong to perfect motherhood. What, then, are these attributes ?

First on the list stands tenderness. The mother must above all things be tender and pitiful; for her love is the highest type of human tenderness, the truest symbol of the Divine. Next comes strength: the mother must be strong and helpful, for how else shall she protect and guide the helpless lives clinging to hers? She must be pure, not only with the purity which is ignorance, but with the purity which, knowing evil, abhors it, for is she not the representative to her children of Divine purity? She must be true; for if her children find their trust in her deceived, in whom else will they have faith? She must be a lover

and promo

ter of order, for order in the family is like law in the State; without it there is only anarchy and confusion. She must be just; for children have a keen sense of justice, and will pay respectful and cheerful obedience only to the rule they feel to be just. She must be self-controlling and self-forgetting; for she cannot rule her children unless she can rule herself, and she cannot have that perfect sympathy with them that shares and lives in their life, unless she can forget herself. She must have a high ideal; for how else shall she inspire her

children with the love and worship of a goodness, justice, and beauty transcending that of earth? And, finally, she must be crowned with wisdom, for her love must give light as well as warmth: she must be able to guide as well as to cherish. This is the type of the perfect mother, and therefore it is the type of the perfect woman. Here, then, we have the standard we wanted, and may lay down as the rule, whose application admits no exception, that whatever action, pursuit, or profession is incompatible with this type, is unwomanly. Whatever habits of life, or methods of education, tend rather to repress than to cultivate those attributes of perfect womanliness,-tenderness, strength, purity, truth, justice, noble idealism, order, and wisdom,—is a wrong course, and a radically faulty method of education.

I venture to think that a similar test of perfect manliness might be found in the characteristics of perfect fatherhood, which is the special function of men, as motherhood of women; and on examination they appear to be the same as we have already enumerated, differing only in the manner and circumstances of their exercise, and merging in the common characteristics of the parent, so that if one parent fails the other may supply the place of both. The father, like the mother, must be tender, strong and true, just and pure, self-controlling, self-forgetting, capable of a noble worship, of wisdom to guide and to counsel; and if any habits of life and methods of education hinder or do not culti

vate those characteristics of true fatherhood, and therefore of true manhood, may we not safely condemn them as radically wrong and false?

Let us apply this test to our existing systems of education and habits of life for both sexes, as well as to propound reforms in either, and go on to enquire if there be no similarly unchangeable test by which we could also judge of gentlehood in man or woman,-whether we can find no principle lying deep below conventional rules, which shall afford us a criterion of the true gentleman, the true gentlewoman.

And first it seems clear that this quality of gentlehood is something superadded to, and resting as its foundation upon, true manliness and womanliness. No unmanly man or unwomanly woman can be a gentleman or a gentlewoman in the true sense of the terms. But to that deep and strong root and stem, gentlehood adds the leaf and flower, which clothes them in outward beauty. To strength it adds grace; to purity, refinement; to truth, the delicacy of honour; to self-restraint, the ease which is second nature; to noble ideals, noble and beautiful forms. It does not veneer; it polishes. It does not by any artifice make the baser metal look like gold; but it adds to the gold itself the value of exquisite workmanship. Let us apply these tests to the idols. of Gentility and Femininity, and they will stand betrayed as by the touch of Ithuriel's spear. Once seen as they truly are, their power over society will be gone for ever.. M. G. GREY.

A

CHAPTER in Irish political history may be said to have closed when the celebrated address to the electors of Greenwich announced to the country that the Parliament of 1868 was a thing of the past.

The justifiability of what has since proved to have been a suicidal step has been so keenly assailed by opponents, so eagerly defended by Ministerialists, and, in fact, so generally discussed, that we have no wish to say anything further in the matter. The precedent of endeavouring, as it were, to snatch a verdict from the country is undoubtedly an evil one; but the attempt has failed, and more important events, the offspring of that attempt, claim our attention. We must, however, express our opinion, although it may perhaps be considered as somewhat too abstract, that, inasmuch as the verdict of the country is the object intended to be gained by an appeal to the constituencies, no party considerations, such as the wish to obtain a particular verdict, should cause any unusual course to be adopted in making that appeal.

1

We have already had occasion to remark on the Irish policy of the Government, and we would willingly on the present occasion have omitted, as far as possible, any further reference to the events of the last few years, and have proceeded at once to a consideration of the results and probable consequences of the elections just concluded in Ireland; but the Premier having appealed to his Irish policy as one reason for demanding the renewal of confidence in his Government, we must once more refer to the subject. It is now a little more than five years since the Liberal party, under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone, was borne into power by nearly the

concurrent voice of the electoral body, upon, we might almost say, an exclusively Irish policy. England had become so tired of Ireland, so wearied with the perpetual agitations, recriminations, and turbulences, that she welcomed any statesman, any party who held out a prospect of putting an end to the everlasting Irish difficulty. Some of the most important affairs of this great Empire were unable to receive that attention which they merited solely because Irish grievances, real or imaginary, were being dinned. into our ears by some noisy Irish faction or other. Gradually all patience was worn out. The Fenian movement was the finishing stroke, and though that was mainly the work of an alien Irish element, yet it attracted an attention to Ireland itself, which would not relax until the causes of discontent evinced in the support it received had been ascertained and removed. These causes were supposed to have been ascertained when it was discovered that religious equality did not exist in Ireland; that the great mass of the Irish tenantry had no security against the tyranny of their landlords; and finally that a portion of the Irish people lay under certain disabilities as regarded the means of education.

The diagnosis was no sooner made than rival parties rushed forward with rival remedies. The one party was for levelling up,' the other for levelling down.' The Conservatives tried their policy in the case of University Education, and failed, deservedly and to their no small detriment: they tried it also in the case of the Church, and on that question the issue was taken, and the Conservatives were left in a hopeless minority.

The Liberal party having come into power on an Irish programme, great prominence was given to Irish questions. To the leaders of that party it seemed clear that the system hitherto adopted had been radically wrong. Ireland had been governed from an English standpoint; naturally, therefore, was she discontented: no wonder that discontent should take the form of open violence. The remedy was simple. The new policy was selfevident. Govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, and all would be well.

With this declared policy Liberal statesmen seized the helm, and, steering by the lights of Irish ideas, set out on a perilous voyage.

the

Religious inequality was first evil to be redressed, and the Church of Ireland was the first to feel the reforming hand. To Irishmen that Church was a badge of conquest,' a foul brand of their inferiority,' a monster grievance.' To English Liberals it was a disgraceful anomaly,' a relic of that Protestant ascendency which being Conservative-was a disgrace to the great English Liberal party. The Premier, in one of his speeches on the subject, said:

3

Of the Established Church in Ireland I

will only say, that it still remains, if not the home and the refuge, yet the token and the symbol of ascendency; and so long as that Establishment lives, painful and bitter memories of ascendency can never be effaced.

Thus, though different motives impelled these two parties, their immediate end was the same, and with concurrent effort a measure was passed which disestablished the Church, and severed the connection between Church and State in Ireland.

The measure was a hazardous one, and the risk was great of alienating those who had ever been our truest supporters, and but for whom we should not now be in possession

of Ireland. Their loyalty however, sincere and high-minded, bore the test. They resented the measure, it is true, but resented rather the manner than the fact of their Church's disestablishment. They did not set any very particular value on the connection of their Church with the State, and under other circumstances might not have felt so keenly the severance of that connection; but the case was different when they were reviled by those who should have been their friends, and when they felt that they were being sacrificed to appease the insatiable voracity of Irish Nationalists and Ultramontane clergy.

That the Irish Church was not the cause of Irish disaffection was soon apparent. In truth, the Irish people cared little for it one way or the other. Its real enemies were the Roman Catholic clerics, and its downfall, though affording them much gratification, was of little avail in stemming their demands.

Disaffection still continued in Ireland; crime in its worst possible form, namely agrarian, reached an appalling height. To the people one fact had become clear-violence was evidently the way to gain whatever was wanted from a Government which had been frightened by rebellion into disestablishing the Church. Violence seemed to answer too in regard to the land grievance, for the very next Session a mea

sure

was carried through Parliament dealing with the land difficulty in a manner as exceptional as the Church had been dealt with. Once again special legislation was designed to meet the case as presented through the 'Irish' medium, once again the Government resorted to legislation which, however desirable it may have been in itself, had, both from its unusual nature and from the time at which it was passed, all the appearance of having been wrung from the Government by force and by crime.

The land agitation supposed to have been settled, religious equality in education was the next cry. One Session was passed and the subject was not dealt with, another Session and it was also postponed the cry not being so much a popular as a priest cry, the urgency of complying with it was not so great. At last, however, it could be postponed no longer, and the attempt to solve it was made. It became clear then that the difficulties which had long been foreseen had been by no means overrated: it was placed beyond all doubt that English Liberalism could not coalesce with Irish Ultramontanism, and from the date of that discovery the fate of the Government was sealed.

But in the meantime, even whilst these healing measures were under consideration, and were being carried into effect, the real Irish question was beginning to make itself apparent. Gradually it assumed more definite shape, until at last it was formulated in the now familiar cry for 'Home Rule.' The elasticity and convenience of this term have long since been demonstrated. The Home Rule Conference attempted to define it, but, as we conclusively showed at the time,2 failed completely to do so; and in the recent election addresses every advantage has been taken of its vagueness by candidates who wished to become members of Parliament, yet also wished to avoid pledging themselves to advocating the establishment of a separate Parliament for Ireland.

We have long since shown that this Home Rule question was the real Irish difficulty-that all other concessions, though readily accepted, were, so far as they were intended to dispose of Irish clamour, utterly inadequate. We have, too, before now pointed out that this Home Rule agitation was, so far as

its real strength is concerned, simply a new and more insidious attempt to effect the separation of the countries, and thus to obtain the realisation of those wild ideas which are so unceasingly finding expression amongst the Irish people.' Let us add now certain other facts which do not seem to be generally known, or, if known, at least not generally recognised. Superficial writers and speakers on Irish matters refer always to Ireland as being divided into two parties. There are, however, not two, but four parties. There is the Protestant party, loyal and true, which only asks for the same legislation as that which is applied to England; there is the educated and intelligent and independent portion of the Roman Catholics, who are as loyal to England as we could wish, and whose present chief desire is to be emancipated from a political subserviency to their clergy. There is the Irish party, who, for their own objects, seek the separation of the countries and the dismemberment of the Empire; and there is, finally, but not least, the Romish clerical party, which seeks for its Church absolute supremacy in religion, morals, and politics.

To anyone with any knowledge of Ireland it was manifest that these two latter parties were not to be appeased by anything short of full concession of all their outrageously extravagant demands. But the Government having announced its intention of being guided by Irish ideas, each of these two parties expected much, and the disestablishment of the Church and, at first sight, the Land Act seemed to bear out the truth of Mr. Gladstone's promises. Finding, however, that not only were they not likely to obtain anything commensurate with their desires, but that stringent Coercion Acts were