men whom they would feel and acknowledge their superiors on many points of creative power. Let this intellect, then, be developed, if there were no other reason than that wife should sympathize more with husband, sister with brother.

2. It is truly said by Maurice (in the Introductory lecture, Lectures to Ladies) that we are all, men and women alike, born under the law of instructing others, under penalty of ourselves forgetting what we know. He adds that women possess the capability of instructing more than men, bringing forward instances which will satisfy many. Whether this latter be true or not, these two things we may certainly lay down, that women are under the obligation of imparting their knowledge, and that, in this, as in all cases, where a duty is imposed, the faculty for discharging it is also given; they have by nature a capacity for teaching. To nearly all the task of professedly teaching must fall: to a few, professionally, as governesses, to the majority as mothers and elder sisters. Let all do this first, obvious duty well, with all their strength and all their skill; in every case let the nearest duties, especially those of home, be first fulfilled; let us establish this unmistakeably; now we may add that those who, after the performance of their professional and domestic duties, still have leisure and opportunity, may extend their sphere beyond their pupils, their children and younger brothers and sisters. To dwell upon the importance of this duty is surely unnecessary. I hope, too, that the cowardly and selfish prejudice against educating the poor is by now fast dying out. What urgent necessity there is, may be shown by a single fact mentioned by Mrs. Jameson, that one half of the women who are married annually in England cannot sign their names in the parish register. This indicates an amount of ignorance for which few of us, I think, were prepared.—But the benefit is not



expected to be limited to the mere acquisition of information: much good is looked for from the intercourse of ladies with women of lower rank; while, if ladies engage personally in boys’ schools, they cannot fail to exercise a beneficial influence all their own, such as gentlemen, on the one hand, however refined, and, on the other, the boys’ own mothers and sisters, perhaps almost as ignorant as the boys themselves, do not, and cannot, possess.—Let me recommend this Introductory Lecture to the thoughtful examination of such of my female readers as have health and unoccupied time.

III. Moral duties.—A vast subject, in which I cannot pretend to do more than point out a few duties which I think are most pressingly urged upon women by the wants of the time, some of which are already receiving attention, but all of which will bear further consideration and recommendation. I shall entirely omit those which they owe to their families, that I may have the more space for some of their obligations to society at large, of which the family is a miniature.

No one, of either sex, and of whatever age, can be unaware that an enormous mass of ignorance, crime and misery, in their most revolting shapes, exists in this civilized country,—not here and there, in London and Liverpool, or in unheard-of villages, but everywhere, throughout the length and breadth of the land; in our metropolis and huge manufacturing and sea-port towns, in our small country towns, in the mining Counties, in our Arcadia, the agricultural districts,—these last, it would seem, according to Kingsley, the worst of all. No one who looks into a Newspaper or a Magazine, or dips ever so lightly into any of the many books which treat of social questions, can be ignorant of this. It is almost as easily learnt, too, that a large proportion of this sin and misery is preventible,— preventible in this very present time, and that, not only by State measures, or even by the combined labours of “Societies,” but also by private efforts, if only made energetically, and directed by knowledge and discretion. But nothing affects the mind less than mere general statements, nothing blunts it more than repetition of those generalities. The slightest knowledge of particulars, howsoever gained, would do more towards inducing a practical attempt at a remedy than a lifetime’s reading or hearing of such, however interesting and startling. This knowledge is very easily gained, nothing more easily; the experience of a morning’s visits would give it (the best way, as bringing the evil under personal observation); it may be obtained from a daily newspaper, from dozens of books. The books under review, especially the Lectures, will furnish quite a sufficient amount, and will open the eyes of ladies both to the particular forms of evil existing round them, and to the means for alleviating it. I will enumerate some of the departments, in which the authors of these lectures call upon women to combine with men for the extinction or mitigation of the vices and miseries which degrade and oppress their fellow men and fellow women. Nothing more is needed than to transcribe the titles of the majority of the lectures.

What a field is here opened for ladies whose family duties do not engross them; and how many there are



who not only have leisure from household occupations, but who positively have nothing, or scarcely anything to do, except to amuse themselves,—hardest task of all, possible to no human being. Everybody knows that among you, ladies of the higher and middle classes, there are hundreds “sickening of a vague disease,” pining for interesting and useful employment, for something far different from pianoforte playing and novel-reading and visiting; for something which may unfold the mind and satisfy those affections which cannot be (for they were never meant to be) bestowed all upon your families and personal friends. Here is work for you to do, ready to your hand, noble work in its end, if difficult and distasteful in its process. I appeal to you now on the selfish grounds of the development of your own mind, and the satisfying of the cravings of your own heart; but I can take a far higher stand than that; thousands are dying round you, dying in and of hunger, nakedness, ignorance, vice, misery; you can do something, it may be much, to save them; to do it is your duty, which remains the same, whether you heed it or not. And there are darker scenes even than those I have pointed to; there are Reformatories, there are Penitentiaries; there is evil which I will not name here. Surely here is work for you, brought home to your very door; only begin, and from the smallest beginnings you know not what may arise.

But let me guard against misconception. Do I call upon all ladies to undertake these offices? First let me say that I think there are very few who could not do something, even though it were very little; and, having premised this, I freely answer that but a very small proportion can devote themselves to these charitable works even for a short period; few, especially married ladies, can even give much of their time to them. Again, those who

ground. And there lies Florence reposing in the noonday sun! In the outlook on the right we see the broad blue Arno winding, (for two turreted bridges span its waters at different angles,) and a boat is sailing there, its white sail filling and its blue pendant streaming gaily to the breeze; and in the foreground on the hither bank is a windmill with its own bell, and mossy wall, and overhanging tree; whilst on the other side, though the pillars of the staircase, we see an ample square, a public well in the centre of it, a house with porch and turrets, and just a single figure. Beyond are streets with other towers and houses, gathered in fellowship, fading away in the distance, the light still on them: and below the stair is a peep of wall and garden and summer-house.

This landscape, which in such little compass (for it is quite subordinate to the rest of the picture) speaks to us of light and space and distance, and above all of human fellowship, is introduced, I think, with exquisite judgment. It is welcome to us as the sweet natural close of one of Tennyson’s impassioned stories, “Love and Duty”, for instance, or “Edwin Morris”. Not only does it here serve to mark the when and where of the story, giving the entire character of the scene on which Dante and Beatrice looked on every day of the happy past, not only does the broad gladsome light of day make contrast with the gloom of the presence-chamber of Death, and so endue it with deeper solmenity and impressiveness, just as the light of life in the ministrant women makes only more touching the pale motionless face of her who is dead; not only this, but a truth is here, very precious to the mourner. For does not this landscape unite that narrow sorrow-haunted cell to the great city of Florence, to that greater city, which is called the World?—seeming to say to Dante’s



poor chastened heart, “In thy sorrow think not thou art alone, think not so; but lift up thine eyes and behold, There is a whole world beside thee; and the sun is shining there, and men dwell there, and are happy there, and busy there, even as our Universal Father has in His mercy provided. The mill-sail goes round, the serving maidens trip to the well morning and evening, and the boatman plies his sail; and there are garden and bower, lovely sights and sounds, and all is well. Let not thy heart, O Son of Man, cling to selfish repining, awake to holy love and gratitude and joy!” And Dante shall see this, shall hear and feel this—not now, but presently.

Perhaps these words recall to the reader another poem which is so familiar to us all.

• “Break, break, break,
• On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
• And I would that my tongue could utter
• The thoughts that arise in me.

• Oh well for the fisherman’s boy,
• That he shouts with his sister at play!
• Oh well for the sailor lad,
• That he sings in his boat on the bay!

• And the stately ships go on
• 10To their haven under the hill;
• But oh for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
• And the sound of a voice that is still!

• Break, break, break,
• At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
• But the tender grace of a day that is dead
• Will never come back to me.”

I quote it to show how kindred are the hearts of poets* and of all men, and to observe how the painter’s brush and the poet’s pen have worked in the self-same spirit; the scene is in both cases just indicated by a few touching features.

I now bid farewell to the meaning of this picture, much of it yet unfathomed, its fulness altogether impossible to words, and turn to the workmanship. It is as a work of colour that this picture, or rather drawing, for it is executed in water colours only, is most remarkable. To perception of colour the modern eye, even of the painter’s, is comparatively dead (though it will not be so much longer!) so that chromatic splendour is either altogether denied, or else the painter rests content with just defining a thing as red or blue or what not. But in this drawing, as in other works by the same artist, is manifested a fervent love for rich and brilliant colour, and a rare mastery in handling it. The plumage of tropical birds is the only thing I can compare to it for general effect. Green and purple, scarlet, crimson, blue, and many another glory of the paintbox, in themselves as soon as they touch the pallet the delight of the eye, are here freely bestowed upon us, and at once surprise us with joy, like a rainbow in the sky; and no words can express the tenderness, the subtlety of their beauty truly blent; not in the drapery only and in the countenances, where the colour is principal and brilliant, but even in things of the most subordinate interest, the gloom of the archway, the stone stair, the timbers of the floor: think not, simple reader, that these are mere brown things!—the shadows in the white sheet which is raised over Beatrice are wrought, magically, it seems no less, in faint green and blue-gray inter-blending; I name these, yet despair of naming them rightly; they are almost as nameless as the colours which live in the petals of the pale garden anemones, of which they remind me. All too, when looked closely into, is so mysterious, attained one cannot tell how, but by the magic instinct of genius guiding the hand through strangest confusions to the beautiful purpose of the mind; but one secret of the work seems to lie in a wondrous feeling for the play of shadow, its spirit-like wanderings and ethereal colours, for a few paces back these many hues melt into the proper unity which belongs to each object, and articulate the lights and shadows with impressive emphasis. Is not this the truth of Nature—mystery within



mystery, life within life, and a clear voice through all? Another attribute of this colour, if indeed it be not vitally included in the first, is the bloom of its surface; not radiant however and dazzling, as in sunshine, but softly glowing with secret life in every particle, as the sustained undertone of a sweet and quiet melody. Perhaps the reader, who two months ago saw a cluster of wild hyacinths in a shady nook of wood, may know how true, how lovely this is!

There must also be a harmony of colour in the whole, as in every great work; but this is here so complex that I do not pretend to comprehend it; this only I know, that I would change nothing.

One word may well be given to the frame, as it is of the Artist’s own designing. Beside a double beaded moulding of gilt, is a broad band of silver, on which, above the picture, are inscribed the words “Vita Nuova”, followed by the stanza of the poem, which, distributed prose-wise, is completed below; on the right border are the words “Quomodo sedet sola civitas”, the exclamation which broke from Dante when he heard of Beatrice’s death, on the left “Veni sponsa de Libano,” the angel-song of their meeting in Paradise; and beneath all is the date of her true death, “12 Giogno 1290.”

And now it may well be asked, “Who has done this? Who is it who has thus made new again and beautiful this old touching story, which so endears to us the memory of the great Voice of Italy?”—One Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Let the reader now turn his thoughts to a far different scene. Away from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth; from ancient dream to modern fact; from sunny Florence to the wintry English Channel; from that quiet chamber to the noisy deck of an Emigrant-ship. And another Poet shall now reveal his thoughts to us; not Rossetti any longer, but Madox