disclosures are made may often be chargeable with effrontery as well as with wanton exaggeration, but contemplated from a philosophical point of view it is lifted out of the domain of taste into that of ethnology, and serves many scientific purposes. The same will doubtless be said of Shakespeare's language many thousands of years hence by students on the banks of the Oregon, the Red River, or the Paraná.

ESSAY VII

CONCEPTION OF THE FEMALE CHARACTER

It is no matter of surprise that Shakespeare, considering the character of the age in which he lived, should have formed a low estimate of women; but that Aristotle should have done the same, with so many superior advantages at his command, is scarcely intelligible. He says that, upon the whole, women are rather bad than good; but are not men also upon the whole rather bad than good? There has always, it seems, been a sort of warfare going on between the sexes, as well as between those who take one side or the other, and this state of hostility leads to the adoption of partial views; so that women and the advocates of women misrepresent those whom they choose to regard as their enemies, while men and their advocates do the same. This is not unnatural among wits, or sportive writers who feel no regard for truth. But Aristotle was not a wit, or one who wrote for effect. He studied human nature in order, if possible, to understand it thoroughly, especially in the sexual relations, and yet we find that of half the human race he arrived at the conclusion that evil elements predominate in its constitution. It is rare to find any writer, great or little, who does not on this subject agree with Aristotle; women themselves, when not engaged in controversy,

fall into the same vein of thinking, even while intent, as they suppose, on lauding their own sex.

A dispute which has been carried on ever since the creation of mankind can hardly be expected to be settled

now.

There are certainly great differences between the sexes, mental as well as physical, and it seems doubtful whether they who attempt to remove the differences are not mischievously occupied. In Shakespeare these differences are brought out in the most marked manner. The contrast between the hunter and his game is not more striking than that presented in these dramas between the wooer and the wooed. Sometimes, as in the case of Beatrice, hostilities are commenced by the weaker party, who exhibits in the conduct of them too much of the rough energy and reckless intrepidity of the stronger; sometimes, as in the case of Lady Macbeth, the woman appears for a while the superior in intellectual force as well as in the fervour of passion; but the excitement which buoys her up is unnatural, and speedily leads to a collapse which terminates her being.

In real life women beheld in contrast with certain men are superior, not only in mental but sometimes in bodily power; but, as a rule, power is the appanage of the male, while grace and subtlety are those of the female. This leads to many of the moral phenomena we witness in the world, where women in order to defend themselves against brute force put in practice all the arts and cunning and deception in the hope of thereby escaping from oppression and barbarity. But in such cases neither sex is fulfilling the designs of nature, which means that they should co-operate, and oppose their united faculties to external circumstances, in which

case the woman's finer organs would form the complement to those of the man, which are more enduring as well as powerful. But when circumstances place man and woman in the relation of contending parties fear often strips woman of all her finer qualities, and clothes her with craft and falsehood. She ought never to be engaged in conflict with man, but when thrust, whether with or against her will, into such a conflict she has no choice but to lie and overreach.

Among savages women submit to perform all the drudgery of life, not voluntarily, but because they must, and in several stages of what we call civilisation they continue to perform much the same part. It is not of such women that effeminate poets like Byron can affirm, that while love is only part of man's life it is woman's whole existence; for in such a life there is little to do with love, and much with hate.

In all stages of society, however, women, being the weaker sex, are necessarily governed by men, a statement which may not be considered chivalrous or polite, though its truth be undeniable. All the great business of the world is carried on by men-its laws, its wars, its commerce, its trade, its industry-sometimes with, but generally without, the co-operation of women. Hitherto we have beheld no female senators, and, though barbarians have sometimes forced the women into the battlefield, their presence, I believe, has seldom been found serviceable; neither have ships-of-war, or even merchantships, been anywhere entrusted to the management of women. To the masculine brain we owe nearly all inventions and discoveries, the development of principles, the application of processes, the dynamics of manufactures, the direction of education, the discovery of philosophy, the framing

and regulation of civil society. We may then inquire with Anacreon, is there nothing left in this world's work for women? This is left for them: to be the sharers with man in whatever is good, and to be themselves the spolia opima of his most glorious victories; for even where they neither toil nor fight, women come in for the best share of whatever is toiled or fought for.

It did not fall much within the scope of Shakespeare's plan to consider women in any other light than as the object of man's passion, the chief incentive to his actions, good or evil, and the victim too frequently of her own or his vices. To develop his views of woman he put upon the stage numerous examples of female character, each belonging to a separate type and exhibiting the qualities which, according to his theory, belong to that type. The historian of ancient art had come after long study to the conclusion that the perfection of female beauty was not made the supreme object of art, because it was so easy of attainment. The reverse, I believe, was the case; and our dramatic poets have found the difficulty of representing female character to be as great as the ancient artists found it to represent the female countenance, for the beauty of form is less difficult.

It is in this part of his art that Shakespeare excels all other modern dramatic poets. He alone has put women of a high order and at the same time natural upon the stage. The shades, however, of difference between woman and woman when approximating at all to excellence are so fine and subtle, though in fact as real as those which distinguish man from man, that even he in the plenitude of his powers never sought to exhibit many female characters in one play; and in the entire body of his works, while the men may be reckoned by hundreds, the women are comparatively few.