on.

He con

guards him against wasting his evenings frivolously in the tattle of women's company. Yet Lord Chesterfield was for his period a worldly-wise and affectionate father. demns the barbarous sentiments of anger and revenge, and exhorts his son to gentleness and generosity. The lesson for us is clear. Throughout the whole range of public and private social life change in sentiment is rapidly going What is thought proper now will very probably not be thought proper in the year 1919; therefore, let no mere conservative bias thwart our judgment. All feelings are open to criticism, and it is by permitting the searching light of intellect to penetrate into the dark corners of human emotion, that we shall best secure or aid progress in the right directions. The subject is very large one, and it may seem to my reader that I have treated it superficially; but my object is not psychological, but purely sociological. It would not be relevant to my purpose to analyze and classify human sentiments. The order of evolution is what I have to do with, and it only falls within the scope of my work to make a few general observations, and note one or two important points. These are, first -that in this sphere of feeling the path of advance towards greater happiness, lies in fostering the sympathetic, and repressing the anti-social emotions; second-that love of property must be modified and subjected to reason; third-that jealousy is anti-social and must die out; fourth-that love of truth and the sentiment of justice are of recent growth, and demand general attention and aid in their development; and fifth-that the sentiment of what is proper or improper in conventional society, is no true guide to right conduct.

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CHAPTER X.

THE PERIOD OF YOUTH.

"From these high windows behind the flower-pots young girls have looked out upon life, which their instincts told them was made for pleasure, but which year after year convinced them was somehow or other given over to pain."-J. H. SHORTHOUSE.

THERE appeared in the Saturday Review for March, 1868, an article entitled "The Girl of the Period," written by a woman who certainly possesses what Lord Chesterfield called "solid, reasoning good sense," the type of woman which, according to him, had no existence in his day, but of which we have at least a few specimens now.

This writer holds advanced opinions upon many subjects. She has given to the world works that show knowledge, high culture, experience of life, and wide human sympathies. It is impossible for us to impute to her any prejudice against her own sex, any want of true sympathy with girls; nevertheless, in this article her teaching is conservative. She compares a past state of things with a present state of things, and gives a distinct opinion in favour of the former.

"Time was," she says, "when the phrase—a fair young English girl-meant, a creature generous, capable, and modest. It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of the innate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neither bold in bearing nor masculine in mind; a girl who, when she married, would be her husband's friend and companion, but never his rival; a tender mother, an industrious housekeeper, a judicious mistress." "Of late years," she goes on, "we have changed the pattern, and have given to the world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we had created another nation altogether. The Girl of

the Period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her face; . . . whose sole idea of life is fun; whose sole aim is unbounded luxury; and whose dress is the object of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavour

is to outvie her neighbours in the extravagance of fashion. The Girl of the Period has done away with such moral muffishness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke.

"No one can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. Love is the last thing she thinks of, and the least of the dangers besetting her. Love in a cottage-that seductive dream which used to vex the heart and disturb the calculations of the prudent mother— is now a myth of past ages," and her only ideal of marriage is "the legal barter of herself for so much money, representing so much dash, luxury, and pleasure." She concludes with a grave warning to the young of her own sex, in reference to marriage. "The Girl of the Period," she tells them, “does not marry easily. Men are afraid of her; and with reason. All men whose opinion is worth having, prefer the simple and genuine girl of the past, with her tender little ways, and pretty bashful modesties, to this loud and rampant modernization, with her false red hair and painted skin, talking slang as glibly as a man, and by preference leading the conversation to doubtful subjects."

Now, I entirely agree with the writer of this article in her condemnation and denunciation of the girl of the period whom she describes. The picture is a truly odious one, and I suppose we must admit that there are amongst us a considerable number of the type. But the article seems to me to carry two inferences with it, which I regard as erroneous. First, she assumes that if we reject her type of girl of the period, we are shut up to the type of the past; and because we cannot admire or tolerate the loud and rampant modernization, we must revert to the girl whose chief attractions lie in "tender little ways, and bashful modesties." Second, she infers that the proper standard of feminine excellence is masculine desires. Her principle seems to me to be that woman is made for man. At all events, in exhorting the girl of the period to lay aside her absurdities, she appeals to no higher motive than that men do not approve, and do not want that kind of thing in her.

I do not for a moment deny that some men are excellent

THE IDEAL IN WOMANHOOD.

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judges of what is good in woman; but that man's opinion is to be her guide and rule, that she is to find out, in short, what he requires and wishes for in a wife, and shape herself accordingly, is to my mind teaching of a misleading, mischievous character. And in reference to the spirit of the age it is like a false note, a jarring discord in the music of the future. The true harmony lies in a wholly different view, viz. this-woman exists as man exists, for the development of her varied faculties, for the achievement of the highest work within her power, and the attainment of the greatest goodness and happiness possible. That her happiness is deeply involved in her relations to man, and that her goodness must be compatible with, and in no way obstructive of, his happiness, are undoubted facts; but the true measure of her standard is not his requirements, and her mental and moral calibre are not to be controlled by, and fitted to, his personal tastes.

But is this question about our ideal in womanhood, with its necessary discussion of the frivolous lives of spoilt girls, a fitting subject to introduce here? Am I justified in asking for it the attention of minds that may be occupied with such grave matters as capital punishment, our criminal code, the reform of drunkards, the land laws, church disestablishment, etc.? In my opinion, the question is an extremely important one. It forms part of a wider subject, which in relation to general welfare and social advance, comes next in importance to that of poverty and increase of population-I mean the subject of the Period of Youth in both sexes. Let us put it in this way. Given the prevailing disposition, character, habits, and customs of the young men and women of the present day, and given the conditions of their life—that is their environment or surroundings-what result may be rationally looked for as regards present happiness and as regards the moral elevation of the next generation, of which they are the potential parents?

In dealing with poverty, we found the pauper a blot upon our nineteenth-century civilization and a reproach to the whole British race. We saw clearly, that to abuse and attach personal blame to the pauper was irrational and cruelly unjust. His antecedents and his surroundings explain his existence; and it is by enlightened modification of these conditions alone, that we shall compass the great end of securing his gradual and total extinction. Similarly with the Saturday Review's girl of the period. She is a blot upon our civilization, and we

may place her figure side by side with that which Mr. Lecky calls "the most mournful and in some respects the most awful upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose name is a shame to speak . . . who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed, for the most part, to disease and abject wretchedness. . . . That degraded and ignoble form. . . . She remains while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." * This latter figure is more despised than the former, more publicly and popularly recognized as ignoble; but the girl of the period form is in reality not one whit less degraded. Both are vicious, unseemly outcomes of our social system, and point to something radically wrong in our nineteenth-century civilization. Neither should be treated superciliously or with abuse. Compassion is the tone of mind they should inspire, and on the part of all reformers, persistent, earnest endeavour to remove the causes that perpetuate their number, or give them birth. As regards the prostitute, the fundamental and primary cause of her existence is poverty, with its antecedent, a too rapid birth-rate. But there are

other secondary causes on which we shall elsewhere touch; meanwhile we turn again from her, to her companion picturethe objectionable girl of the period.

And let us glance first at the essential nature of youth. It is a period of effervescence. There is in youth, if it is healthy, an exuberance of life, which is ever ready to bubble up and overflow. It tends to movement or to action in all directions, and the movement is threefold. It may be muscular or physical, it may be emotional, or it may be intellectual; but if the latter, the activity is not of the judgment or reasoning powers, but rather of the imagination and the faculty of quick perception. Now, society is bound to find safe and ready channels for all this surplus energy. Young people of both sexes require a sphere for useful activities as well as recreational activities, a wide choice of intellectual pleasures, and a field for the free play and exercise of all the spontaneous and varied emotions that are not of an anti-social nature.

In the novels of the present day, as I observed in my last chapter, we must not expect to find guidance to right conduct; but what we do find there is a true representation of the inner and outer life that surrounds us. One of these novels gives a striking description of the position and feelings of a young * "History of European Morals," vol. ii. p. 299.