Morning journal and courier., 1888-12-05

or tne befnese mald, wife and mother. " Gotthelf has joined in her, he now continues, ''the three perfections of womanly grace, of womanly honor and of pure intellect" Her character is indeed thus ''too complete to be exemplary, or even, in the common world, credible. Nevertheless, women of her type, and even coming near her standard, ara fre- queRt in the Bernese, Uri and TYroless Alps, and in dedicating the pansy of the Wengern Alp to her, ment to indicate at once the relation of her noble strength to her moun- tain land, and the peculiar sadness and pa tience in sorrow which invest her, even through the happiest scenes of her life, with the purple robe of the kings and queens who reign at once in earth and heaven"
 "But," continues MT. Raskin, "the two points of character in which French Is emin- ent above even these gracious women, such as they are generally, are her frankness- and yet command of her lips. Many very noble women are subtle, reserved, or inex- piieable even to themselves; they know not their own hearts, or the tendency of their own thoughts. But French knows, always, not her own mind merely but her power cap acity, sensibility; knows how truly she can love, how unwearily she can labor, how faith- fully she keep the law and receive the gospel of Christ. And further she is frank and simple to the utter-most even to those who are seeking her destruction. She never de- signs to deceive, never loses in anger the 9"OCbhCco1 life and conduct. She expresses neither inc dignation nor Fride to the lover who has in- left her, asks for no atonement on his return speaks of her own affection to him as quietly as if it were sisters, and trusts to his re- specs for 1t to guard him against imprudent contest with his own fortune"
 MT. Ruskin then proceeds to ask "How far the women have this perfect power alike over their own affections and the expression of feeling, differ in the elements of their nature from those whose passions possess and conquer them. Alike Scott, Gotthel and Miss Edgeworth assume that noble training and right principle can always give the pow of self-command. Shakespeare allows the passion always to conquer in the most lovely natures. x They are conquered by love in an instant; and confess it as soon as they have the chance; while even with Scott and Miss Edgeworth, reserved as the affec- tion may be, it is always deeper than their lovers and usually anticipates it, but never conauers their own characters or for an in- stant shakes their purposes''
 But with regard to Shakespeare's types of noble womanhood, F'it is of little use," says MT. Ruskin, 'tfor lessening in daily life to study the thoughts or ways of maidens who are always dukes daughters at the least. In- deed, in returning to my Shakespeare after such final reading of the realities of life as may have been permitted to me (dazzled too easily, and too often blind), 1t grieves me to find in him no laborious nor lowlv ideal; his perfect shepherdness is @ disguised princess, his miracle of the white island exultingly quits her spirit guarded sands to be Queen of Naples, and his cottage Rosalind is extreme ly glad to get her face unbrowned again."
 But the noblest types of womanhood are not ''dukes' daughters" in the least. Gott- helf's Swiss heroine, French is only farm servant and Scott's Jeans is of the same type in Scotland. For as for womens work, says Mr. Ruskin in passage in"Fors Clavigera, ,'' with which we may bring his later notes to a conclusion, "what should it be but scrubbing furniture, dusting walls, sweeping floors, helping with the farm work, or the garden or the dairya Take the facts of such life in old Scotland seen with Walter Scott's own eyes:
 On reaching the brow of a bleak eminence overhanging the primitive tower and it's tiny patch of cultivated ground he found his host and three sons, and perhaps half dozen at- tendant gilliee, all stretched half-asleep in their tartans, upon the heath with guns and dogs and profusiou of game about them; while in the courtyard far below, appeared a company of women actively engaged in load ing cart with manure. The stranger was not little astonished when he discovered, on descending from the height that among these industrious females were the laird s own lady and two or three of her daughters; but they seemed quite unconscious of having been detected in an occupation unsuitable to their rank, retired presently to the "bowers, '' and when they reappered in other dresses retained no traces of their mornings work except compilations glowing with a radiant freshness, for one evening of which many a high bred beauty would have bartered half her diamonds. He found the young ladies not ill-informed and exceedingly agreeable; and the song and the dance seemed to form the iDvariable termination of their busy days.
 ''You think such barbarian forever past No my dears; it is only the barbarity of idle gentlemen that must pass. They will have to fill the carts-you to drive them"