The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-09-19

In writing women will be wise to re-
cognize with George Eliot the fact of sex
in literature, and realize that to write as
a woman is the office they have to per-
form, says G. G. Buckler in the North
American Review. After their kind, in
her opinion, women can fully equal men,
Probably woman's kind in literature will
always be found to be the humber species,
the lyric, and especially the hymn, letter
writing, and domestic novels. In art she
will do well to confine herself to the lower
and no less useful branches, decoration
and the various art industries; in music
and drama she must be content with be-
ing indisputably a finer interpreter than
man. In teaching, philanthropy and med
icine She can take an honorable place, and
in religious work apart from the vexed
question of preaching) she will be univer-
sally welcomed. In the sciences of inven-
ton and discovery she had best not hope
for great achievement but be satisfied with
a large arena of usefulness in assisting
and carrying out the creations of men. For
it is in this subordinate relation that wo-
men can probably find their truest and
wisest sphere, that of influence 1t is the
modern fashion to decry this power as de-
grading; none the less it is a vitality i'm
pOrtant factor in human affairs. Buckler
declares that in the modern world the
spread of civilization and the influence of
women have been commensurate. Not
only on morals, he tells us, but on knowl-
edge has this influence been of enormous
Importance, for it is women who encourag e
in men those processes of deduction and
imagination which are foreign to the male
nature. To the same secret but benef-
cent agency Mill ascribes the aversion of
the world nowadays to war and its adj
diction of philanthropy. In whatever
field of mental activity we look women
have from all time been the great inspir-
ers and molders of men. No one can men
ton Barak, Pericles, Dante or Petrarch
without thinking simultaneously of De-
borah, Aspasia, Beatrice, or Laura.
The finest compositions by Beethoven,
Schumann and Chopin would probably
never have been written but for the wo-
men to whom they are dedicated, and the
paintings of Andrea del Sarto and Titan
show almost too plainly the earthly and
feminine sources of their inspiration. The
French academy owes its birth to the fe-
male purists assembled in the Hotel de
Rambouillet, and indeed throughout the
history of French literature women seem
TO nave abided by the famous advice of
Lebrun: Inspire, do not write In
the various salons of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, literary, political,
philosophical, semi-religious, or wholly
revolutionary, a new French literature
and philosophy, and above ALL the spirit
OF terribly new political age, may be said
to have been Graded. Clubs have now
arisen to draw men away from ladies'
drawing rooms, and the power of the press
has eclipsed that of any social circle, but
none the less can women expect and claim
vital if subordinate or indirect share in
all the activities of men.
To those who are not contented with
this, we can only say: Take your own
way You are probably as well fitted as
a man at least to acquire learning, and
all opportunities are now open to you. But
if in achievement you fail to attain the
highest rank, do not be surprised but
look with more tolerant respect on the wo-
men who are satisfied to be and confess
themselves the intellectual interiors of
men.