not admit of imitations, however clever. A man with Sir Bulwer Lytton's endowments can no more sit down and say, I will write a great epic poem, than a plain woman can resolve to have a handsome face. All he can do is what is here done. He can skilfully put together the materials which poets use. No man is absolutely <destitute of fancy, or even of the true imaginative faculty; but for Bulwer to attempt to vivify a poem of twelve books with the amount of bardic fire and insight which is at his disposal, is as if one should attempt to light up St. Paul's with a single composition-candle. We had proposed to make it the subject of some detailed criticisms, but our heart has failed us. The mosaic splendour of strained expression and exaggerated sentiment which, as in the case of an over-dressed gentleman, gives an air of vulgarity not always deserved to his prose works, shines out in his poems in a yet higher degree. For the rest, they serve only to illustrate, with somewhat sharper lines, the deficiencies we have noted in his prose works; they are, indeed, only novels spoiled into verse, and they have scarcely readers enough to make it desirable that they should find commentators.

With his novels it is different. They have attractions which cannot fail to secure them a wide perusal. But their claims to a more lasting reputation must depend on their real merits, not on their false pretensions, still less on the author's direct and hungry demand for applause. It is the voice of the fit audience though few, gaining fresh adherents from each new generation, which makes fame permanent. Bulwer has got a radically false notion, the presence and influence of which pervades all his works. He thinks the ideal, the poetical, is something separate from, something even in contrast with reality, and that we can in our creations transcend nature and improve upon the work of the Almighty; whereas all we can do is to give a special completeness within a certain narrow sphere, and concentrate the elements of perfection by con

fining ourselves to a particular aspect. No poet can grasp the great whole of the universe, explore its plan, or comprehend its beauty; he sees only patches of the world, he apprehends only fleeting glimpses of life: but the power is given him out of that which he does see to make a whole of his own; to conceive, to create something; petty, indeed, and limited, compared to the vast creation from which it is drawn, and within which it stands, yet which moves on its own axis and is entire within itself. But it must rest on reality; there must be some sense in which imagination, even in its wildest flights, keeps harmony with the universe in which we live, or we recoil from its births as distorted and monstrous. Bulwer deserves sincere admiration for the zeal and perseverance with which he has devoted himself to his profession of a novelwriter; but he is a warning that no mere mastery of the machinery of art can compensate for a severance from the truths of nature.

393

WOMAN.*

[October 1858.]

THE influence of women on modern European society, Mr. Buckle tells us, has, on the whole, been extremely beneficial. We presume the influence of men has also, on the whole, been extremely beneficial. Yet it would seem odd to urge this. What is the origin of this curious habit, by which we so often speak and think of women as something outside of general humanity, or at least a lesser distinguishable part, whose relation to the whole may be made the subject of estimate? Are they not in reality human society as much as men are? If one looks at the subject with a fresh sudden glance, it seems as strange to speak of women exercising a beneficial influence on society as of the branches and leaves exercising a beneficial influence on the tree. Yet a mode of speech so universal, and of antiquity so undated, must have some true basis. Man" cannot mean both men and women for nothing; and mean it in all times and all languages. Does this expression imply that the nature of the man comprehends, includes within it, that of the woman? Not this probably; but it does imply that

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* Industrial and Social Position of Women in the Middle and Lower Ranks. London: Chapman and Hall, 1857.

The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge. By Henry Thomas Buckle. "Fraser's Magazine," April 1858.

London: J. W. Parker and Son.

The Englishwoman's Journal. London, 1858.

Remarks on the Education of Girls. By Bessie Rayner Parkes. Third edition. London: John Chapman, 1856.

society ever since the world began has received its characteristic nature and distinctive impress, not from the women, but from the men who helped to compose it. It does imply, and the world's history confirms it, that the collective body of men are in their nature more strong, more vigorous, more comprehensive, more complete in themselves, than the collective body of women. It is of no use screaming about it; the irrefragable fact remains. It is idle to say, 'it is all owing to the defective education you give us.' Why not have secured a higher education? It is no answer to cry, it all depends on your advantage in mere physical strength; for to say so admits the fact, and gives an inadequate reason for it. Why tell us of Semiramis and Maria Theresa, of Vittoria Colonna and Mrs. Browning, of Mrs. Somerville and Miss Martineau, down to Brynhilda who tied up King Gunther and Captain Betsey who commands the Scotch brig Cleotus? These great names, which shoot so high, serve but to measure the average growth.

Against the great fact of subordination of place in the world's history, however, is to be placed another fact not less marked and important, that the upward progress of the race has always been accompanied by a commensurate increase in the influence of women. The fact to which Mr. Buckle calls attention, that in the palmiest days of Athens the influence of women was at a minimum, is strictly in accordance with the purely intellectual, and therefore narrow, though brilliant civilisation to which alone the Greek mind attained. It serves to show how large a part of intellectual cultivation may be independent of the woman, and how incomplete in such independence are its loftiest achievements. Mr. Buckle, with his narrow theory of civilisation, rests the matter too purely on considerations of intellectual conformation; yet it can scarcely be denied that the influence of women is less at the present day than it was before the advent of what may be called the scientific age, that our material civilisation is

the result of effort and mental activity of a more specially masculine kind. Both our forms of thought and our habits of industrial life have become too narrow and engrossing and this defect may fairly be attributed (in some degree at least) to the fact that the quick advance and strong leaning in one direction of the men's minds has separated them by a sort of chasm from the women; and depriving them of the softening and enlarging influence of the closer companionship of the latter, has left these too with inadequate resources for the full development of their faculties and natures.

It is the women themselves who have first become conscious of this; who have felt their wants and their comparative isolation. They have been moved, indeed, by a practical pinch. A denser population, a keener competition for the means of livelihood, thence marriages later and proportionally fewer, the disuse, through superior manufacturing facilities, of a large mass of domestic industry,-have at once limited their home avocations and cast them more upon their own resources. They cry for larger opportunities of employment, for means of subsistence less precarious than those they now possess: but they ask also for an enlarged education, for freer scope for their powers, and for a closer interest and sympathy in the intellectual pursuits and practical concerns of men.

It has been pointed out by the author of The Industrial Condition of Women, that this gap prevails more in the middle, especially the manufacturing and commercial classes, than in the higher or lower ones; and this is consistent with the hypothesis of its being connected with the rapid development of what may be called our material industry.

The defects of our present social condition with respect to the education and position of women, are real and important; the suggestion of remedies most difficult. The question is so complex, casts its fine and inter