Part 2

EDUCATION OF WOMAN.

Progress of female education Youth of Hannah More Her accomplishments Teaches school Intimacy with great men Shines in society Wearied of it Her ridicule of fashionable gatherings called society Retirement to Cowslip Green Her patrons and friends Labors in behalf of the poor Foundation of schools Works on female education Their good influence Their leading ideas Christian education Removal to Barley Wood Views of society Her distinguished visitors "Coelebs in Search of a Wife" "Christian Morals" Her laboring at the age of eighty The quiet elegance of her life Removal to Clifton Happy old age Death Exalted character Remarks on female education The sphere of woman What is woman to do?

GEORGE ELIOT.

WOMAN AS NOVELIST.

Notable eras of modern civilization Nineteenth Century, the age of novelists Scott, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray Bulwer; women novelists Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot Early life of Marian Evans Appearance, education, and acquirements Change in religious views; German translations; Continental travel Westminster Review; literary and scientific men Her alliance with George Henry Lewes Her life with him Literary labors First work of fiction, "Amos Barton," with criticism upon her qualities as a novelist, illustrated by the story "Mr. Gilfils Love Story" "Adam Bede" "The Mill on the Floss" "Silas Marner" "Romola" "Felix Holt" "Middlemarch" "Daniel Deronda" "Theophrastus Such" General characteristics of George Eliot Death of Mr. Lewes; her marriage with Mr. Cross Lofty position of George Eliot in literature Religious views and philosophical opinions Her failure as a teacher of morals Regret at her abandonment of Christianity

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VII.

Madame de Récamier After the painting by Baron François Pascal Gérard.

Abélard Teaching in the Paraclete After the painting by A. Steinheil.

Joan of Arc Hears the Voices After the painting by Eugene Thirion.

The Vision of St. Therese After the painting by Jean Brunet.

Reception of the Great Condé by Louis XIV After the painting by J. L. Gérôme.

Ministerial Conference of Louis XIV. at the Salon of Madam de Maintenon After the painting by John Gilbert.

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough After the painting by Pieter van der Werff, Pitti Palace, Florence.

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough After the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

Mme. de Récamier After the painting by Mlle. Morin

Madame de Staël After the painting by Mlle. de Godefroid, Versailles.

Garrick and His Wife After the painting by William Hogarth.

Hannah More After the painting by H.W. Pickersgill, A.R.A..

BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY

HÉLOÏSE.

* * * * *

A.D. 1101-1164.

LOVE.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,--subtile, mysterious, inexplicable,--a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not only with happiness, but human existence, and pertaining to the soul in its highest aspirations. Allied with the transient and the mortal, even with the weak and corrupt, it is yet immortal in its nature and lofty in its aims,--at once a passion, a sentiment, and an inspiration.

To attempt to describe woman without this element of our complex nature, which constitutes her peculiar fascination, is like trying to act the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet himself,--an absurdity; a picture without a central figure, a novel without a heroine, a religion without a sacrifice. My subject is not without its difficulties. The passion or sentiment I describe is degrading when perverted, as it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,--all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul.

"Socrates," says Legouvé, "who caught glimpses of everything that he did not clearly define, uttered one day to his disciples these beautiful words: 'There are two Venuses: one celestial, called Urania, the heavenly, who presides over all pure and spiritual affections; and the other Polyhymnia, the terrestrial, who excites sensual and gross desires.'" The history of love is the eternal struggle between these two divinities,--the one seeking to elevate and the other to degrade. Plato, for the first time, in his beautiful hymn to the Venus Urania, displayed to men the unknown image of love,--the educator and the moralist,--so that grateful ages have consecrated it by his name. Centuries rolled away, and among the descendants of Teutonic barbarians a still lovelier and more ideal sentiment burst out from the lips of the Christian Dante, kindled by the adoration of his departed Beatrice. And as she courses from star to star, explaining to him the mysteries, the transported poet exclaims:--

"Ah, all the tongues which the Muses have inspired could not tell the thousandth part of the beauty of the smile of Beatrice as she presented me to the celestial group, exclaiming, 'Thou art redeemed!' O woman, in whom lives all my hope, who hast deigned to leave for my salvation thy footsteps on the throne of the Eternal, thou hast redeemed me from slavery to liberty; now earth has no more dangers for me. I cherish the image of thy purity in my bosom, that in my last hour, acceptable in thine eyes, my soul may leave my body."