still more often is this the case with a girl.  They have both had a false view of things foisted on them by reading novels; and expectations have been aroused which can never be fulfilled.  This generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole life.  In this respect those whose youth has allowed them no time or opportunity for reading novels—­those who work with their hands and the like—­are in a position of decided advantage.  There are a few novels to which this reproach cannot be addressed—­nay, which have an effect the contrary of bad.  First and foremost, to give an example, Gil Blas, and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish originals); further, The Vicar of Wakefield, and, to some extent Sir Walter Scott’s novels. Don Quixote may be regarded as a satirical exhibition of the error to which I am referring.

OF WOMEN.

Schiller’s poem in honor of women, Wuerde der Frauen, is the result of much careful thought, and it appeals to the reader by its antithetic style and its use of contrast; but as an expression of the true praise which should be accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior to these few words of Jouy’s:  Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure; and the end, of consolation.  The same thing is more feelingly expressed by Byron in Sardanapalus: 

                                                 The very first
  Of human life must spring from woman’s breast,
  Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
  Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs
  Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing,
  When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
  Of watching the last hour of him who led them.

(Act I Scene 2.)

These two passages indicate the right standpoint for the appreciation of women.

You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body.  She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion.  The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great deal of strength.  The current of her life should be more gentle, peaceful and trivial than man’s, without being essentially happier or unhappier.

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—­a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word.  See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place.