But if it is really true that a German professor has to cross the Atlantic to witness a phenomenon so very simple as that of a lover-like husband bringing a shawl for his wife, I should say, Let the immigration from Germany be encouraged as much as possible, in order that even the most learned immigrants may discover something new.

CHILDLESS WOMEN

It has not always been regarded as a thing creditable to woman that she was the mother of the human race.  On the contrary, the fact was often mentioned, in the Middle Ages, as a distinct proof of inferiority.  The question was discussed in the mediaeval Council of Macon, and the position taken that woman was no more entitled to rank as human, because she brought forth men, than the garden-earth could take rank with the fruit and flowers it bore.  The same view was revived by a Latin writer of 1595, on the thesis “Mulieres non homines esse,” a French translation of which essay was printed under the title of “Paradoxe sur les femmes,” in 1766.  Napoleon Bonaparte used the same image, carrying it almost as far:—­

“Woman is given to man that she may bear children.  Woman is our property; we are not hers:  because she produces children for us; we do not yield any to her:  she is therefore our possession, as the fruit-tree is that of the gardener.”

Even the fact of parentage, therefore, has been adroitly converted into a ground of inferiority for women; and this is ostensibly the reason why lineage has been reckoned, almost everywhere, through the male line only, ignoring the female; just as, in tracing the seed of some rare fruit, the gardener takes no genealogical account of the garden where it grew.  This view is now seldom expressed in full force:  but one remnant of it is to be found in the lingering impression, that, at any rate, a woman who is not a mother is of no account; as worthless as a fruitless garden or a barren fruit-tree.  Created only for a certain object, she is of course valueless unless that object be fulfilled.

But the race must have fathers as well as mothers; and if we look for evidence of public service in great men, it certainly does not always lie in leaving children to the republic.  On the contrary, the rule has rather seemed to be, that the most eminent men have left their bequest of service in any form rather than in that of a great family.  Recent inquiries into the matter have brought out some remarkable facts in this regard.

As a rule, there exist no living descendants in the male line from the great authors, artists, statesmen, soldiers, of England.  It is stated that there is not one such descendant of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Butler, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, or Moore; not one of Drake, Cromwell, Monk, Marlborough, Peterborough, or Nelson; not one of Strafford, Ormond, or Clarendon; not one of Addison, Swift, or Johnson; not one of Walpole, Bolingbroke, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Burke, Grattan, or Canning; not one of Bacon, Locke, Newton, or Davy; not one of Hume, Gibbon, or Macaulay; not one of Hogarth or Reynolds; not one of Garrick, John Kemble, or Edmund Kean.  It would be easy to make a similar American list, beginning with Washington, of whom it was said that “Providence made him childless that his country might call him Father.”