is written, and flowers are fostered, that life may be made beautiful.  Let women delight our eyes like pictures, be harmonious as music, and fragrant as flowers, that they also may fulfil their mission of grace and of beauty.  By companionship with beautiful thoughts shall their tastes be so formed that their toilets will never be out of harmony with their means or their position.  They will be clothed almost as unconsciously as the lilies of the field; but each one will be herself, and there will be no more uniformity in their attire than in their faces.

The modern Dryad who is ready to ‘dress for the trees’ seems to me a charming type; but I hardly think that Mrs. Moulton is right when she says that the woman of the future will be clothed ’almost as unconsciously as the lilies of the field.’  Possibly, however, she means merely to emphasise the distinction between dressing and dressing-up, a distinction which is often forgotten.

* * * * *

Warring’ Angels is a very sad and suggestive story.  It contains no impossible heroine and no improbable hero, but is simply a faithful transcript from life, a truthful picture of men and women as they are.  Darwin could not have enjoyed it, as it does not end happily.  There is, at least, no distribution of cakes and ale in the last chapter.  But, then, scientific people are not always the best judges of literature.  They seem to think that the sole aim of art should be to amuse, and had they been consulted on the subject would have banished Melpomene from Parnassus.  It may be admitted, however, that not a little of our modern art is somewhat harsh and painful.  Our Castaly is very salt with tears, and we have bound the brows of the Muses with cypress and with yew.  We are often told that we are a shallow age, yet we have certainly the saddest literature of all the ages, for we have made Truth and not Beauty the aim of art, and seem to value imitation more than imagination.  This tendency is, of course, more marked in fiction than it is in poetry.  Beauty of form is always in itself a source of joy; the mere technique of verse has an imaginative and spiritual element; and life must, to a certain degree, be transfigured before it can find its expression in music.  But ordinary fiction, rejecting the beauty of form in order to realise the facts of life, seems often to lack the vital element of delight, to miss that pleasure-giving power in virtue of which the arts exist.  It would not, however, be fair to regard Warring Angels simply as a specimen of literary photography.  It has a marked distinction of style, a definite grace and simplicity of manner.  There is nothing crude in it, though it is to a certain degree inexperienced; nothing violent, though it is often strong.  The story it has to tell has frequently been told before, but the treatment makes it new; and Lady Flower, for whose white soul the angels of good and evil are at war, is admirably conceived, and admirably drawn.