SCHILLER;

“they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of men; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands.”  “Win her and wear her, if you can,” says Shelley; “she is the most delightful of God’s creatures—­Heaven’s best gift—­man’s joy and pride in prosperity—­man’s support and comforter in affliction.”  “Her passions are made of the finest parts of pure love,” says Shakspeare.  “Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears,” says Rousseau.  “She was

LAST AT THE CROSS, EARLIEST AT THE GRAVE,”

says Barrett.  “Her errors spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true” declares Balzac.  “She has more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments,” says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman.  “All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman,” says Voltaire, skeptic in all else.  “Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men,” writes Addison, “whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there may not be a kind of

SEX IN THE VERY SOUL,

I shall not pretend to determine.”  “It is not strange to me” says Boyle, a good, sensible man, “that persons of the fairer sex should like, in all things about them, that handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked.”  Man reviles woman for her vanity.  At the same time it is the particular delight of the man who will himself wear no decoration to load upon his willing wife the trinkets of his fancy as far as his purse will pay for them.  Without woman’s almost savage love of display, man would be robbed of nearly all the pleasure which

PERSONAL ORNAMENTS

now give him.  He loves woman, just as she is.  Just as she is she is much above the level of the thing he would love had he not her to claim his rapt attention.  Man smiles at woman’s weaknesses, but if he thought of his great meanness of soul when his mercy and fidelity are in the scale against her own, he would look grave and troubled.  She dresses with expense and variety, because it is the first ordinance of her master.  Her very love of dress is the sign and seal of her intelligence.  If it be folly, arraign man at the dock!  Says

STAID OLD DR. JOHNSON: