m 
 
 m I 
 
No. 177. 
 
 maynard's 
 English • Classic • Series 
 
 « v^ » 
 
 USECOND LECTURE 
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 -7^ 
 
 BY 
 
 cTOhN ROSKIN 
 
 Jl 
 
 — I — I — ■ — ■ — I— l-l-l— l-l— I— l-l-l 
 
 r" 
 
 "NEW YORK 
 
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 lish Version by Rev. R. Pottei 
 
MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.— No. 177 
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 SECOND LECTURE 
 
 Of Queens' Gardens 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, CRITICAL OPINIONS, 
 AND NOTES 
 
 
 
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Introduction. 
 
 John Ruskin was born in London, in 1819. His father was a 
 I prosperous wine-merchant, who spent his leisure hours in the 
 study of art and the exercise of the pencil and brush. His early 
 education was conducted by his mother, a woman of unusual 
 culture, possessing a refined taste in literature. This maternal 
 tuition was almost puritanic in its severity. In addition to 
 daily reading from such books as Pope's "Homer," Scott's 
 "Novels," and " Pilgrim's Progress," he was forced, he tells us, 
 "by steady, patient, daily toil, to learn long chapters of the 
 Bible by heart, as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, 
 hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about 
 once every year ; and to that discipline, patient, accurate, and re- 
 solute, I owe, not only a knowledge of the book I find occasion- 
 ally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, 
 and the best part of my taste in literature," By such discipline 
 in the knowledge of the Scriptures "she established my soul in 
 life," he says, and he regards it as "the most precious, and, on 
 the whole, the one essential part of my education." From the 
 training of his mother he passed to the school of the Rev. 
 Thomas Dale, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 It was the father of John Ruskin, however, who bestowed and 
 cultivated those artistic impulses which became the formative 
 principles of his life. The ' ' power of hills ' ' was early upon him, 
 and the most vivid impressions of his childhood, he tells us, 
 were of the beautiful in nature and art. He was in the habit of 
 accompanying his father in his business journeyings to various 
 parts of the kingdom, and thus became familiar with much of 
 the choicest English scenery, as well as with the art treasures 
 of all the famed halls and galleries. "In all mountain ground 
 and scenery, I had a pleasure, as early as I can remember," he 
 I says. When three years and a half old, being asked by the artist 
 who was painting his portrait what he would like for the back- 
 ! ground, he replied, "blue hills." The care and excellence of 
 his father's instruction in matters of taste is attested by a signi- 
 ficant fact: "he never," says Ruskin, "allowed me to look at a 
 bad picture." After leaving Oxford he studied drawing and 
 painting under J. D. Harding and Copley Fielding, and his 
 work gave promise of eminence as an original artist. But it 
 was as a prophet of painting, not as a painter, that Ruskin was to 
 reveal himself to men. 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ruskin's first contribution to literature was in the form of 
 poetry. As early as his ninth year he was writing tolerable 
 verses, and while at Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize for 
 English Poetry. A collection of these youthful poems was pub- 
 lished in 1850, entitled " Poems. J. R." But this, like his work 
 in painting, was aside from the true purpose of his genius, and 
 simply indicative of qualities which were to characterize his 
 future achievements. It is said that a copy of Rogers' " Italy,' ' 
 illustrated by the famous landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, 
 which had been presented to him by his father's business part- 
 ner, determined Ruskin's career. By this he was led to study, 
 to admire, and with advancing years, to comprehend the pur- 
 poses of the great artist, who had fallen under the ban of the 
 English critics for boldly introducing certain new ideas and 
 methods into landscape art. Indignant at the " shallow and 
 false criticism of the periodicals of the day on the works of this 
 great living artist," he determined to write in his defense, and 
 in 1843 the first volume of his masterly vindication appeared, 
 with the title, " Modern Painters : their Superiority in the art of 
 Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters. By a Graduate 
 of Oxford." Thus at the age of twenty-four, Ruskin challenged 
 the verdict of his age, defied the critics, and denied the validity 
 of principles established for four hundred years. The book was 
 received with contempt and derision. But a new edition was 
 issued the following year, and two years later a second volume 
 appeared, with which his victory was assured. The third and 
 fourth volumes appeared in 1856 ; the fifth and last in 1860. But 
 long before the appearance of these last volumes he had practi- 
 cally achieved the main objects with which he began his work, 
 namely, "to vindicate Turner and to purify the public taste." 
 
 Ruskin's other works have added much to his usefulness, but 
 little to the reputation established by the first three volumes of 
 "Modern Painters,"— a work which, says Leslie Stephen, "has 
 done more than any other of its kind to stimulate thought and 
 disperse antiquated fallacies." While preparing the materials 
 for the successive volumes of " Modern Painters," he gave to the 
 public two other works which alone would have placed him at 
 the head of his age as an art critic, " The Seven Lamps of Archi- 
 tecture," published in 1849, and " The Stones of Venice," in 1851 
 -1853. Some of the more important of his other works are 44 The 
 Political Economy of Art:" "Unto this Last," essays on Politi- 
 cal Economy; ** Crown of Wild Olives," lectures on social 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 topics; " Sheep-Folds,' ' a discussion of Church doctrine and 
 discipline; "The Queen of the Air," lectures on Greek myths ; 
 several volumes of "Lectures," upon architecture, drawing, and 
 painting; and "Fors Clavigera," a series of letters to working 
 men, still in course of publication. 
 
 It is a tenet of Rus kin's art philosophy that the principles 
 fundamental to art are fundamental to all true life, and there- 
 fore applicable to every department of social progress. This 
 fact explains the wide and, in some respects, chimerical depart- 
 ure from his original field, which has caused him to be some- 
 what discredited as a thinker upon other subjects than those 
 directly pertaining to art. But the essential soundness of his 
 theories will hardly be questioned by any careful reader of his 
 early volumes, in which the broad principles of art, as he con- 
 ceived them, are unfolded. Certainly no one doubts the grand 
 sincerity with which he has pursued his purpose of improving 
 public taste and public morals. For half a century he has been 
 a maker of books, his works now numbering over forty volumes. 
 Freed from the routine of professional life by the possession of a 
 vast fortune, he has devoted his entire life to study and writing, 
 performing both with scrupulous thoroughness. The opinions 
 maintained in " Modern Painters " are grounded, he affirms, on 
 the results of a "laborious study of practical art from youth," 
 and " on familiar acquaintance with every important work of art 
 from Antwerp to Naples." One of the most striking features 
 of his works is the extensive and accurate knowledge of external 
 nature displayed, and the felicitous combination of science with 
 poetry. In the midst of this busy life of study Ruskin has been 
 a frequent lecturer in all the larger towns of England and at the 
 Universities. In 1867 he was appointed "Rode Lecturer" at 
 Cambridge, and from 1870 to 1879 he was "Slade Professor of 
 Art" at Oxford, to which position he has been recently recalled. 
 
 In studying the works of Ruskin we may regard him in three 
 aspects ; as a poet of nature, revealing and describing its beau- 
 ties ; as a thinker, applying himself to questions of social reform ; 
 and as a critic, realising, in Matthew Arnold's sense, the higher 
 creative function of criticism. This volume of selections is in- 
 tended simply to illustrate the first phase of his power ; and 
 this can be adequately done, in this manner, since it is possible 
 to remove without defacement many of the gems of poetic 
 description from their setting of expository prose. For his 
 opinions and theories of art and society, the student must go 
 to the original works. 
 
Ruskin's Word-Painting. 
 
 •'Our best modern English word-painters are, amongst the poets, 
 Tennyson, Shelley, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and Keats, in the order 
 of excellence. And of prose writers, Ruskin stands quite alone; then 
 after him, but at a- great distance, come about a dozen others whom it 
 is needless to particularize. Of all these I give to Tennyson the first 
 place. Even Ruskin, the best prose word-painter who ever lived, says 
 
 that no description of his is worth four lines oi Tennyson 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's art of description in prose is in every way wonderful. 
 He complained somewhere that his readers missed the arguments in 
 his books, and dashed at the descriptions. A novel complaint truly ! 
 What author but Mr. Ruskin ever found his descriptions dangerously 
 seductive? Other people's descriptions are skipped habitually by the 
 prudent reader. Mr. Ruskin's, it appears, do positive injury to the 
 graver and more argumentative parts of his writings. He is decidedly 
 the first author who has made landscape description too attractive. 
 And when we try to get at the reason for this attractiveness in his 
 word-pictures, we see that it is mainly owing to an unusual magnifi- 
 cence of language, and a studied employment of metaphor."— Philip 
 Gilbert Hamerton, 
 
 " Whatever he may call himself, it is as a painter of nature with 
 words that Ruskin is named with enthusiasm wherever men speak the 
 English tongue. It has been through his books, not through his pic- 
 tures, that he has mainly influenced his generation, and sent that 
 wave of passionate enthusiasm for nature into ten thousand young 
 hearts which has shown itself in the fresh, impetuous, exulting, and 
 sometimes weak and affected naturalism of our recent schools. . . . 
 A man gifted with pre-eminent sensibility to nature's beauty, with 
 pre-eminent ability to perceive nature's truth, lends a voice to the hills, 
 and adds a music to the streams ; he looks on the sea, and it becomes 
 more calmly beautiful ; on the clouds, and they are more radiantly 
 touched; he becomes a priest of the mysteries, a dispenser of the 
 charities of nature ; and men call him poet. Ruskin stands among 
 a select and honored few who have thus interpreted nature's meaning, 
 and conveyed her bounty to mankind. He has spoken with a voice of 
 fascinating power of those pictures which never change, yet are ever 
 new ; which are old, yet not dimmed or defaced ; of the beauty of which 
 all art is an acknowledgment, of the admiration of which all art is the 
 result, but which, having hung in our view since childhood, we are apt 
 to pass lightly by. At his bidding we awake to a new consciousness 
 of the beauty and grandeur of the world."— Peter Bayne* 
 
Sesame and Lilies 
 
 LECTURE II— LILIES 
 
 OF queens' gardens 
 
 "Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made 
 cheerful, and bloom as the lily ; and the barren places of Jordan shall 
 run wild with wood." — Isaiah xxxv. I. (Septuagint.) 
 
 51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the 
 sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly 
 state to you my general intention in both. The ques- 
 tions specially proposed to you in the first, namely, 
 How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one 5 
 which it was my endeavor to make you propose ear- 
 nestly to yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want 
 you to feel, with me, that whatever advantage we 
 possess in the present day in the diffusion of educa- 
 tion and of literature, can only be rightly used by any 10 
 of us when we have apprehended clearly what educa- 
 tion is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you 
 to see that both well-directed moral training and well- 
 chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over 
 the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to 15 
 
 Note. — The two lectures that form the volume "Sesame and Lilies'' were 
 delivered at Manchester in 1864. 
 
 The notes designated by an asterisk (*) are by Mr. Ruskin. 
 
8 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly; confer- 
 ing indeed the purest kingship that can exist among 
 men : too many other kingships (however distinguished 
 by visible insignia or material power) being either 
 
 5 spectral, or tyrannous; spectral — that is to say, as- 
 pects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, 
 and which only the " likeness of a kingly crown have 
 on"; or else tyrannous — that is to say, substituting 
 their own will for the law of justice and love by which 
 
 io all true kings rule. 
 
 52. There is, then, I repeat, — and as I want to leave 
 this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with 
 it, — only one pure kind of kingship; an inevitable and 
 eternal kind, crowned or not : the kingship, namely, 
 
 15 which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer 
 thoughtful state, than that of others; enabling you, 
 therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe that 
 word " State"; we have got into a loose way of using 
 it. It means literally the standing and stability of a 
 
 20 thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived 
 word "statue" — "the immovable thing." A king's 
 majesty or "state," then, and the right of his king- 
 dom to be called a state, depends on the movelessness 
 of both: without tremor, without quiver of balance; 
 
 25 established and enthroned upon a foundation of 
 eternal law which nothing can alter, nor overthrow. 
 
 53. Believing that all literature and all education 
 are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this 
 calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power, — first, 
 
 30 over ourselves, and, through ourselves, overall around 
 
 7. Kingly crown. Milton's Paradise Lost, II. 1. 666. 
 
 22. State. Derived from the Latin stare, statum, to stand. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 9 
 
 us, — I am now going to ask you to consider with me, 
 farther, what special portion or kind of this royal 
 authority, arising out of noble education, may rightly 
 be possessed by women; and how far they also are 
 called to a true queenly power — not in their house- 5 
 holds merely, but over all within their sphere. And 
 in what sense, if they rightly understood and exer- 
 cised this royal or gracious influence, the order and 
 beauty induced by such benignant power would justify 
 us in speaking of the territories over which each of 10 
 them reigned, as "Queens' Gardens." 
 
 54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a 
 far deeper question, which — strange though this may 
 seem — remains among many of us yet quite undecided, 
 in spite of its infinite importance. 15 
 
 We cannot determine what the queenly power of 
 women should be, until we are agreed what their 
 ordinary power should be. We cannot consider how 
 education may lit them for any widely extending duty, 
 until we are agreed what is their true constant duty. 20 
 And there never was a time when wilder words were 
 spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, respect- 
 ing this question — quite vital to all social happiness. 
 The relations of the womanly to the manly nature, 
 their different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem 25 
 never to have been yet estimated with entire consent. 
 We hear of the " mission " and of the "rights" of 
 Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the 
 mission and the rights of Man; — as if she and her lord 
 were creatures of independent kind, and of irreconcila- 30 
 ble claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less 
 wrong — perhaps even more foolishly wrong (for I will 
 
io SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 anticipate thus far what I hope to prove) — is the idea 
 that woman is only the shadow and attendant image 
 of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedi- 
 ence, and supported altogether in her weakness, by 
 
 5 the pre-eminence of his fortitude. 
 
 This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respect- 
 ing her who was made to be the helpmate of man. 
 As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or 
 worthily by a slave! 
 
 io 55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some 
 clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if 
 it is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in 
 power and office, with respect to man's; and how their 
 relations, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, 
 
 15 and honor, and authority of both. 
 
 And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 
 lecture: namely, that the first use of education was to 
 enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest 
 men on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use 
 
 20 books rightly, was to go to them for help: to appeal 
 to them when our own knowledge and power of thought 
 failed: to be led by them into wider sight — purer con- 
 ception — than our own, and receive from them the 
 united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, 
 
 25 against our solitary and unstable opinion. 
 
 Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, 
 the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed 
 in any wise on this point: let us hear the testimony 
 they have left respecting what they held to be the true 
 
 30 dignity of woman, and her mode of help to man. 
 56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 
 Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has nc 
 
OF QUEEN'S' GARDENS II 
 
 heroes; — he has only heroines. There is not one 
 entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight 
 sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the pur- 
 poses of the stage; and the still slighter Valentine in 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In his labored and 5 
 perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have 
 been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to 
 leave him the prey of every base practice round him; 
 but he is the only example even approximating to the 
 heroic type. Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony stand in 10 
 flawed strength, and fall by their vanities; — Hamlet is 
 indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impa- 
 tient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submis- 
 sive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely 
 noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of 15 
 true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the 
 office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, is 
 yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, 
 saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a play 
 that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave 20 
 hope, and errorless purpose; Cordelia, Desdemona, 
 Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Catherine, Perdita, 
 ^Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps 
 •loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in the 
 highest heroic type of humanity. 25 
 
 57. Then observe, secondly, 
 
 The catastrophe of every play is caused always by 
 
 1 17. Orlando. In A s You Like It, the younger brother of Oliver and lover of 
 Rosalind. 
 
 21. Cordelia in King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, Isabella in Measure for 
 \Measure, Hermione in A Winter's Tale, Imogen in Cymbeline, Queen Cath- 
 erine in Henry VIII., Perdita in A Winter s Tale, Sylvia in Two Gentlemen 
 of ifrona, Viola in Twelfth Night, Rosalind in As You Like It, Helena in 
 AIVs Well That Ends Well, Virgilia in Coriolanus. 
 
12 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there 
 be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and^ 
 failing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King 
 Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impa- 
 
 5 tient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the 
 
 virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him 
 
 from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast 
 
 her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him. 
 
 Of Othello I need not trace the tale; nor the one 
 
 10 weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of 
 his perceptive intellect to that even of the second 
 woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in 
 wild testimony against his error: 
 
 44 Oh, murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool 
 15 Do with so good a wife ? " 
 
 In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem 
 of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless 
 impatience of her husband. In The Winter's Tale, 
 and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two 
 
 20 princely households, lost through long years, and 
 imperiled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of 
 the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly 
 patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for 
 Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul 
 
 25 cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious 
 truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Corio- 
 lanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would 
 have saved her son from all evil; his momentary for- 
 getfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, granted, 
 
 30 saves him — not, indeed, from death, but from the curse 
 of living as the destroyer of his country. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 13 
 
 And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the 
 fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child ? of 
 Helena, against the petulance and insult of a careless 
 youth ? of the patience of Hero, the passion of 
 Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the 5 
 " unlessoned girl," who appears among the helpless- 
 ness, the blindness, and the vindictive passions of 
 men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and safety 
 by her presence, and defeating the worst malignities 
 of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in, 10 
 precision and accuracy of thought. 
 
 58. Observe, further, among all the principal 
 figures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak 
 woman — Ophelia; and it is because she fails Hamlet 
 at the critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her 15 
 nature be, a guide to him when he needs her most, 
 , that all the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, 
 though there are three wicked women among the 
 principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, 
 they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the 20 
 ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence also, in 
 proportion to the power for good which they have 
 abandoned. 
 
 Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to 
 the position and character of women in human life. 25 
 He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise 
 counselors — incorruptibly just and pure examples, 
 strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save. 
 
 1. Julia in Tzvo Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 4. Hero, Beatrice, in Much Ado About Nothing. 
 
 6. " Unlessoned girl." Portia in The Merchant of Venice. 
 
 19. Regan and Goneril in King Lear. 
 
14 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of 
 the nature of man, — still less in his understanding of 
 the causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer 
 who has given us the broadest view of the conditions 
 
 5 and modes of ordinary thought in modern society, 
 
 I ask you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott. 
 
 I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of 
 
 no value, and though the early romantic poetry is 
 
 very beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other 
 
 10 than that of a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied 
 from Scottish life, bear a true witness; and, in the 
 whole range of these, there are but three men who 
 reach the heroic type* — Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, 
 and Claverhouse; of these, one is a border farmer; 
 
 15 another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad 
 cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only 
 in their courage and faith, together with a strong, 
 but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual 
 power; while his younger men are the gentlemanly 
 
 20 playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or 
 accident) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the 
 trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, 
 or consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely 
 conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
 
 25 definitely challenged and resolutely subdued, there 
 
 *I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have noted the 
 various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great characters of men in the 
 Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, 
 the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Glendinning, and the like ; and I ought 
 to have noticed that there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes 
 in the backgrounds ; three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to England an J 
 her soldiers — are English officers : Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel 
 Mannering. 
 
 13. Dandie Dinmont in Guy Mci7inering, Claverhouse in The Bride of 
 Lammermoor, 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 15 
 
 is no trace in his conceptions of young men. Where- 
 as in his imaginations of women,— in the characters of 
 Ellen Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
 Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, 
 Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans,— 5 
 with endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intel- 
 lectual power, we find in all a quite infallible sense 
 
 -of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untir- 
 ing self-sacrifice, to even the appearance of duty, 
 much more to its real claims; and, finally, a patient 10 
 wisdom of deeply-restrained affection, which does 
 infinitely more than protect its objects from a 
 momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and 
 exalts the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at 
 the close of the tale, we are just able, and no more, to 15 
 take patience in hearing of their unmerited success. 
 
 So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, 
 it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides 
 the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who 
 watches over, or educates, his mistress. 20 
 
 60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testi- 
 mony—that of the great Italians and Greeks. You 
 know well the plan of Dante's great poem — that it is 
 a love-poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for her 
 
 . watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to 25 
 
 3. Ellen Douglas in The Lady of the Lake. Flora Maclvor, the principal 
 I character in Waverley. She refuses Waverley, and, after her brother's death, 
 retires to a convent. Rose Bradwardine saves Waverley's life, and he marries 
 her. Catherine Seyton in The A bbot, Diana Vernon in Rob Roy, Lilias Red- 
 gauntlet in Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth in Peveril of the Peak, Alice 
 Lee in Woodstock, Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian. 
 
 23. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The greatest of Italian poets. In the ninth 
 
 year of his age Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari, who inspired him with the 
 
 j romantic passion, or, as some would have it, the impersonal love which he nar- 
 
 \ rates in the Vita Nuova and the Divina Commedia. Beatrice was married in 
 
 j 1287 to Simone de Bardi, and died shortly after. 
 
1 6 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 love, she yet saves him from destruction — saves him 
 from hell. He is going; eternally astray in despair; 
 she comes down from heaven to his help, and through- 
 out the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting 
 
 5 for him the most difficult truths, divine and human; 
 and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star 
 to star. 
 
 I do not insist upon Dante's conception; if I began, 
 I could not cease : besides, you might think this a 
 
 icwild imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather 
 read to you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a 
 knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic 
 of the feeling of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, 
 or early fourteenth, century, preserved among many 
 
 15 other such records of knightly honor and love, which 
 Dante Rossetti has gathered for us from among the 
 early Italian poets. 
 
 44 For lo ! thy law is passed 
 That this my love should manifestly be 
 20 To serve and honor thee : 
 
 And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
 Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 
 
 " Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
 Since thus my will was set : 
 25 To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence : 
 
 Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
 A pain or a regret. 
 But on thee dwells my every thought and sense , 
 Considering that from thee all virtues spread 
 30 As from a fountain head, — 
 
 12. A knight of Pisa. Pannucio dal Bagno. 
 
 16. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82). The second volume of Rossetti's 
 collected works consists of translations from the early Italian poets. 
 

 OF QUEENS 1 GARDENS 17 
 
 That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail, 
 
 And honor without fail ; 
 With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
 Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 
 
 " Lady, since I conceived 5 
 
 Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 
 
 My life has been apart 
 In shining brightness and the place of truth ; 
 
 Which till that time, good sooth, 
 Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 10 
 
 Where many hours and days 
 It hardly ever had remember'd good. 
 
 But now my servitude 
 Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 
 
 A man from a wild beast 15 
 
 Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived." 
 
 61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would 
 have had a lower estimate of women than this Chris- 
 tian lover. His spiritual subjection to them was in- 
 deed not so absolute; but as regards their own 20 
 personal character, it was only because you could not 
 have followed me so easily, that I did not take the 
 Greek woman instead of Shakespeare's; and instance, 
 for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the 
 simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; the 25 
 divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful 
 kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; 
 
 25. Andromache. One of the noblest characters in Homer's Iliad. She was 
 the devoted wife of Hector, and mother of Astyanax. 
 
 26. Cassandra. Also a character in the Iliad. Being beloved by Apollo, she 
 obtained the gift of prophecy, but with the restriction that no one should believe 
 her prophecies. 
 
 27. Nausicaa. Daughter of Alcinous. King of the Phaeacians. She con- 
 ducted Odysseus to the court of her father when he was shipwrecked on the 
 coast. Od., IV. 16. 
 
1 8 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its 
 watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hope- j 
 lessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, in 
 Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like 
 
 5 and silent; and, finally, the expectation of the resur- 
 rection, made clear to the soul of the Greeks in the 
 return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save 
 her husband, had passed calmly through the bitterness 
 of death. 
 
 10 62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness of 
 this kind upon you if I had time. I would take 
 Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a Legend of 
 Good Women; but no Legend of Good Men. I would 
 take Spenser, and show you how all his fairy knights 
 
 15 are sometimes deceived and sometimes vanquished; 
 but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear 
 of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I could go back 
 into the mythical teaching of the most ancient times, 
 and show you how the great people, — by one of whose 
 
 20 princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all 
 
 1. Penelope. The wife of Odysseus. She waited patiently for his return 
 from the siege of Troy and subsequent wanderings, although his absence lasted 
 twenty years. 
 
 4. Antigone. In the tragic Greek story of OEdipus Antigone appears as a 
 noble maiden, heroically attached to her father and brothers. 
 
 4. Iphigenia. When the Greek fleet under Agamemnon was detained at 
 Aulis by a calm, the seer Calchas declared that the sacrifice of Agamemnon's 
 daughter, Iphigenia, was the only means of propitiating the offended deity who 
 had caused the calm. But, as Iphigenia was preparing herself meekly for death, 
 the goddess Artemis snatched her away in a cloud, and substituted a stag in her 
 place. 
 
 7. Alcestis. The wife of Admetus, vvhowas promised his life if his father, 
 mother, or wife would die for him. Alcestis died in his stead, but was brought 
 back by Heracles from the lower world. 
 
 16. Una. A " lovely ladie," the personification of truth in Spenser's Faerie 
 Queene. 
 
 17. Britomart. The female knight personifying purity, in Spenser's Faerie 
 Queene. 
 
 20. The Lawgiver, Moses. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 19 
 
 the earth should be educated, rather than by his own 
 kindred : — how that great Egyptian people, wisest 
 then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the 
 form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, 
 the weaver's shuttle; and how the name and the form 5 
 of that spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the 
 Greeks, became that Athena of the olive-helm, and 
 cloudy shield, to faith in whom you owe, down to this 
 date, whatever you hold most precious in art, in 
 literature, or in types of national virtue. 10 
 
 63. But I will not wander into this distant and 
 mythical element; I will only ask you to give its 
 legitimate value to the testimony of these great poets 
 and men of the world, — consistent, as you see it is, on 
 this head. I will ask you whether it can be supposed 15 
 that these men, in the main work of their lives, are 
 amusing themselves with a fictitious and idle view of 
 the relations between man and woman; nay, worse 
 than fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imaginary, 
 yet desirable, if it were possible; but this, their ideal 20 
 of woman, is, according to our common idea of the 
 marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, 
 we say, is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. 
 The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the 
 thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and dis- 25 
 cretion, as in power. 
 
 64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our 
 minds on this matter? Are all these great men mis- 
 taken, or are we ? Are Shakespeare and ^Eschylus, 
 
 3. Spirit of Wisdom. Tn Egyptian Mythology Neith, or Neth, or Net was 
 a lofty personification of the female principle. She was the chief divinity of the 
 ancient city, Sni's, and was identified by the Greeks with their goddess, Athena, 
 on account of a similarity in the names. 
 
20 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Dante and Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; or, 
 worse than dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of 
 which, were it possible, would bring anarchy into all 
 households and ruin into all affections? Nay, if you 
 
 5 can suppose this, take lastly the evidence of facts 
 given by the human heart itself. In all Christian ages 
 which have been remarkable for their purity of prog- 
 ress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
 devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedi- 
 
 io ent j — not merely enthusiastic and worshiping in 
 imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the 
 beloved woman, however young, not only the encour- 
 agement, the praise, and the reward of all toil, but, so 
 far as any choice is open, or any question difficult of 
 
 15 decision, the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to 
 the abuse and dishonor of which are attributable 
 primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or 
 corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to the 
 original purity and power of which we owe the defense 
 
 20 alike of faith, of law, and of love; — that chivalry, I 
 say, in its very first conception of honorable life, 
 assumes the subjection of the young knight to the com- 
 mand — should it even be the command in caprice — of 
 his lady. It assumes this, because its masters knew 
 
 25 that the first and necessary impulse of every truly 
 taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to 
 its lady : that where that true faith and captivity are 
 not, all wayward and wicked passion must be; and 
 that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of 
 
 30 his youth, is the sanctification of all man's strength, 
 and the continuance of all his purposes. And this, 
 not because such obedience would be safe, or honor- 
 
OF QUEENS 1 GARDENS 21 
 
 able, were it ever rendered to the unworthy; but 
 because it ought to be impossible for every noble 
 youth — it is impossible for everyone rightly trained — 
 to love anyone whose gentle counsel he cannot trust, 
 or whose prayerful command he can hesitate to obey. 5 
 
 65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, 
 for I think it should commend itself at once to your 
 knowledge of what has been, and to your feeling of 
 what should be. You cannot think that the buckling 
 on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a 10 
 mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an 
 eternal truth — that the soul's armor is never well set 
 to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and 
 
 it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of 
 manhood fails. Know you not those lovely lines — 1 15 
 would they were learned by all youthful ladies of 
 England: 
 
 "Ah, wasteful woman ! — she who may 
 On her sweet self set her own price, 
 
 Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 20 
 
 How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
 How given for nought her priceless gift, 
 How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine, 
 Which, spent with due respective thrift, 
 Had made brutes men, and men divine ! "* 25 
 
 66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of 
 lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too 
 often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of such 
 a relation throughout the whole of human life. We 
 
 * Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully ; as far as 
 I know, he is the only living poet who always strengthens and purifies ; the 
 others sometimes darken and nearly always depress, and discourage, the imagi- 
 nation they deeply seize. 
 
22 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 think it right in the lover and mistress, not in the 
 husband and wife. That is to say, we think that a 
 reverent and tender duty is due to one whose affection 
 we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do but 
 
 5 partially and distantly discern; and that this rever- 
 ence and duty are to be withdrawn, when the affection 
 has become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the 
 character has been so sifted and tried that we fear not 
 to intrust it with the happiness of our lives. Do you 
 
 io not see how ignoble this is, as well as how unreason- 
 able ? Do you not feel that marriage, — when it is 
 marriage at all, — is only the seal which marks the 
 vowed transition of temporary into untiring service, 
 and of fitful into eternal love ? 
 
 15 67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guid- 
 ing function of the woman reconcilable with a true 
 wifely subjection ? Simply in that it is a guiding ■, not 
 a determining, function. Let me try to show you 
 briefly how these powers seem to be rightly distinguish- 
 
 20 able. 
 
 We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speak- 
 ing of the " superiority " of one sex to the other, as if 
 they could be compared in similar things. Each has 
 what the other has not : each completes the other, 
 
 25 and is completed by the other: they are in nothing 
 alike, and the happiness and perfection of both 
 depends on each asking and receiving from the other 
 what the other only can give. 
 
 68. Now their separate characters are briefly these. 
 
 30 The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. 
 He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, 
 the defender. His intellect is for speculation and 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 23 
 
 invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for 
 conquest wherever war is just, wherever conquest 
 necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not for 
 battle, — and her intellect is not for invention or cre- 
 ation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and de- 5 
 cision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, 
 and their places. Her great function is Praise : she 
 enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the 
 crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is 
 protected from all danger and temptation. The man, 10 
 in his rough work in the open world, must encounter 
 all peril and trial: — to him, therefore, must be the 
 failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he 
 must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and 
 always hardened. But he guards the woman from all 15 
 this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she her- 
 self has sought it, need enter no danger, no tempta- 
 tion, no cause of error or offense. This is the true 
 nature of home — it is the place of Peace; the shelter, 
 not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, 20 
 and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not 
 home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life pene- 
 trate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, 
 unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is 
 allowed by either husband or wife to cross the thresh- 25 
 old, it ceases to be home ; it is then only a part of 
 that outer world which you have roofed over, and 
 lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a 
 vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by 
 Household Gods, before whose faces none may come 30 
 
 30. Household Gods. A graceful feature of Roman religion was the belief in 
 the minor deities who guarded the interests of the family. 
 
24 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 but those whom they can receive with love, — so far as 
 it is this, and roof and fire are types c lly of a nobler 
 shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a weary land ; 
 and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea; — so far it 
 
 5 vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise of Home. 
 
 And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
 
 round her. The stars only may be over her head; 
 
 the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only 
 
 fire at her foot : but home is yet wherever she is; and 
 
 io for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better 
 than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, 
 shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were 
 homeless. 
 
 69. This, then, I believe to be — will you not admit 
 
 15 it to be ? — the woman's true place and power. But do 
 not you see that, to fulfill this, she must — as far as one 
 can use such terms of a human creature — be incapable 
 of error ? So far as she rules, all must be right, or 
 nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly 
 
 20 good; instinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self- 
 development, but for self-renunciation : wise, not that 
 she may set herself above her husband, but that she 
 may never fail from his side : wise, not with the 
 narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the 
 
 25 passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because 
 infinitely applicable, modesty of service — the true 
 changefulness of woman. In that great sense — "La 
 donna e mobile," not " Qual phim' al vento " ; no, nor 
 
 4. Pharos. An island opposite ancient Alexandria, on which stood, in ancient 
 times, the celebrated lighthouse, Pharos, one of the seven wonders of the world. 
 11. Ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion. Jeremiah xxii. 14. 
 
 27. '* La donna e mobile." Woman is changeful. 
 
 28. " Qual Piiim' al vento." As a feather in the wind. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 25 
 
 yet "Variable as the shade, by the light quivering 
 aspen made"; but variable as the light, manifold in 
 fair and serene division, that it may take the color of 
 all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 
 
 70. II. I have been trying, thus far, to show you 5 
 what should be the place, and what the power, of 
 woman. Now, secondly, we ask, What kind of educa- 
 tion is to fit her for these ? 
 
 And if you indeed think this a true conception of 
 her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace 10 
 the course of education which would fit her for the 
 one, and raise her to the other. 
 
 The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
 now doubt this — is to secure for her such physical 
 training and exercise as may confirm her health, and 15 
 perfect her beauty ; the highest refinement of that 
 beauty being unattainable without splendor of activity 
 and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I 
 say, and increase its power; it cannot be too powerful, 
 nor shed its sacred light too far : only remember that 20 
 all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty without 
 a corresponding freedom of heart. There "are two 
 passages of that poet who is distinguished, it seems to 
 me, from all others — not by power, but by exquisite 
 rightness — which point you to the source, and de- 25 
 scribe to you, in a few syllables, the completion 
 of womanly beauty. I will read the introductory 
 stanzas, but the last is the one I wish you specially 
 to notice : 
 
 1, " Variable as the shade." Scott's Marmion, canto vi 30. 
 23. That poet. William Wordsworth. 
 
15 
 
 26 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 " Three years she grew in sun a'nd shower, 
 Then Nature said, ' A lovelier flower 
 
 On earth was never sown ; 
 This child I to myself will take; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 A lady of my own. 
 
 " Myself will to my darling be 
 
 Both law and impulse ; and with me 
 The girl, in rock and plain, 
 i In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 To kindle, or restrain. 
 
 " The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her, for her the willow bend ; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the storm, 
 Grace that shall mold the maiden's form 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 " And vital feelings of delight 
 20 Shall rear her form to stately height, — 
 
 Her virgin bosom swell. 
 Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
 While she and I together live, 
 Here in this happy dell.' " * 
 
 25 " Vital feeling of delight," observe. There are 
 
 deadly feelings of delight; but the natural ones are 
 
 vital, necessary to very life. 
 
 And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to 
 
 be vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if 
 30 you do not make her happy. There is not one restraint 
 
 you put on a good girl's nature — there is not one 
 
 * Observe, it is " Nature" who is speaking throughout, and who says, "while 
 she and I together live." 
 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 27 
 
 check you give to her instincts of affection or of 
 effort — which will not be indelibly written on her 
 features, with a hardness which is all the more painful 
 because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of 
 innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. 5 
 
 71. This for the means: now note the end. Take 
 from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description 
 of womanly beauty: 
 
 " A countenance in which did meet 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet." IG 
 
 The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance 
 can only consist in that majestic peace which is 
 founded in memory of happy and useful years — full of 
 sweet records; and from the joining of this with that 
 yet more majestic childishness, which is still full of 15 
 change and promise; — opening always — modest at 
 once, and bright, with hope of better things to be 
 won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age where 
 there is still that promise. 
 
 72. Thus, then, you have first to mold her physical 2c 
 frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit 
 you, to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge 
 and thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts 
 of justice, and refine its natural tact of love. 
 
 All such knowledge should be given her as may 25 
 enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of 
 men; and yet it should be given, not as knowledge, — 
 not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to 
 know; but only to feel, and to judge. It is of no 
 
 7. In two lines. From She Was a Phantom of Delight. 
 
28 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, 
 whether she knows many languages or one; but it is 
 of the utmost, that she should be able to show kind- 
 ness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of 
 
 5 a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to her own 
 worth or dignity that she should be acquainted with 
 this science or that; but it is of the highest that she 
 should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that 
 she should understand, the meaning, the inevitable- 
 
 ioness, and the loveliness of natural laws; and follow at 
 least some one path of scientific attainment, as far as 
 to the threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, 
 into which only the wisest and bravest of men can 
 descend, owning themselves forever children, gather- 
 
 15 ing pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little con- 
 sequence how many positions of cities she knows, or 
 how many dates of events, or names of celebrated 
 persons — it is not the object of education to turn the 
 woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply necessary 
 
 20 that she should be taught to enter with her whole per- 
 sonality into the history she reads; to picture the 
 passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination; 
 to apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic cir- 
 cumstances and dramatic relations, which the historian 
 
 25 too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and discon- 
 nects by his arrangement: it is for her to trace the 
 hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, 
 through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven 
 fire that connect error with retribution. But, chiefly 
 
 12. Valley of Humiliation. The place where Christian encountered 
 Apollyon, in Bunyan's Pi/grim s Progress. 
 
 14. Gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. Cf. Milton's Paradise 
 Regained, IV. 30. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 29 
 
 of all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her 
 sympathy with respect to that history which is being 
 
 • forever determined as the moments pass in which she 
 draws her peaceful breath; and to the contemporary 
 
 • calamity, which, were it but rightly mourned by her, 5 
 would recur no more hereafter. She is to exercise 
 herself in imagining what would be the effects upon 
 her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into 
 the presence of the suffering which is not the less real 
 because shut from her sight. She is to be taught 10 
 somewhat to understand the nothingness of the pro- 
 portion which that little world in which she lives and 
 loves, bears to the world in which God lives and loves; 
 — and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her 
 thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to 15 
 the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid 
 than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her 
 husband or her child, when it is uttered for the multi- 
 tudes of those who have none to love them, — and is, 
 
 " for all who are desolate and oppressed/' ?o 
 
 73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; 
 perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most 
 needful forme to say. There is one dangerous science 
 for women, — one which they must indeed beware how 
 they profanely touch, — that of theology. Strange, and 25 
 miserably strange, that while they are modest enough 
 to doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of 
 sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, 
 they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of 
 incompetency, into that science in which the greatest 30 
 men have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, 
 that they will complacently and pridefully bind up 
 
3° SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever arro- 
 gance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into 
 one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange in 
 creatures born to be Love visible, that where they can 
 
 5 know least, they will condemn first, and think to 
 recommend themselves to their Master, by crawling 
 up the steps of His judgment-throne, to divide it with 
 Him. Strangest of all, that they should think they 
 were led by the Spirit of the Comforter into habits of 
 
 10 mind which have become in them the unmixed elements 
 of home discomfort; and that they dare to turn the 
 Household Gods of Christianity into ugly idois of their 
 own; — spiritual dolls, for them to dress according to 
 their caprice; and from which their husbands must 
 
 15 turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be 
 shrieked at for breaking them. 
 
 74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl's 
 education should be nearly, in its course and material 
 of study, the same as a boy's; but quite differently 
 
 20 directed. A woman, in any rank of life, ought to 
 know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to 
 know it in a different way. His command of it should 
 be foundational and progressive; hers, general and 
 accomplished for daily and helpful use. Not but that 
 
 25 it would often be wiser in men to learn things in a 
 womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
 the discipline and training of their mental powers in 
 such branches of study as will be afterward fitted for 
 social service; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to 
 
 30 know any language or science he learns, thoroughly — 
 while a woman ought to know the same language, or 
 science, only so far as may enable her to sympathize 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 3 1 
 
 in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his best 
 friends. 
 
 75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as 
 she reaches. There is a wide difference between 
 elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge — 5 
 between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at 
 compassing. A woman may always help her husband 
 by what she knows, however little; by what she half- 
 knows, or mis-knows, she will only tease him. 
 
 And indeed, if there were to be any difference 10 
 between a girl's education and a boy's, I should say 
 that of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her 
 intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects : 
 and that her range of literature should be, not more, 
 but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of 15 
 patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of 
 thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in 
 a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now 
 into any question of choice of books; only let us be 
 sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as 20 
 they fall out of the package of the circulating library, 
 wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain 
 of folly. 
 
 76. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect 
 to the sore temptation of novel reading, it is not the 25 
 badness of a novel that we should dread, so much as 
 its overwrought interest. The weakest romance is 
 not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious 
 exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so 
 corrupting as false history, false philosophy, or false 30 
 political essays. But the best romance becomes 
 dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the ordi- 
 
32 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 nary course of life uninteresting, and increases the 
 morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in 
 which we shall never be called upon to act. 
 
 77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our 
 5 modern literature is particularly rich in types of such. 
 
 Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being 
 nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and 
 chemistry; studies of human nature in the elements of 
 it. But I attach little weight to this function; they 
 
 10 are hardly ever read with earnestness enough to per- 
 mit them to fulfill it. The utmost they usually do is to 
 enlarge somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the 
 bitterness of a malicious one; for each will gather, 
 from the novel, food for her own disposition. Those 
 
 15 who are naturally proud and envious will learn from 
 Thackeray to despise humanity; those who are 
 naturally gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally 
 shallow, to laugh at it. So, also, there might be a 
 serviceable power in novels to bring before us, in 
 
 20 vividness, a human truth which we had before dimly 
 conceived; but the temptation to picturesqueness of 
 statement is so great, that often the best writers of 
 fiction cannot resist if; and our views are rendered so 
 violent and one-sided, that their vitality is rather a 
 
 25 harm than good. 
 
 78. Without, however, venturing here on any 
 attempt at decision how much novel reading should be 
 allowed, let me at least clearly assert this, that whether 
 novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should be 
 
 30 chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their 
 possession of good. The chance and scattered evil 
 that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 33 
 
 powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl; 
 but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and his 
 amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have 
 access to a good library of old and classical books, 
 there need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern 5 
 magazine and novel out of your girl's way; turn her 
 loose into the old library every wet day, and let her 
 alone. She will find what is good for her, you can- 
 not; for there is just this difference between the 
 making of a girl's character and a boy's — you may 10 
 chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or ham- 
 mer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you 
 would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer 
 a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, — she 
 will wither without sun; she will decay in her sheath, 15 
 as a narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; 
 she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave 
 her without help at some moments of her life; but you 
 cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form and 
 way, if she take any, and in mind as in body, must 20 
 have always 
 
 " Her household motions light and free, 
 And steps of virgin liberty." 
 
 Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in 
 the field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better 25 
 than you; and the good ones too, and will eat some 
 bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not 
 the slightest thought would have been so. 
 
 79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, 
 
 22. "Her household motions," etc. Wordsworth's She Was a Phantom 
 of Delight. 
 
34 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 and let her practice in all accomplishments be accurate 
 and thorough, so as to enable her to understand more 
 than she accomplishes. I say the finest models — that 
 is to say, the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those 
 
 5 epithets; they will range through all the arts. Try 
 them in music, where you might think them the least 
 applicable. I say the truest, that in which the notes 
 most closely and faithfully express the meaning of the 
 words, or the character of intended emotion; again, 
 
 io the simplest, that in which the meaning and melody 
 are attained with the fewest and most significant notes 
 possible; and, finally, the usefullest, that music which 
 makes the best words most beautiful, which enchants 
 them in our memories each with its own glory of 
 
 15 sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at 
 the moment we need them. 
 
 80. And not only in the material and in the course, 
 but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's 
 education be as serious as a boy's. You bring up 
 
 20 your girls as if they were meant for sideboard orna- 
 ments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give 
 them the same advantages that you give their 
 brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of 
 virtue in them; teach them, also, that courage and 
 
 25 truth are the pillars of their being : — do you think that 
 they would not answer that appeal, brave and true as 
 they are even now, when you know that there is 
 hardly a girls' school in this Christian kingdom where 
 the children's courage or sincerity would be thought 
 
 30 of half so much importance as their way of coming in 
 at a door; and when the whole system of society, as 
 respects the mode of establishing them in life, is one 
 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 35 
 
 rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — cowardice, 
 in not daring to let them live, or love, except as their 
 neighbors choose; and imposture, in bringing, for the 
 purposes of our own pride, the full glow of the world's 
 worst vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period 5 
 when the whole happiness of her future existence 
 depends upon her remaining undazzled ? 
 
 81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, 
 but noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before 
 you send your boy to school, what kind of a man the 10 
 master is; — whatsoever kind of man he is, you at least 
 give him full authority over your son, and show some 
 respect to him yourself: — if he comes to dine with you, 
 you do not put him at a side table: you know also 
 that, at college, your child's immediate tutor will be 15 
 under the direction of some still higher tutor, for 
 whom you have absolute reverence. You do not treat 
 the Dean of Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as 
 your inferiors. 
 
 But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 20 
 reverence do you show to the teachers you have 
 chosen ? Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or 
 her own intellect, of much importance, when you trust 
 the entire formation of her character, moral and intel- 
 lectual, to a person whom you let your servants treat 25 
 with less respect than they do your housekeeper (as if 
 the soul of your child w r ere a less charge than jams and 
 groceries), and whom you yourself think you confer 
 an honor upon by letting her sometimes sit in the 
 drawing room in the evening ? 30 
 
 18. Trinity. Christ Church and Trinity are Oxford Colleges. There is a 
 Trinity at Cambridge also. 
 
3 6 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 82. Thus, then, of literature as her help and thus of 
 art. There is one more help which she cannot do 
 without, — one which, alone, has sometimes done more 
 than all other influences besides, — the help of wild and 
 5 fair nature. Hear this of the education of Joan of 
 Arc : 
 
 The education of this poor girl was mean, according to the 
 present standard ; was ineffably grand, according to a purer philo- 
 sophical standard ; and only not good for our age, because for us it 
 
 10 would be unattainable. . . 
 
 Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to the ad- 
 vantages of her situation. The fountain of Domre'my was on the 
 brink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by 
 fairies, that the parish priest (cur/) was obliged to read mass there 
 
 15 once a year, in order to keep them in decent bounds. . . 
 
 But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of the land ; 
 for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that 
 towered into tragic strength. Abbeys there were, and abbey win- 
 dows, — " like Moorish temples of the Hindoos," — that exercised even 
 
 20 princely power both in Touraine and in the German Diets. These 
 had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at 
 matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
 and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree ; to dis- 
 turb the deep solitude of the region ; yet many enough to spread a 
 
 25 network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have 
 seemed a heathen wilderness.* 
 
 Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, 
 woods eighteen miles deep to the center; but you can, 
 perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if 
 30 you wish to keep them. But do you wish it? Sup- 
 pose you had each, at the back of your houses, a 
 garden, large enough for your children to play in, 
 
 *"Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's ' History of France.' "-De 
 Quincey's Works, vol. iii. p. 217. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 37 
 
 with just as much lawn as would give them room to 
 run, — no more, — and that you could not change your 
 abode; but that, if you chose, you could double your 
 income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal shaft in the 
 middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into 5 
 heaps of coke. Would you do it ? I hope not. I can 
 tell you, you would be wrong if you did, though it 
 gave you income sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 
 
 83. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. 
 The whole country is but a little garden, not more 10 
 than enough for your children to run on the lawns of, 
 
 if you would let them all run there. And this little 
 garden you will turn into furnace ground, and fill with 
 heaps of cinders, if you can; and those children of 
 yours, not you, will suffer for it. For the fairies will T 5 
 not be all banished; there are fairies of the furnace as 
 of the wood, and their first gift seems to be " sharp 
 arrows of the mighty"; but their last gifts are " coals 
 of juniper." 
 
 84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of 20 
 my subject that I feel more — press this upon you; for 
 we made so little use of the power of nature while we 
 had it that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. 
 Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your 
 Snowdon, and your Menai Straits, and that mighty 25 
 granite rock beyond the moors of Anglesea, splendid 
 in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, 
 once thought of as sacred — a divine promontory, look- 
 
 18. " Sharp arrows of the mighty." " Coals of juniper." Psalm cxx. 4. 
 
 24. Mersey. An English river flowing into the Irish Sea below Liverpool. 
 " On the other side of the Mersey " is Wales, with Snowdon, the loftiest mountain 
 in England or Wales, and the island of Anglesea, lying west of the mainland, from 
 which it is separated by Menai Strait. 
 
= 
 
 3^ SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 ing westward; the Holy Head or Headland, still not 
 without awe when its red light glares first through 
 storm. These are the hills, and these the bays and 
 blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have 
 
 5 been always loved, always fateful in influence on the 
 national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus; ]ii 
 but where are its Muses ? That Holyhead mountain i 
 is your Island of iEgina; but where is its Temple to 
 Minerva ? 
 
 10 85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva 
 had achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus up to 
 the year 1848? — Here is a little account of a Welsh 
 school, from page 261 of the Report on Wales, pub- 
 lished by the Committee of Council on Education. 
 
 15 This is a school close to a town containing 5000 
 persons: 
 
 I then called up a larger class, most of whom had recently come 
 to the school. Three girls repeatedly declared they had never heard 
 of Christ, and two that they had never heard of God. Two out of 
 20 six thought Christ was on earth now [they might have had a worse 
 thought perhaps], three knew nothing about the Crucifixion. Four 
 out of seven did not know the names of the months nor the number 
 of days in a year. They had no notion of addition ; beyond two and 
 two, or three and three, their minds were perfect blanks. 
 
 25 Oh, ye women of England! from the Princess of 
 that Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your 
 own children can be brought into their true fold of 
 rest, while these are scattered on the hills, as sheep 
 
 6. Parnassus. A mountain ridge, eighty-three miles northwest of Athens. 
 Greek Mythology credited it with being the haunt of Apollo and the Muses, and 
 consequently the seat of music and poetry. 
 
 8. Island of ^Eefina. The tfmple of Athena at ^gina was famous for both 
 sculpture and architecture. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 39 
 
 having no shepherd. And do not think your daughters 
 can be trained to the truth of their own human 
 beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made at 
 once for their schoolroom and their playground, lie 
 desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly 5 
 in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize 
 them also in the sweet waters which the great Law- 
 giver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your 
 native land — waters which a Pagan would have wor- 
 shiped in their purity, and you worship only with 10 
 pollution. You cannot lead your children faithfully 
 to those narrow ax-hewn church altars of yours, while 
 the dark azure altars in heaven — the mountains that 
 sustain your island throne, — mountains on which a 
 Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven rest in 15 
 every wreathed cloud — remain for you without inscrip- 
 tion; altars built, not to, but by an Unknown God. 
 
 86. III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of 
 the teaching, of woman, and thus of her household 
 office and queenliness. We come now to our last, our 20 
 widest question, — What is her queenly office with 
 respect to the state ? 
 
 Generally, we are under an impression that a man's 
 
 duties are public, and a woman's private. But this is 
 
 not altogether so. A man has a personal work or 25 
 
 1 duty, relating to his own home, and a public work or 
 
 Iduty, which is the expansion of the other, relating to 
 
 the state. So a woman has a personal work or duty, 
 
 j relating to her own home, and a public work or duty, 
 
 ^ which is also the expansion of that. 30 
 
 17. Unknown God. Cf. Acts xvii. 23. Altars were raised in Athens in 
 < ancient times to an unknown god or gods, though it is uncertain whom they 
 worshiped under this appellation. 
 
40 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Now, the man's work for his own home is, as has 
 been said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and 
 defense; the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and 
 loveliness. 
 
 5 Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as 
 a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the main- 
 tenance, in the advance, in the defense of the state. 
 The woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, 
 is to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, and in 
 
 io the beautiful adornment of the state. 
 
 What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if 
 need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a 
 less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at 
 the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, 
 
 15 even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work 
 there. 
 
 And, in like manner, what the woman is to be 
 within her gates, as the center of order, the balm of 
 distress, and the mirror of beauty : that she is also to 
 
 20 be without her gates, where order is more difficult, 
 distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. 
 
 And as within the human heart there is always set 
 an instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which 
 you cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you 
 
 25 withdraw it from its true purpose: — as there is the 
 intense instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, 
 maintains all the sanctities of life, and, misdirected, 
 undermines them; and must do either the one or the 
 other; — so there is in the human heart an inextin- 
 
 3oguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly 
 directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, 
 and misdirected, wrecks them. 
 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 4* 
 
 87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart 
 of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, 
 and God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame 
 or rebuke the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, 
 and for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But %vhat 5 
 power ? That is all the question. Power to destroy ? 
 the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath ? Not so. 
 Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to guard. 
 Power of the scepter and shield; the power of the 
 royal hand that heals in touching, — that binds the 10 
 fiend, and looses the captive; the throne that is 
 founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from 
 only by steps of Mercy. Will you not covet such 
 power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be 
 no more housewives, but queens ? 15 
 
 88. It is now long since the women of England 
 arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged 
 to nobility only; and, having once been in the habit 
 of accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as cor- 
 respondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the 20 
 privilege of assuming the title of "Lady,"* which 
 properly corresponds only to the title of " Lord." 
 
 I do not blame them for this; but only for their 
 
 narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and 
 1 
 
 claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, not 25 
 merely the title, but the office and duty signified by 
 it. Lady means "bread-giver " or "loaf-giver," and 
 
 * I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English youth of 
 
 certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their 
 
 5 knighthood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only by certain probation and 
 
 ( trial both of character and accomplishment ; and to be forfeited, on conviction, 
 
 by their peers, of any dishonorable act. Such an institution would be entirely, 
 
 ' and with all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honor. That it would 
 
 not be possible among us, is not to the discredit of the scheme. 
 
42 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Lord menus " maintainer of laws," and both titles 
 have reference, not to the law which is maintained in 
 the house, nor to the bread which is given to the 
 household: but to law maintained for the multitude, 
 5 and to bread broken among the multitude. So that 
 a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so far as he 
 is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords; 
 and a Lady has legal claim to her title, only so far as 
 she communicates that help to the poor representa- 
 tives of her Master, which women once, ministering 
 to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend 
 to that Master Himself; and when she is known, as 
 He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 
 
 89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this 
 15 power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the 
 Domina, or House-Lady, is great and venerable, not 
 in the number of those through whom it has lineally 
 descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps 
 within its sway; it is always regarded with reverent 
 20 worship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, 
 and its ambition correlative with its beneficence. 
 Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble 
 ladies, with a train of vassals ? Be it so; you cannot 
 be too noble, and your train cannot be too great; but 
 25 see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve 
 and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed 
 you ; and that the multitude which obeys you is of 
 those whom you have comforted, not oppressed, — 
 whom you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 
 30 90. And this, which is true of the lower or house- 
 hold dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion; 
 — that highest dignity is open to you, if you will also 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 43 
 
 accept that highest duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et 
 Reine — " jRight-dotrs "; they differ but from the Lady 
 and Lord, in that their power is supreme over the 
 mind as over the person — that they not only feed and 
 clothe, but direct and teach. And whether consciously 5 
 or not, you must be, in many a heart, enthroned: 
 there is no putting by that crown; queens you must 
 always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your 
 husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery to 
 the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever 10 
 bow, before the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter 
 of womanhood. But, alas! you are too often idle and 
 careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least 
 things, while you abdicate it in the greatest; and leav- 
 ing misrule and violence to work their will among 15 
 - men, in defiance of the power which, holding straight 
 in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among 
 you betray, and the good forget. 
 
 91. "Prince of Peace." Note that name. When 
 kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of 20 
 the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and mortal 
 measure, receive the power of it. There are no other 
 rulers than they: other rule than theirs is but mis-rule; 
 they who govern verily "Dei gratia " are all princes, 
 yes, or princesses, of Peace. There is not a war in 25 
 the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are 
 answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but 
 in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, 
 
 24. Dei Gratia. " By the grace of God." An expression usually inserted in 
 the ceremonial statement of the title of a sovereign : as Victoria Dei Gratia 
 Britanniarum regina. (Victoria, by the grace of God, queen of the Britains.) It 
 was originally used by bishops and abbots as expressive of their divine commis- 
 sion; afterward by secular rulers of various grades, and finally by monarchs as a 
 special mark of absolute sovereignty and a divine legation. — Century Dictionary, 
 
44 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for 
 none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, 
 and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is 
 no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but 
 
 5 the guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight 
 of it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men may 
 tread it down without sympathy in their own struggle; 
 but men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in 
 hope; it is you only who can feel the depths of pain, 
 
 ioand conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying 
 to do this, you turn away from it; you shut yourselves 
 within your park walls and garden gates; and you are 
 content to know that there is beyond them a whole 
 world in wilderness— a world of secrets which you dare 
 
 15 not penetrate, and of suffering which you dare not 
 conceive. 
 
 92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amaz- 
 ing among the phenomena of humanity. I am sur- 
 prised at no depths to which, when once warped from 
 
 20 its honor, that humanity can be degraded. I do not 
 wonder at the miser's death, with his hands, as they 
 relax, dropping gold. I do not wonder at the sensual- 
 ist's life, with the shroud wrapped about his feet. I 
 do not wonder at the single-handed murder of a single 
 
 25 victim, done by the assassin in the darkness of the 
 railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not even 
 wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multitudes, 
 done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of 
 nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, 
 
 30 heaped up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and 
 kings. But this is wonderful to me — oh, how wonder- 
 ful ! — to see the tender and delicate woman among 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 45 
 
 you, with her child at her breast, and a power, if she 
 would wield it, over it, and over its father, purer than 
 the air of heaven, and stronger than the seas of 
 earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing which her husband 
 would not part with for all that earth itself, though it 5 
 were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite: — to 
 see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence 
 with her next-door neighbor! This is wonderful — oh, 
 wonderful! — to see her, with every innocent feeling 
 fresh within her, go out in the morning into her garden 10 
 to play with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift 
 their heads when they are drooping, with her happy 
 
 * smile upon her face, and no cloud upon her brow, 
 because there is a little wall around her place of peace; 
 and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only look 15 
 for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose- 
 covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up 
 by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of 
 their life-blood. 
 
 93. Have you ever considered what a deep under 20 
 meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if we 
 choose, in our custom of strewing flowers before 
 those whom we think most happy? Do you suppose 
 it is merely to deceive them into the hope that happi- 
 ness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet ? — 25 
 that wherever they pass they will tread on herbs of 
 
 I sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made 
 smooth for them by depth of roses ? So surely as 
 they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk on 
 
 ' bitter herbs and thorns ; and the only softness to 30 
 their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended 
 
 ' they should believe ; there is a better meaning in that 
 
4^ SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed 
 strewn with flowers ; but they rise behind her steps, 
 not before them. "Her feet have touched the 
 meadows, and left the daisies rosy." 
 5 94. You think that only a lover's fancy ; — false and 
 vain ! How if it could be true ? You think this also, 
 perhaps, only a poet's fancy, — 
 
 " Even the light harebell raised its head 
 Elastic from her airy tread." 
 
 10 But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does 
 not destroy where she passes. She should revive ; the 
 harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You 
 think I am rushing into wild hyperbole ? Pardon me, 
 not a whit — I mean what I say in calm English, 
 
 15 spoken in resolute truth. You have heard it said — 
 (and I believe there is more than fancy even in that 
 saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) — that flowers 
 only flourish rightly in the garden of someone who 
 loves them. I know you would like that to be true ; 
 
 20 you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush 
 your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon 
 them : nay, more, if your look had the power, not 
 only to cheer, but to guard ; — if you could bid the 
 black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar 
 
 25 spare — if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the 
 drought, and say to the south wind, in frost — "Come, 
 thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the 
 spices of it may flow out. " This you would think a 
 
 3. " Her feet have touched the meadows," etc. JITar/a 7 , I. xii. 24. 
 8. " Even the light harebell," etc. Scott's Lady of the Lake, I. 18. 
 26. " Come, thou south," etc. Song of Solomon iv. 16. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 47 
 
 great thing ? And do you think it not a greater thing, 
 
 that all this (and how much more than this !) you can 
 
 do, for fairer flowers than these — flowers that could 
 
 bless you for having blessed them, and will love you 
 
 for having loved them ; — flowers that have thoughts 5 
 
 like yours, and lives like yours ; and which, once 
 
 saved, you save for ever ? Is this only a little power? 
 
 Far among the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the 
 
 darkness of the terrible streets, — these feeble florets 
 
 are lying, with all their fresh leaves torn, and their 10 
 
 stems broken — will you never go down to them, nor 
 
 set them in order, in their little fragrant beds, nor 
 
 fence them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind ? 
 
 Shall morning follow morning, for you, but not for 
 
 them; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those 15 
 
 frantic Dances of Death; but no dawn rise to breathe 
 
 upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, 
 
 1 and rose ; nor call to you, through your casement, — 
 
 call (not giving you the name of the English poet's 
 
 lady, but the name of Dante's great Matilda, who on 20 
 
 the edge of happy Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers 
 
 with flowers), saying, — 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 
 For the black bat, night, has flown, 
 
 And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 25 
 
 And the musk of the roses blown " ? 
 
 16. Dances of Death. See Of K ' ings' Treasuries. Note on page 49. 
 
 20. Matilda. (The names Matilda and Maud are the same, Maud being the 
 diminutive.) See the last six cantos of Dante's Purgatory, where the author tells 
 how he encounters "a solitary lady, who was going along singing, and culling 
 flower from flower." This lady is the type of virtuous activity. Her name, as 
 appears later, is Matilda. Why this name was chosen for her, and whether she 
 stands for an earthly p-rsonage, has been the subject of vast and still open debate. 
 It is the " beautiful lady " who finally plunges Dante into the waters of the river 
 Lethe, the drinking of which obliterates the memory of sin. 
 
 23. "Come into the garden, Maud." The first line of an exquisite love 
 song in Tennyson's Maud. 
 
4^ SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Will you not go down among them ? — among those 
 sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from 
 the earth with the deep color of heaven upon it, is 
 starting up in strength of goodly spire ; and whose 
 
 5 purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, 
 into the flower of promise ; — and still they turn to 
 you and for you. "The Larkspur listens — I hear, I 
 hear ! And the Lily whispers — I wait." 
 
 95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I 
 
 10 read you that first stanza ; and think that I had for- 
 gotten them ? Hear them now: 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 
 For the black bat, night, has flown. 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 15 I am here at the gate alone." 
 
 Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
 sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you ? Did you 
 ever hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeleine, who went 
 
 20 down to her garden in the dawn, and found One 
 waiting at the gate, whom she supposed to be the 
 gardener? Have you not sought Him often; sought 
 Him in vain, all through the night; sought Him in vain 
 at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword 
 
 25 is set? He is never there; but at the gate of this 
 garden He is waiting always, — waiting to take your 
 hand, — ready to go down to see the fruits of the valley, 
 to see whether the vine has flourished, and the pome- 
 granate budded. There you shall see with Him the 
 
 30 little tendrils of the vines that His hand is guiding — 
 there you shall see the pomegranate springing where 
 His hand cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you shall see 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS 49 
 
 the troops of the angel keepers that, with their wings, 
 wave away the hungry birds from the pathsides where 
 He has sown and call to each other between the vine- 
 yard rows, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that 
 spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." i 
 Oh — you queens — you queens; among the hills and 
 happy greenwood of this land of yours, shall the foxes 
 have holes and the birds of the air have nests; and in 
 your cities shall the stones cry out against you, that 
 they are the only pillows where the Son of Man can ic 
 lay His head ? 
 
 4. M Take us the foxes," etc. Song of Solomon ii. 15. 
 
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