THE Marquis of Halifax of the Commonwealth and Restoration had, we know, some shrewd ideas on the subject of naval discipline and training. He also had certain opinions about the habits and behaviour of the female sex, and was brave enough to put them on paper under the title 'Advice to a Daughter.' Bold nobleman! For much less nowadays would Suffragettes have tied themselves up to your area railings, or had their indignant bodies sent to you by parcels post. Every man is ready with advice enough and to spare for his son, but before revolted Margaret even his Majesty's Ministers are dumb. For this reason, that no ordinary male will now venture to admonish the other sex, it may be interesting to explore the pages of a musty old book written more than two centuries ago, and, if we be very reckless, to extract therefrom certain maxims and apply them to the present generation. In parenthesis, why make sham martyrs by sending people to prison who want to go there? There is a tale of a Russian Countess who dabbled with Nihilism; one evening at a semi - Nihilistic tea party the house was surrounded, and she was seized by two stalwart wardresses, who removed her to another room. Presently she returned dishevelled and in tears, and "On m'a fouetté comme un enfant," she moaned,

"avec un soulier." She would doubtless have preferred Siberia; - but the tea-parties ceased.

Lord Halifax begins his dissertation with some remarks on religion.

"As to your particular faith," he writes, "keep to the religion that is grown up with you, both as it is the best in itself, and that the reason of staying in it upon that ground is somewhat stronger for your sex, than it will perhaps be allowed to be for ours; in respect that the voluminous inquiries into the truth, by reading, are less expected from you." The Bible is "the best of books," and will be direction enough for her not to change.

On the whole, however, his attitude is not unlike that of the average Frenchman of the present day, who rarely visits a church, thinks as freely as he pleases, supports his Government in its attack on the religious orders-and yet, in his heart, much prefers that his wife and daughter should attend Mass. The Marquis was a religiously minded man, but not a religious Christian, and there is little or nothing in his essay that might not have been penned by a devout Buddhist. Still, he would have his daughter grow up a religious woman.

The largest portion of his discourse is on the subject of husbands. Apparently, lovematches were rare in those days. "It is one of the dis

advantages belonging to your sex, that young women are seldom permitted to make their own choice; their friends' care and experience are thought safer guides to them than their own fancies; and their modesty often forbiddeth them to refuse when their parents recommend, though their inward consent may not entirely go along with it."

Let those who clamour for women's votes consider the following passage:

"You must first lay it down for a foundation in general that there is inequality in the sexes, and that for the better economy of the world, the men, who were to be the lawgivers, had the larger share of reason bestowed upon them; by which means your Sex is better prepared for the compliance that is necessary for the better performance of those duties which seem to be most properly assigned to it."

It is this fundamental fact, that there is "inequality in the sexes," which the Shrieking Sisterhood forgets. The strongest will ever be the lawgivers, and, generally speaking, might is right. But there are consolations. "The first part of our life is a good deal subjected to you in the nursery, where you reign without competition, and by that means have the advantage of giving the first impressions. Afterwards you have stronger influences, which, well-managed, have more force in your behalf than all our privileges and jurisdictions can pretend to have against you. You have

more strength in your looks than we have in our laws, and more power by your tears than we have by our arguments."

He acknowledges that it is hard that there should be one law for a husband and another for a wife,-that an offence should be considered "in the utmost degree criminal in the woman, which in a man passeth under a much gentler censure.' But it is the way of the world, he says, and necessary for the preservation of the family honour, which a woman has in her keeping.

A husband's faults are a wife's opportunities; "I am tempted to say, That a wife is to thank God her husband hath faults. (Mark the seeming paradox, my Dear, for your own instruction, it being intended no further.) A husband without faults is a dangerous observer, he hath an eye so piercing. . . . The faults and passions of husbands bring them down to you, and make them content to live upon less unequal terms than faultless men would be willing to stoop to." No one has ever met the faultless man, save in the pages of lady novelists; he does not exist any more than the μeyaλоπρеπǹs ȧvýρ of Aristotle, but no doubt it is quite justifiable to use him as a bogey for frightening a demoiselle into making the best of a future husband's faults! Lord Halifax would probably have been the first to confess that he had never met the faultless man, and would never meet him though he attained to the years of Methuselah.

"In

ing no great one? But none the less, easy Princes and weak husbands are kittle cattle to drive, and the Minister and the wife alike will know many an anxious moment in pursuit of their Sisyphæan task. The "shameless stone" will seem to be nigh the hill-top, when suddenly it will fall back and crush the struggling creature who has been striving so hard to heave it in the right direction.

to be proud of it. Some think it hath a great air to be above troubling their thoughts with such ordinary things as their house and family." He sketches out the day of the idle woman of fashion. She "sails up and down the house to no kind of purpose, and looks as if she came thither only to make a visit. . . . After Her Emptiness hath been extreme busy about some very senseless thing, she eats her breakfast half an hour before dinner, to

λᾶας ἀναιδής.

"With all this, that which you are to pray for is a wise husband. . . . Such a husband is as much above all the other kinds of them, as a rational subjection to a Prince, great in himself, is to be preferred before the disquiet and uneasiness of Unlimited Liberty."

There was furious seeking after pleasure in those days, and probably a tendency on the part of many great ladies to neglect their homes and families. No doubt it was all very dazzling to a girl fresh from the schoolroom. Courts were gay and glittering then, most people pursued the happiness of the moment, romped and danced, flirted and intrigued, with the zest of a younger world; ate, drank, and were merry, while Kings were but Chief Revellers, and the sun of pleasure shone brighter than ever after its eclipse behind the clouds and smoke of the Puritan storm. "Take heed of carrying your good breeding to such a height as to be good for nothing and

the company with her discourse; then calleth for her coach, that she may trouble her acquaintance, who are already cloyed with her, . . . she setteth out like a ship out of the harbour, laden with trifles, and cometh back with them; at her return she repeateth to her faithful waiting-woman the triumphs of that day's impertinence; then wrapped up in flattery and clean linen goeth to bed so satisfied that it throweth her into pleasant dreams of her own felicity."

The penalty, he says, that falls on such an one is loss of her servants' respect, of her husband's fealty, of her children's love. She becomes insignificant in her own house, and only discovers her miserable plight when it is too late to amend it. She is doomed to play second fiddle to the old housekeeper, and is brought under a censure which is a much heavier thing than the troubles she has sought to avoid.

There follow some sage re

marks concerning a parent's dealings with children. "You must begin early to make them love you, that they may obey you." "You are not to expect returns of kindness," as children take everything for granted, and have a "shortness of thought." "You are to have as strict a guard upon yourself amongst your children, as if you were amongst your enemies." Certainly many folk permit themselves to say things in their children's presence which had better be left unsaid, especially parents of the lower classes, many of whom, soon as a lad or lassie goes to school, behave and speak as if all parental responsibility had vanished. "Take heed of supporting a favourite child in its impertinence, which will give right to the rest of claiming the same privilege." He passes on to consider the principal minor trouble of the well-to-do, the servants. "Servants may be looked upon as humble friends, and returns of kindness and good usage are as much due to such of them as deserve it, as their service is due to us when we require it." By this dignified and kindly sentence Lord Halifax surely shows that he was much in advance of his times. Seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury servants had as a rule a roughish time; they were very badly paid, were expected to sleep under the eaves or in the cellars, and never had a holiday. In many an old town-house or manor - house it is a marvel

where the servants did sleep -any airless and lightless dog-kennel was good enough for a footman, and the maids dossed down in the loft. It appears, indeed, that as a rule they had abundance of coarse food.

On the subject of Behaviour and Conversation, he says, "It is time now to lead you out of your house into the world. A dangerous step; where your virtue alone will not secure you, except it is attended with a great deal of prudence. The enemy is abroad, and you are sure to be taken if you are found straggling. The

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extravagancies of the age have made caution more necessary, . . . the unjustifiable freedoms of some of your sex have involved the rest in the penalty of being reduced." Obsta principiis. "She who will allow herself to go to the utmost extent of everything that is lawful, is so very near going farther, that those who lie at watch will begin to count upon her." We come to a well-worn simile. "Proper Reserves are the Outworks, and must never be deserted by those who intend to keep the place; they keep off the possibilities not only of being taken but of being attempted." Many writers have compared a woman to a fortress; in the days of Les Précieuses we know that there was a regular manual of the art of conducting such a siege. The lady who "thinketh she must always be in a laugh or 8 broad smile" comes some scathing censure.

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