uture destiny. Suggestion is one of the
most powerful things in the world, but we must not forget that inverted
form of it which has been called contra-suggestion. We all know how the
first shoots of religion are destroyed on all sides in young minds by
contra-suggestion. Crude, ill-timed, unsympathetic, excessive, religious
teaching and religious exercises achieve, as scarcely anything else
could, exactly the opposite of that which they seek to attain. Thus it
is not here proposed that we should take any course at home or at
school which should have the result of making motherhood as nauseous to
the girl's mind through contra-suggestion, as it easily could be made if
we did not set to work upon judicious lines.

If we are in any measure to gain, by means of books, our end of forming
right ideals in the girl's mind, I am certain that we must not expect to
accomplish much with the help of any but very great writers. We may very
well doubt the substantial value for the purpose of anything written for
the purpose. Such books may be of value for the teacher; they may
possibly be of value in disposing of curiosity that has become
overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I much
question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind will be
nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture on
"Queens' Gardens" in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," though in that
magnificent and immortal piece of literature there is nowhere any direct
allusion to motherhood as the natural ideal for girlhood. Yet if only
one girl in a hundred who read that lecture can be persuaded, in the
beautiful phrase to be found there, that she was "born to be love
visible," how excellent is the work that we shall have accomplished! A
chapter might well be devoted entirely to the teaching of Wordsworth
regarding womanhood. We need scarcely remind ourselves that this great
poet owed an immeasurable debt to his sister, and in lesser, though very
substantial, degree to his wife and daughters. He has left an abundance
of poetry which testifies directly and indirectly to these influences.
This poetry is not only utterly lovely as poetry; at once sane and
passionate, steadying and thrilling, but it is also not to be surpassed,
I cannot but believe, as a means for rightly forming the ideals of
girlhood. Every year sees an inundation of new collections of poetry.
The anthologist might do worse than collect from Wordsworth a small, bu