n cords of
reverence, making a rude world civil, was now to inaugurate for
diffidence its miserable career. Through the rough deference of the
German camp, through the Provencal code of _courtoisie_, up to the
modern law of fine manners, the drudge and chattel of the primeval tribe
has risen to impose her law upon the modern world. Earth is better for
this finer power, but social intercourse is less sincere. For woman,
having curbed the brute man by conventional restraints of outward
demeanour, has made human intercourse smooth and seemly, but imposed
upon mankind the wearing of unnatural masks. Before the multitude of
locked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels
itself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention
gladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting
urbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony and conceal a
disingenuous soul.

All this finished science of illusion is like an east wind to the
confidences of the shy, and if they stay within its range they are
blighted before their hearts have time to unfold. They long for a less
biting air, for vernal hours in sheltered dells, where without sheaths
and unguarded the hearts of flowers lie open to their neighbours and to
heaven. There was once a simple day when religion set hearts
interflowing, but now it can melt them only within the precincts; the
fire which is carried from the altar is dead at the church door. The
brotherliness of those early days is indeed often found in humble walks
of life, but these we cannot continually tread, because our intellectual
and artistic tastes find there no sufficient nurture. Among the cultured
a cold convention often reigns, behind which only a more persistent
nature than ours can pass. Unless, therefore, we find our way into some
circle of gentle scholars or lovers of the beautiful quite simple in
their tastes, a thing possible but not often granted by a niggard
fortune, we are perforce thrown back upon our own company, and move
towards the grave alone. For this we accuse none; nothing is more at
fault than our own constitution. But to us society is a school of dames,
who are not to be blamed if amid the crowd that clamours for their
teaching, they find no time for the backward scholar. We are the dunces
of the school, and are dismissed without learning the accomplishments
set forth upon the prospectus. That is why in our northern streets so
many seeming hats