wn observations of no light importance to women.

It is this: Nineteen times out of twenty I have remarked that the true
paradise of a female life in all ranks, not too elevated for constant
intercourse with the children, is by no means the years of courtship,
nor the earliest period of marriage, but that sequestered chamber of her
experience, in which a mother is left alone through the day, with
servants perhaps in a distant part of the house, and (God be thanked!)
chiefly where there are no servants at all, she is attended by one sole
companion, her little first-born angel, as yet clinging to her robe,
imperfectly able to walk, still more imperfect in its prattling and
innocent thoughts, clinging to her, haunting her wherever she goes as
her shadow, catching from her eye the total inspiration of its little
palpitating heart, and sending to hers a thrill of secret pleasure so
often as its little fingers fasten on her own. Left alone from morning
to night with this one companion, or even with three, still wearing the
graces of infancy; buds of various stages upon the self-same tree, a
woman, if she has the great blessing of approaching such a luxury of
paradise, is moving--too often not aware that she is moving--through the
divinest section of her life. As evening sets in, the husband, through
all walks of life, from the highest professional down to that of common
labour, returns home to vary her modes of conversation by such thoughts
and interests as are more consonant with his more extensive capacities
of intellect. But by that time her child (or her children) will be
reposing on the little couch, and in the morning, duly as the sun
ascends in power, she sees before her a long, long day of perfect
pleasure in this society which evening will bring to her, but which is
interwoven with every fibre of her sensibilities. This condition of
noiseless, quiet love is that, above all, which God blesses and smiles
upon.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] How purified? And if it should be answered, through and under
Christianity, the fool in his heart would scoff and say: 'What woman
thinks of religion in her youthful courtship?' No; but it is not what
she thinks of, but what thinks of her; not what she contemplates in
consciousness, but what contemplates her, and reaches her by a necessity
of social (? ideal) action. Romance is the product of Christianity, but
so is sentiment.

_III. WHY THE PAGANS COULD NOT INVEST THEIR GODS WITH ANY