ty and
goodness, and would keep herself unspotted from the world not by
shrinking from it, but by helping it upward.

But as we are imperfect, our sensitiveness shows itself most frequently
in making us feel every jar to our pride and vanity. And we make a
virtue of this. We ought to guard ourselves against such sensitiveness.
It is a fault which lies very deep. It is almost impossible for a _very_
sensitive woman to be just. In fancying wrong to herself she imputes
wrong to everybody about her. In trying to shield herself she wounds
others. She fears a slight was intended, and rather than submit to it,
deliberately hurts some one who she knows may be innocent. Would it not
be better to believe that the person who has hurt her is innocent, and
submit to the slight even if it was intended? What harm can it do her to
think a guilty person innocent? And what harm can a slight do her? But
it always does harm to stoop to an ignoble feeling.

Let us at least be just. But the special accusation against women is
that they are not just, and sometimes their special virtue is believed
to be a romantic generosity which shuts out justice. Women are prone to
be so generous to one person as to be unjust to another. They are strong
partisans, and are determined to believe those they love always in the
right. That seems like an amiable failing; but is it? Do we wish even
our enemy to be wronged to save our friend? I think every high-minded
woman would choose to be just, even if she must make her friend suffer;
but it is very hard to live by that standard.

Most men who write novels describe women as ready to forgive the man who
has forsaken them for another woman, but as implacable towards the rival
however innocent she may be. There is too much truth in such a picture,
but the best women know that good women are not so unjust. That Dorothea
in her anguish at finding Will Ladislaw singing with Rosamund Lydgate
should do her utmost to help Rosamund take a better stand is of course
unusual, but it is not unnatural. That was a splendid kind of generosity
which did indeed swallow up justice, but it was founded on justice, the
justice which strove to restore all things to their true relations. If
any girl is puzzled as to the true province of feeling, and wishes to
know how to reconcile warm-heartedness and self-control, let her read
the wonderful chapter in "Middlemarch" which describes the interview
between Dorothea and Rosamund.

Wher