Here is another:— “L’expérience lui avait appris que quel que fut leur âge, ou leur caractère, toutes les femmes vivaient avec le même rêve, et qu’elles avaient toutes au fond du cœur un roman commencé dont elles attendaient jusqu’à la mort le héros, comme les juifs attendent le Messie.” This “roman commencé,” (et qui ne finit jamais), is true as regards women who are idle, and who have not replaced dreams by duties. And what are the “barrières” which passion cannot overleap, from the moment it has subjugated the will? How fine, how true that scene in Calderon’s “Magico Prodigioso,” where Justina conquers the fiend only by not _consenting_ to ill! ——“This agony Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul May sweep imagination in its storm; The will is firm.” And the baffled demon shrinks back,— “Woman, thou hast subdued me Only by not owning thyself subdued!” [Illustration] A friend of mine was once using some mincing elegancies of language to describe a high degree of moral turpitude, when a man near her interposed, with stern sarcasm, “Speak out! Give things their proper names! _Half words are the perdition of women!_” [Illustration] “I observe,” said Sydney Smith, “that _generally_ about the age of forty, women get tired of being virtuous and men of being honest.” This was said and received with a laugh as one of his good things; but, like many of his good things, how dreadfully true! And why? because, _generally_, education has made the virtue of the woman and the honesty of the man a matter of external opinion, not a law of the inward life. [Illustration] Dante, in his lowest hell, has placed those who have betrayed women; and in the lowest deep of the lowest deep those who have betrayed trust. [Illustration] Inveterate sensuality, which has the effect of utterly stupifying and brutifying lower minds, gives to natures more sensitively or more powerfully organised a horrible dash of ferocity. For there is an awful relation between animal blood-thirstiness and the proneness to sensuality, and in some sensualists a sort of feline propensity to torment and lacerate the prey they have not the appetite to devour. [Illustration] “La Chevalerie faisait une tentative qui n’a jamais réussi, quoique souvent essayée; la tentative de se servir des passions humaines, et particulièrement de l’amour pour conduire l’homme à la vertu. Dans cette route l’homme s’arrête toujours en chemin. L’amour inspire beaucoup de bons sentiments—le courage, le dévouement, le sacrifice des biens et de la vie; mais il ne se sacrifie pas lui-même, et c’est là que la faiblesse humaine reprend ses droits.”—_St. Marc-Girardin._ I am not sure that this well-sounding remark is true—or, if true, it is true of the mere passion, not of love in its highest phase, which is self-sacrificing, which has its essence in the capability of self-sacrifice.