So I will not attempt to solve the formidable problem. Yet may I be permitted to express a thought, simple in itself, but one which presents itself with the smiling countenance of hope. It is, that “opposite” principles do not mean “irreconcilable” principles. Is it not just possible that this craze for work, for riches, and for speed, of which we are victims, may slacken somewhat, and give men time to collect their thoughts, and to piece together again the shattered grandeur of the modern world in the image of a more serene and composed beauty? Are men really doomed to become more insatiable, the richer they become; or will the day arrive when they will think it wiser to employ a larger part of the immense riches they possess, not in producing other riches, but in embellishing the world, seeing that beauty is no less a joy in life than wealth, and that we ourselves, though all athirst for gold, prove that it is so, by searching untiringly in every corner for the few remains of ancient beauty? I feel that I have not the courage to answer this question with a brutal “No”; and I hope that many others will be of the same opinion. For one cannot help thinking that one of the most marvellous epochs in history would really begin on the day on which Europe and America succeeded in reconciling in a new civilisation the two opposite principles of quantity and quality, and in employing the extraordinary riches at their disposal in adorning and beautifying the world, which their energy and audacity have so immeasurably enlarged in recent centuries. III WOMAN AND HOME Some years ago, in the course of the excavations which are being made with such success in Egypt, a papyrus was found which is now known among archæologists by the name of _The Petition of Dionysia_. This papyrus, which belongs to the second century A.D., contains on one side some books of the _Iliad_, on the other a defence presented by a certain Dionysia to an Egyptian court, before which she was defending an action brought against her by her own father affecting her dowry and other questions of interest. To escape paying his daughter and her husband the sums which they demanded, the father had directed the husband to return him his daughter, and had dissolved the marriage. But the daughter, on her side, maintained in her defence that the father had forfeited his right to dissolve her marriage and to separate her from her husband, because her marriage was a “written” marriage—established, that is to say, by an act or document in writing. If it had been an “unwritten” marriage, Dionysia would not have contested her father’s right in that case to dissolve it, for no motive whatever, merely because it so pleased him.