Moreover, Christianity quickened the force of that feminine influence which Rome had first set flowing through the civilized world, but diverted the stream from irregular and torrential courses into a smooth channel gliding amid sacred groves. It clothed woman with ideal grace and virtue, and perceived in her powers which the virile mind could never wield. "Inesse quinetiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec aut consilia earum aspernantur, nec responsa negligunt." So our ancestors held in the northern woods, and Christianity, purifying and expanding their belief, fulfilled it with a new perfection. But this gradual binding of all men's limbs in silken 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.