The spiritually walled cloister to which this charming child of modern enlightenment thus expresses her determination to retire, differs, it would appear, from the materially walled monastic shades of the Dark Ages, first, by the breadth and magnanimity of an Index Expurgatorius rising to interdiction of all uninspired books whatever, except Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest,’ and other classics of evangelical theology; and, secondly, by its holy abhorrence of the arts of picture and song, which waste so much precious time, and give so much disagreeable trouble to learn; and which also, when learned, are too likely to be used in the service of idols; while the skills which our modern gospel substitutes for both, of steam-whistle, namely, and photograph, supply, with all that they need of terrestrial pleasure, the ears which God has redeemed from spiritual deafness, and the eyes which He has turned from darkness to light. My readers are already, I hope, well enough acquainted with the Institutes of the St. George’s Company to fear no monastic restrictions of enjoyment, nor imperative choice of their books, carried to this celestially Utopian strictness. And yet, understanding the terms of the sentence with true and scholarly accuracy, I must, in educational legislation, insist on the daughters of my Companions fulfilling this resolution to the letter: “I am resolved never to read worldly books any more, and my music and drawing I have laid aside for ever.” “Worldly books”? Yes; very certainly, when you know which they are; for I will have you to abjure, with World, Flesh, and Devil, the literature of all the three:—and your music and drawing,—that is to say, all music and drawing which you have learned only for your own glory or amusement, and respecting which you have no idea that it may ever become, in a far truer sense, other people’s music and drawing. For all the arts of mankind, and womankind, are only rightly learned, or practised, when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or teaching others. A child dancing for its own delight,—a lamb leaping,—or a fawn at play, are happy and holy creatures; but they are not artists. An artist is—and recollect this definition, (put in capitals for quick reference,)—A PERSON WHO HAS SUBMITTED TO A LAW WHICH IT WAS PAINFUL TO OBEY, THAT HE MAY BESTOW A DELIGHT WHICH IT IS GRACIOUS TO BESTOW. [69] “A painful law,” I say; yet full of pain, not in the sense of torture, but of stringency, or constraint; and labour, increasing, it may be, sometimes into aching of limbs, and panting of breasts: but these stronger yet, for every ache, and broader for every pant; and farther and farther strengthened from danger of rheumatic ache, and consumptive pant.