The French, unfortunately for them, have never associated national pride with morality. They have associated it with generosity, with courage, and with the externals of civilisation, but never with sexual purity. The French never think that they are purer than other people, they imagine that the weakness of humanity is the same everywhere, and as Paris is the pleasure city of Europe they have ample opportunities for observing how foreigners conduct themselves there, which only confirms them in their opinion. Still, it cannot be truly said that the entire French nation is without an ideal, even in this matter. The goddess of French maidenhood is not the goddess of Lubricity, but her precise opposite, the Holy Virgin. It has been written, with slight exaggeration, that every French girl is called Marie; it is not an exaggeration to say that every French girl brought up in the Catholic religion is taught to look to the Holy Virgin as her ideal. It may be answered that the Virgin Mary is not unknown in England either; certainly the Virgin Mary is known there, but _La Sainte Vierge_ is not. The Virgin Mary is partly ideal, but there is much everyday reality about her, and Protestantism insists upon that reality which French Catholicism conceals. The Virgin Mary is also an ordinary mother; she had a family by Joseph, the carpenter. In _La Sainte Vierge_ there is nothing to diminish the purity of the ideal; her marriage with Joseph was merely nominal, and Joseph himself was a great saint above the common lot of humanity. _La Sainte Vierge_ had but one child, and that one by the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit. The Virgin Mary is in heaven, _La Sainte Vierge_ reigns for ever as the crowned Queen of Heaven and the royal patroness and special protectress of France. Her statue is on a hundred hills, it looks down benignantly from a thousand towers, she herself, the mystical Tower of Ivory, has preserved many a French city from invasion. Every French girl, at her _première communion_, is robed in white from head to foot in emulation of her purity; during _her_ month, _le mois de Marie_, her hundred thousand altars are covered with flowers in memory of her sweetness, and all the terms of love and praise are exhausted in her litanies. [Sidenote: Want of a Masculine moral Ideal.] There is no ideal for the male sex comparable to this. We have read of Sir Galahad, who could say-- “I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden’s hand in mine.” [Sidenote: Sir Galahad.] [Sidenote: England the more moral Country.] [Sidenote: Especially in Principle and Feeling.] [Sidenote: The Story of Joseph.]