might either have stood for the other’s likeness; and if the test of poetry be, as Goethe says, the substance which remains when the poetry is reduced to prose, the test of an ideal woman may be perhaps how she would translate into reality. The ‘family chronicle’ stands the test, and a dozen instances of it at once occur to memory. Michal, with her husband in danger, does not wait to weep nor to exclaim, but, strong of heart as of hand, helps him to escape, and, ready of resource, by her quick, deft arrangement of the bedchamber, gains time to baffle his pursuers. Hannah, for all her holy enthusiasm, is mindful of the bodily needs of her embryo prophet, and as she comes with her husband to offer the ‘yearly sacrifice’ at Shiloh, brings with her the ‘little coat’ which she has made for the boy, and which, we may be quite sure, she has remembered to make a little bigger each time. Nor less, in her far-sighted scheming for her favourite son, is Rebekah heedless of ‘human nature’s daily food.’ For all her concentration of thought on great issues she remembers to make ready ‘the savoury meat such as his father loved’ before she sends Jacob to the critical interview. It is altogether with something of a shock that we ponder on that curious development. The scheming, unscrupulous wife seems quite other than the simple country maiden with her quick assent to the grave young husband whom she was able to ‘comfort after his mother’s death.’ Was that pretty, frank ‘I will go’ of hers only unconventional, one wonders, or perhaps just a trifle unfeeling, foreshadowing in the young girl, so ready to leave her home, a rather rootless state of affections, an Undine-like indifference to old ties? That touch of the carefully prepared dinner at any rate makes us smile as we sigh, putting us _fin de siècle_ folks, as it does, in touch with tent life, and keeping the traditions of home influence unaltered through the ages.