sense of its very life. The whole interest of society depends upon the chastity and tenderness and moral force of its women. Moral weakness once begun among the women of the people, the decline of that race begins. So indeed perished the finest race that ever existed in this world--the old Greek race. On the other hand, though unchastity on the part of the man be certainly condemnable--from a purely moral point of view equally condemnable--its consequences are not fraught with the same danger to society, because they are not of a character to destroy the family. Really the part of man in the great struggle of life is the part of the fighter. The all important thing for the man is to be strong. If he can be morally as well as physically strong, so much the better for the race; but the all important thing is that he shall be able to fight, to contend, to conquer. It is not through the man that the moral progress of society is directly effected; it is through the woman and the teaching of the young, it is through the tenderness and love of the home--the only place where a man can rest from his constant battle with the world. It is only in his own home that he can be as good as he may wish to be. Every good home is a little nursing place of morality, a little garden in which the plants of honour and truth and courage and gentleness can be cultivated until they are strong enough to bear the frosts and the cold winds of the great outside world. In one generation home life may accomplish very little for the improvement of a race, but in the course of thousands of years it accomplishes everything. If men are kinder and wiser and better to-day than they were thousands of years ago, it is because of the virtues which have been cultivated in the family. Had the home of human history been a struggle between men only, the result would have been very different indeed, for competition and battle cultivate only the hard and fierce and cunning side of character. Taking all these facts together, the poet tells us very plainly that adultery is something which should never be forgiven in a woman, however it might be forgiven in a man, because the fault against human society is too great. And therefore he has written this poem especially to condemn those old romances in which illegitimate affection was the theme--in which, also, every effort was made to excite the sympathy of the reader with the sin of the woman. No sympathy has George Meredith; on the contrary, he praises the man who kills, in the line where he speaks of the sword--where he says that the good steel of the sword that killed was what every man ought to be--hard and penetrating, hard and terrible to deal with social wrong. It is very curious to compare this stern view of life with the tenderness of Michelet, in his books entitled "L'Amour" and "Les Femmes." Michelet actually says that in many cases the woman should be forgiven. The two opposing kinds of views thus expressed by two great