Possibly, for so it seems to me, a man’s imagination, like his muscular frame, is an engine of far greater potential energy than a woman’s, and far less tied by the limitations of a particular individuality. A man, in his creative, as well as his reflective, thought can soar out of himself to that _species æternitatis_ which is the only point of view for the great artist as well as for the philosopher. Few women can follow him thither, and when they do, the struggle and effort of the flight seem to weaken their imaginative energies. Beatrice reached paradise after death by her virtues: she would never, like her lover, have reached even the Purgatorio alive by the force of her artistic imagination. While I insist on it, I shall not labour the point. In the England of Shakespeare, Milton, Purcell, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Raeburn and Constable, the sex represented by Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Browning, the Brontës, George Eliot, Angelica Kauffmann, Miss Ethel Smyth, yes, even the one and only Jane Austen, can only adopt an attitude of respect and, if they are true artists, of reverence for masculine artistic achievement. Also, what is true of creative art I believe to be true of interpretative. There is not, indeed, the same difference between the highest achievements of the two sexes in the interpretative sphere: Mrs Siddons balances Kean; Ellen Terry, Henry Irving; Melba, Sims Reeves; Beatrice Harrison, Leonard Borwick. Yet in the general survey, the advantage of the men preponderates: whether as actors, singers or instrumentalists they have more vigour, a finer mental grasp of the work they are interpreting, a firmer touch and that greater power of soaring above their own personalities into that realm where beauty walks unhampered by the flesh.