combat was only a misunderstanding, that they were brothers; and, finally, embrac ing, they became united.

serene,

We all know that Art, while the highest possible result to which human imagination, emotion, and intellect can attain, is also, in its various forms, an exalted and idealized reflection of every passing epoch of human progress; thus, the sensuous, and in one sense nobly natural life of the Greeks, found its truthful illustration in the master-pieces of antique sculpture and architecture; thus the art of painting reached, during the picturesque epochs of the Middle Ages and the renaissance, to an astonishing height of excellence; but to express in all its depth, richness, fullness, torture and ecstasy, this lately awakened, inward force, this spiritual result of the union of the old naturalistic heathenism and the young supernatural faith,—this new life, whose first heart-beat thrilled the world at that supreme moment, when, beside the haunted shores, and over the classic waters of the Ægean Sea, a voice was heard to murmur, 'Great Pan is dead!"-to embody this, another art was needed; then, from the bosom of Christianity, arose the modern art of Music.

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Ample evidence remains to us of the tone-system of the Greeks, and several authentic fragments of their music exist; from all this we find that their instrumental music never advanced beyond the merest rudiments, and that their singing was only a heightening of the effect of their beautiful language, by means of rhythmical cadences, rhetorical pauses, and varied intonation. On account of the extreme respect and admiration which the Greek poets and philosophers express for music, many modern writers, insufficiently acquainted with the subject, have supposed that Greek music must have reached a very high state of perfection; I regard such expressions of admiration only as proofs of the intellectual discernment of those gifted men, who were able to appreciate the high value, and still higher possibilities of music, even in its rough root, as it existed among them. What would not these poets and philosophers have written of music, could they have known it as it now is? As it was, however, Plato said, that no man could be virtuous, whose life was not in harmony with music; Pythagoras thought that music stood so far above the senses that only a lofty intellect was able to judge of it; Chiron said that music should be placed above morals or medicine, as an element of culture; Aristoxenes advised that music should always be introduced at feasts, because its inherent symmetry and order restrained mind and body from excess; Archytas, Plutarch and others agreed that the power of music extends to every part of nature, that it regulates all motion, and even rules the course of the spheres.

And yet in spite of the great encomiums of great men, the music of those days gave scarcely even an idea of the sublimity to which it has arrived in our days. Music, as we understand it, scarcely had an existence prior to the establishment of Christianity; its feeble germ, nursed in the rocks and caves where the early Christians found refuge, fanned by the sighs, and watered by the tears of the persecuted, developed into existence as the Ambrosian and Gregorian chants, then spread, through storm and transition, into the life of the people, as the troubadour, minstrel, war, folk-song and dance music, until it became, under its present splendid and varied forms of artistic song, and instrumental composition, what it now is—the reigning art of to-day, the most consummate flower of modern civilization, intellectual culture and artistic refinement.

Music, though in one sense a mathematical abstraction, and based on exact science like other arts, is wholly original and self-existent. It is not reproductive and imitative, as are the plastic arts to a certain extent; its object is higher than that of mere reflection; it aims at expressing those emotions and aspirations, which are

awakened in thinking and feeling humanity by the passions and events of life and time, or by the contemplation and comprehension of the order, proportion, unity, variety, power, terror, beauty, symmetry, profundity and immensity of the universe. It is the most transcendental of all arts, for it is a purely metaphysical outward manifestation of the inward soul; it is the most complex of all arts, for at once it is vague, definite, and infinitely precise; it is the most ideal of all arts, for it is the beautiful result of unshaken faith in progress towards perfection, and is itself almost a religion, in its purity and sublimity. In the evanescent, intangible form of music, from small materials yet vast possibilities, the human heart and mind have gradually evoked a language, a science, an art, compared with whose simple means and immense results, the miraculous creations of the fabulous magicians of antiquity would appear cold, pale, aimless and meaningless.

I shall now endeavor to sketch the share of woman-which art history has until now neglected to point out, fully and separately--in this gradual, historical development of music to the point of pre-eminence where we find it in our own day. Woman's voice certainly united in the chants and hymns that echoed through the caves and deserts to which the early Christians fled in order to celebrate their worship; though afterwards, in the Sixteenth Century, she was cast out as an official musician from the prosperous church, we know that in the early, persecuted church, she bore her part as singer as well as martyr; whether she had any share in the composition of those early chants in which she practically united, is doubtful, and will forever remain unknown. In the middle ages, woman was the universal martyr; forgot by others, she forgot herself. It was not until the end of the Fourteenth Century, that women began to be anything more than the toys of the higher, the beasts of burden among the lower classes. The few historical clues we possess, lead us most unwillingly to the conclusion that the first timid steps of woman within the portals of the art of music, were rather trammelled, than encouraged and assisted; and if any trace of woman as a musician remains from the era of mediæval sorcery, witch-burning, and the slow overcoming of popular superstition by means of philosophy and natural science, it is to be found in the folk-songs, those beautiful memorials of individual and national life, composed and written by anonymous singers and poets among the people. It is almost impossible to believe that women traversed that long period of persecution, struggle, despair, hope and aspiration, without giving voice to their emotions; and as national and peasant folk-songs are traditionally said to have been nearly always composed by the persons who first sang them, and as women have always been their most zealous performers, it is only fair to suppose that they have also had something to do with their composition as well as with their poetry. It would be unnatural to think that the beautiful lullabies and cradle songs, of which hundreds exist, in different languages and nationalities, were composed by martial barons, rough serving-men, or rougher peasants, and not by their wives or daughters; we know that in Bearn, in Ireland, in the Basque provinces, and elsewhere, women have always been preferred as the vocal eulogists of the departed, in funeral songs; nor could the sibyllic utterances of Druid priestesses, the terrible incantations and magic songs of the early sorceresses, have been invented by others than themselves.

Mrs. Ritter proceeded to show that for the preservation and collection of Spanish, Irish, English, French and Alpine songs, we are indebted largely to women, gave suggestive hints of the style of Hindoo, Greek and Arabic music, and referred to the poetic delicacy of feeling evinced toward women in the songs of these nations.

By a singular contradiction, though the church forbade women, throughout mediæval times, and by actual prohibition in the Sixteenth Century, to take any active musical part in its services,-as I have already mentioned,-a feminine saint, Saint Cecilia, was adopted as patroness of music, and especially of church music. * If we search still further back in what I may term the primeval epoch of musical art, we find the Greek poetess Sappho to have been credited as the inventress of the so-called mixolydian mode in music, and also of a (then) new musical instrument, the pectis or magadis. And Miriam, the prophetess, who went out dancing and singing, the timbrel in her hand, who can say that her song of triumph was not her own composition?

But to advance to the early days of modern music, banished from active musical participation in the church service, woman's practical career as a public artiste only began with the invention of the opera, about A. D. 1600. It was not until her superiority as an actress and singer had been undeniably and triumphantly established on the stage, that she reconquered her musical share in the religious service. And what great distinction in such a position woman has won for herself during the past two hundred years! Volumes have been written on those opera singers, many of whose very names, as they echo through the pages of history, are in themselves romance and poetry, recalling as they do, the gifts, charms, accomplishments, charities, virtues, errors, adventures, and caprices of their possessors.

Brief sketches were given of Vittoria Archilei at the Court of Florence in 1600, of Faustina Bordoni and Regina Mingotti, of Madame Mara, the favorite singer of Frederick the Great; of Caterina Gabrielli, the pupil of Metastasio; of Madame Catalani, of Mrs. Billington, of Agnes Schebest, of Mrs. Sheridan, of Miss Stephens, and references were made to many more recent artistes; the rich-voiced Mrs. Wood, the fascinating Malibran, the impassioned Madame Devrient-of whom it has been said that "she never sang an inferior song in public during her whole life”—the charming Sontag and Patti, the intellectual Madame Lind, the exquisite Madame

But the lady regretted that while these famous songstresses were capable of so grandly interpreting the works of composers, we cannot point to composers of music among women to match such stars in the literary world as Mrs. Browning, Heloise, Mrs. Lewes, Mrs. Siddons, Madame Sand, Rosa Bonheur, Aspasia, Miss Cushman, Madame de Stael, Miss Bronte, Dora d'Istria, Miss Thompson, the nun Roswitha, Fernan Caballero, and all the rest. The list of feminine composers is a brief one, and most of its members are now living.

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But women have only lately realized the depth and strength of the science of music, and what long years of severe mental discipline and scientific training are necessary in order to master the art of composition. This is not much to the dishonor of their courage and patience, indeed, for a comparatively small number of musical students among the other sex in America are willing to devote themselves to such self sacrificing study.

The writer commended musical composition to women as a rich and comparatively uncultivated field wherein talent, not sex, commands the highest price.

One of the finest recommendations of music to our sex, as an art worthy of universal cultivation, is that it not only penetrates to the mind of the hearer, but to the heart also, thus widening and enlivening the faculties, and rendering them better prepared, by

sympathy, to receive humane and elevated impressions. For what is all culture, even the highest, save a means to an end? And what is that end, if not the vivifying and humanizing of the heart, even more than the purifying and strengthening of the intellect? Music possesses a lofty ethical significance; the very heart of humanity beats in its rhythm; the heart speaks to heart far more completely and efficaciously than brain to brain. Music, too, bases itself on the social sentiment of mankind; it is the annihilator of egotism, the most complete expositor of the life of mankind in unison, the art whose high mission it is to express the noblest, warmest, most generous of human feelings, religion, love and patriotism; the art of order, unity, harmony; the art that is destined to become, in the far-distant, slowly-advancing era of general civilization, equality and brotherhood, the universal language of humanity.

NOTE. The above paper is printed in full in pamphlet form. Limited space prevents more copious extracts.-PUB. COM.

SOME DEFECTS IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

BY GEORGIANNE E. WATSON.

THE education of women is a question which has attracted increasing attention for the past fifty years. Within a few years it has received a new impulse from the establishment of colleges for women, and the opening to them of colleges and universities originally established only for men. This modern interest in the subject began in the movement which resulted in establishing what may be termed the academic or seminary system of education for women. This system remains in general, the one for those who receive the grade of education popularly the highest,-and it is the defects of this system which I propose to consider. These defects may be classed as those of method, of curriculum, and of conditions; though nor originating in the same source, they are closely connected, reciprocal in their action, and co-operate to produce the same general result.

The defect of method consists in making the memory the almost exclusive agent in the process of education, involving negatively the absence of investigation and criticism, and the neglect to impart principles as well as facts. This method originated in the simple extension of the method of the Dame Schools of an earlier generation to a more extended list of studies. So long as women were taught only a little reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and history, the memory was the sole agent of the mind. When to the former the natural sciences and modern languages were added, they were taught in the same way, because the system was mostly in the hands of women who knew of no other method.

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The original defects in the curriculum of academic study were due to the popular notion, advanced by Locke, I think, to the dignity of a psychologic principle, that though women were capable of education, their intellectual constitution was so essentially different from that of men that a special course of study must be provided for them. Their reasoning powers were assumed to be deficient, so much so, that it was not thought worth while to introduce them to mathematical and philosophical studies. The aim was to make them well-informed and refined; this it was proposed to effect by the culture of the memory and the imagination. If any view more radical was held, it was held by so small a minority that they had no perceptible influence. The

general view still finds at least one distinguished advocate in Mr. Ruskin, who thinks that a woman needs to know "language or science only so far as may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his best friends,"

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The introduction of mathematical and philosophical studies represents a very distinct stage in the growth of the academic system. This step was due to the idea of their value as disciplinary studies. It was perceived that women, if they did not reason quite so well as men, possessed, at least, an elementary reason, and that consequently, mathematics, mental philosophy, logic and Butler's Analogy, might develop the power to a not undesirable degree. The study of mathematics resulted in the somewhat startling discovery that girls had quite as much taste for them as boys, and that in powers of acquisition, and in the solution of the problems of the class-room, could become their successful competitors. This briefly represents the formation, and the character of the academic course of study at present.

To exhibit the defective method of this system, it will be useful to show the details of its working in a subject to which it has been most thoroughly and, in a sense, successfully applied, and where the results of the method can consequently be most None of the academic studies will better answer our purpose in this

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readily seen. respect than history. The student of history was thoroughly drilled in an epitome of the history of each of the nations or periods which her time allowed, or the ambition of her teacher could suggest; that of the student's native country being placed first on the list. convert the pupil for the time being into a combined epitome and chronological table, and exhibit her at a public examination as a prodigy of industry on her own part, and a prodigy of skill on the part of her teachers, was the acme of success. Such a pupil was a shining example of what could be done by a girl if she were only educated. The pupil prodigy when she was finished," however, forgot her chronology, and her genealogical tables of emperors and kings as fast as she could, and not knowing that there was anything else in history except battles and sieges, of the causes of which she knew nothing, the life of the past was a sealed book to her, and her men tal condition answered to Prof. Seeley's definition of "uncivilized."* After leaving school it might happen, that if her training had been thoroughly priggish, she read Rollins' Ancient History as a duty which an educated woman owed to herself, but it was without pleasure or profit, and might morally be classed with the duties imposed on themselves by religious ascetics. Her historical education had left her ignorant of the nature of institutions, of their effect upon the people, of the struggles which have been made for truth, liberty and freedom of thought. * * * Ignorant of the truths of history, her feelings are easily interested and her imagination dazzled by the sentimental school of history and historic fiction. Gaining her knowledge of feudalism from the pages of Scott, unaware that the feudal system involved many of of the most cruel wrongs of slavery,-ignorant that the salt-tax deprived thousands of peasants of salt for their food, though the salt product of France would suffice for the supply of a large part of Europe; her sympathy in the French Revolution is on the side of the noblesse. Women are sometimes severely censured for such historical misjudgments, which ought justly be charged to their wrong education. * * A method which thus fails to address the imagination or the reason, will naturally bring the study so treated into neglect, which is increased by the perception that the study is barren of results,—a true utility being the only basis for securely maintaining a study in favor. Historic study is at present at a discount in our academic schools;

Roman Imperialism and Other Essays, p. 253.

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