FOOTNOTES:
[27] It will be seen that I differ toto caelo on this point from Mr. Mahaffy in his interesting recent essay on the Decay of Preaching. He seems to me only to recognize the moral and intellectual forces which move men, and these compared with the spiritual are only what mechanical ones are to the electric.
[28] Ingoldsby’s rendering of this world-famous story, the favorite theme of so many eminent painters, is probably no very exaggerated reading of the general impression of the monastic mind respecting the fair sex:—
“There are many devils which walk this world,
Devils great and devils small,
Devils short and devils tall;
Bold devils which go with their tails unfurled,
Sly devils which carry them quite upcurled;
But a laughing woman with two bright eyes
Is the worsest devil of all!”
[29] I know not on what authority the familiar jovial couplet has been attributed to the great Reformer:—
“Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, und Gesang
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.”
The ascetic spirit had very far departed, at all events, from the author who composed it.
[30] I. Cor. xiv., 26. If this graphic description had applied to a female assembly, should we have ever been allowed to forget the circumstance?
[31] “The Hebrew Woman,” by Constance de Rothschild (Mrs. Cyril Flower).
[32] A sermon by this lady on “The Sacrament of Life,” preached and printed at Melbourne, would amply justify, I think, to every reader the above remark.
[33] In the case of the M.P., this would need to be a majority of men, seeing that the whole female contingent of qualified voters will only (if admitted) add about a fifth or sixth to the register.
[34] This at least is the impression left on me by the female speakers (some twenty perhaps) whom I have chanced to hear. I never knew one of them “hum” or “haw,” or stammer, or break down, even when (as in one very remarkable case) the gentle and learned speaker had never addressed an audience till the occasion, when she had already passed middle life. Among the most remarkable phenomena of the present day, I reckon the preaching of Mrs. Booth, the wife of the General of the Salvation Army. The combination of fervent zeal with practical good sense in her extempore discourses must be admired even by those who differ most widely from her views.
[35] A curious illustration of this is to be found in a passage in the first series of Mrs. Kemble’s charming autobiography published three years ago. She describes the late Lady Byron as often expressing envy of her (Mrs. Kemble’s) public readings, and her longing to have similar crowds in sympathy with her own impressions. “I made her laugh,” says Mrs. Kemble, “by telling her that more than once, when looking from my reading-desk over the sea of faces uplifted toward me, a sudden feeling had seized me that I must say something from myself to all those human beings whose attention I felt at that moment entirely at my command, and between whom and myself a sense of sympathy thrilled powerfully and strangely through my heart as I looked steadfastly at them before opening my lips; but that on wondering afterwards what I might, could, would, or should have said to them from myself, I never could think of anything but two words—‘Be good!’” (Page 317.)