And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upwards, O our tyrants,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath.’”
The ears of my reader would not endure to hear what I could tell, what my eyes have seen, of outraged innocence, of horrors and miseries endured among the children of the poor. I am not unmindful of the benevolent enterprise there is in our country, the orphanages, schools and homes springing up everywhere. God be thanked for these! but they do not yet meet the evil; and we must remember that stone walls do not shut out crime, nor regulations confer blessing; these institutions themselves fail in their purpose unless the compassionate motive which originated them be sustained in a constant and abundant flow. The histories of many charities in foreign countries and at home prove that institutions devised by loving hearts for protection and blessing, have become, for lack of the constancy of the internal impulse, neither more nor less than “habitations of cruelty.” What I here complain of is the thriftless waste of good feelings, of emotion,—emotion which on the one hand is ill trained, and consequently takes a false or unreal direction, and on the other is wearing itself out, unclaimed. Tears shed over sentimental works of fiction or some imaginative woe might well be bestowed on the realities around us. Surely there is room enough among them for the promptings of a mighty compassion! Surely there is cause enough here for tears! “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
And there is other work on every side waiting to be done by women,—the work of healers, preachers, physicians, artists, organizers of labour, captains of industry, &c., while on the other hand women are waiting to be prepared for service, and ready to bridge over, as they alone can, many a gulf between class and class which now presents a grave obstacle to social and political progress.
The second kind of advocacy of the rights of women, of which I spoke, may be said to be simply a reaction against the first. It is chiefly held by a few women of superior intellect who feel keenly the disadvantages of their class, their feebleness, through want of education, against public opinion, which is taken advantage of by base people, their inability, through want of representation, to defend their weaker members, and the dwarfing of the faculties of the ablest and best among them. These women have associated little with men, or at best, know very little of their inner life, and do not therefore see as clearly as they see their own loss, the equal loss that it is to men, and the injury it involves to their characters, to live dissociated from women: they therefore look forth from their isolation with something of an excusable envy on the freer and happier lot, which includes, they believe, a greater power to do good, and imagine that the only hope for themselves is to push into the ranks of men, to demand the same education, the same opportunities, in order that they may compete with them on their own ground. They have lost the conception of the noblest development possible for both men and women; for assuredly that which men, for the most part, aim at, is not the noblest, and yet that is what such women appear to wish to imitate; they have lost sight of the truth, too, that men and women were made equal indeed, but not alike, and were meant to supplement one another, and that in so doing,—each supplying force which the other lacks,—they are attracted with a far greater amount of impulse to a common centre. When St. Chrysostom preached in Constantinople, that “men ought to be pure, and women courageous,” he was treated as a dangerous innovator, a perverter of the facts of nature, a changer of customs. I hope that many such innovators will arise, who will shew forth in practice the possibility of the attainment of a common standard of excellence for man and woman, not by usurpation on either hand, nor by servile imitation, but by the action of each upon each, by mutual teaching and help. The above misconception, like many other errors, results from men and women living so dissociated as they do in our country; hence comes also all that reserve, and incapacity for understanding each other which has existed between the sexes for so many generations, those false notions about women which are entertained in society, and great injury to the work, and happiness, and dignity of man and woman alike: for it may be truly said that many of the most serious evils in England are but the bitter and various fruit of the sacreligious disjoining of that which God had joined together, the disunion of men and women, theoretically and practically, in all the graver work of life.
The following account of the School of Art, in Newman Street, London, is interesting, as affording some illustration of this subject. Mrs. Heatherley writes, “This School was begun on the separate principle, about twenty-three years ago, by Mr. James Mathews Leigh. I first knew the place in 1848, when I studied as an amateur. Mr. Leigh, whilst agreeing to the idea of mixed classes as a theory, always declared that the men’s conduct and conversation would render it impossible for any lady to come amongst them, and they were certainly very rough in manner when, after Mr. Leigh’s death, we took the school. We were warned that we should be ruined by introducing the mixed system. Very soon both parties found the convenience of studying in the Gallery every day, instead of having to take their places on alternate days. Finding it succeed, at the end of 1861 we admitted ladies to the evening school: there are about two hundred students in the course of the year. Great individual freedom is allowed, and a most friendly feeling exists amongst the students. Every one who knew the place before the admission of women agrees that there has been great improvement; quite another tone prevails. We have never had to dismiss anyone for conduct that was disapproved. From here went the first ladies to the Royal Academy, one of whom, a girl of about twenty-one, gained the gold medal, last December, for the best historical picture. As a general rule, where there are equal facilities, the women are the most successful. The Academy ceased to admit them when their numbers reached about twelve, and now takes them in only when the time of studentship of others expires. They made this change at the end of two years, without giving any notice here or at any other school, to the great disappointment of a number of girls. This I think is an act of hardship, as there has been shown positively that no incompetence exists. Unless there be chances offered to women of being able to follow a profession, parents will invest in consols, as a general rule, rather than in a superior education. The mention of our school may be useful, because there are doubts in many minds as to the expediency of free intercourse between young people, and facts are better than theories. The more that is done to bring young men and women together in a rational manner, the sooner we may hope to arrive at a social state less immoral than the present.”
I am persuaded that anyone who will candidly and carefully consider the histories of separate communities of men or women, for educational or other purposes, must see that the evils attendant on such a system as they represent outweigh its conveniences. The arrangement is for a given period, but not so the evils which accompany it, for they,—and of this men are not ignorant,—too often leave their effects, I may say their curse, throughout life. The objection rises at once of the difficulty of adopting any other arrangement than the present, which may be called an unnatural one. This objection will be more effectually met by facts than by reasoning, and in time facts will speak for themselves, while up to the present they attest that whenever the experiment of a different system has been tried, the difficulties have been found to be very much less than it was believed they would be, before the trial was made.