[SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS.]
PART V.
Since beginning this series of articles it has occurred to us that it may be well to prevent a possible misconception of the scope of the title. “Self-culture” is a very large subject, and includes a great deal more than the culture of the mind. For instance, there is moral self-culture—physical self-culture—æsthetic self-culture—which, with other kinds of self-culture, should be zealously sought. But these subjects are exhaustively dealt with from time to time by writers in The Girl’s Own Paper, so that our special work lies in the treatment of “culture” in its more usual acceptation—the cultivation of the intellect. And if our title seems rather like a vast floating garment, too voluminous for the slight form it enfolds, it must be remembered that culture is generally understood in the sense we have indicated.
Indeed one can hardly separate the different parts of self-culture after all. It is by reading the best books that the moral nature is strengthened and cultivated, and that the æsthetic sense is cultivated also. The eye is opened to perceive the beauty of life and of art, for example, by such a writer as Ruskin. Then pictures cannot be properly comprehended by one who never reads. Take, as an illustration of this, a few of the pictures which have been from year to year, since 1890, lent to that splendid Guildhall exhibition, where, absolutely without payment, one can go to delight in modern and ancient art.
Here is “A Martyr in the reign of Diocletian,” by Paul Delaroche. This is the picture of world-wide fame, known probably to our readers by photographs if they have not seen the original. A young Roman girl, who has refused to sacrifice to the false gods, has been thrown into the Tiber. Two Christians, on the further bank, look with mingled feelings on the young martyr as her body floats past. Your spectator, ignorant of history, would wonder who was Diocletian, and what it was all about. Soon afterwards we come to “Ophelia,” by G. F. Watts, R.A., and if you have not read Hamlet, you cannot appreciate the beauty of this; nor, if you know nothing of Dante, can you understand “Paolo and Francesca da Rimini,” by the same artist, where the hero and heroine of the immortal story are sweeping through the mist of the Inferno. In another year’s exhibition we have “The City of Dis,” by Albert Goodwin, also requiring a knowledge of Dante; “Orpheus and Eurydice,” by T. Graham, which could not appeal to anyone ignorant of Greek mythology; “Antigone,” by Lord Leighton, fully appreciated only by those to whom Antigone is more than a name.
Consider even the two frontispieces to The Girl’s Own Paper for February and March last. The first, “An Antique Fête,” takes for granted some knowledge of ancient history. The reproduction of Miss Margaret Dicksee’s charming picture “A Sacrifice of Vanities,” will be fully understood only by those who have enjoyed The Vicar of Wakefield. It is unnecessary to go further, and if any reader, on her next visit to a picture exhibition, will note the remarks heard around her, she will have a practical commentary on the truth that Art cannot be fully comprehended and appreciated without some literary education. While standing, for instance, before such a picture as “Pandora” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one may overhear remarks like the following—
“Pandora? Who’s she?”
“What’s she got in her hand?”
“Nescitur ignescitur is written on it! What’s the meaning of that? Why couldn’t he put plain English?”