“Oh, well, I don’t think she’s an English person. She doesn’t look English, anyhow.”
“Oh, a heathen goddess, I suppose, carrying fire about like that! A goddess with red hair in a red dress? Anyhow, I don’t think much of her. Come along!”
The literary preparation for the enjoyment of Art is, of course, different from the technical preparation for it; but, for preparation of either kind, reading is necessary.
The kind of self-culture which at first sight seems furthest apart from the culture of which we write, is the physical kind. Sometimes, indeed, mental and physical self-culture may appear incompatible, especially when time is limited.
“Don’t sit poring over that book; come out into the fresh air!” is a familiar type of address.
In the newly-published Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, we read that the doctor of the poetess carried away her inkstand one day as a remedial measure!
Discretion is needed, and the preservation of health is a duty that comes to the front. Exercise and other essentials to health must not be neglected; and if health fails, the power of mental self-culture will probably fail too. But it is increasingly recognised that cultivation of the brain in reason is excellent for physical health, and that the woman with the best chance of enjoying life is the woman whose mental education has gone side by side with physical culture.
So we come back to the point from which we started, and observe that the different provinces of self-culture are in reality closely connected and interdependent, though we deal in these articles with one province only.
In our last paper we touched on some books that are almost, if not quite, indispensable to any scheme of culture: books of the olden world, that treat with the dawn of history as we know it, and go on to the period of the most brilliant of civilisations—that of Athens. No attempt was made to give an exhaustive list of the books dealing with the period before the Christian era that should be read; it would be impossible. But a few read and enjoyed will point the way to others. These papers do not constitute a full map of the country to be explored; they simply act as a sign-post, and readers must follow on to explore for themselves.
The “guide-post” method is the only way to advise readers, for much will always depend on individual taste and inclination, and to read without pleasure is a hopeless task. Dr. Johnson said very wisely that, for general improvement, a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompted him to. He continued—