senses, and to If the future

the present day, to bring you to your remind you of what you ought to be. that is within you were revealed in its full light, who would turn his eyes towards the departing shadows of darkness and night? It is for you to find, and for you to make, the future. This is not a thing that you must expect to find ready made. If the future is already in you as a bud, transmitted from the most distant ages, let it grow there as the desire for progress and amelioration, a paternal wish for the happiness of those who are to follow you. Love in anticipation your unknown son, for he will be born. Men call him "the time to come," and they work for him.

The day when fellow-mortals will perceive in you the man of the future and a magnanimous mind, families will be rallied. Woman will follow you every where, if she can say to herself, "I am the wife of a strong man.

Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit from the dead letter.* why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of

But

your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and pros

* Whether it be in the highest sciences, or in minor details of business.

perous in action and in science, she would not remain chained down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity.

I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface.* I shall only add one word, which, at once, expresses and completes my thought.

Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her milk, and her very life.

* How many things which crowded upon my mind, whilst writing this volume, have I been obliged to omit! I will mention the intimate connection of the three questions, education, direction, and penitentiary reform; which are three branches of the same science. Every study upon direction, casts a light upon education: experiments in this are, perhaps, more instructive than those made upon children, being made upon a person no longer in a dreamy state (as children are), but awake, in a lucid state, and with the full developement of the intelligence, and who, moreover, wishes seriously to obey. In spite of the clouds of mysticism, which diminish its brilliancy, the science of education will derive a great advantage from the experiments of direction, written with so much care by luminous minds, who could both see and analyse.

Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all.

To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.

And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food.

These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast (either in soul or in body), and we are punished especially by the generation that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them the staff of life.

I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting - only time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and neglect what is important.

You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her ennui, idle conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action, influence, or maternal authority, over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to

do all over again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be, strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with your life.

If I look beyond the family and domestic affections, I find our negligence towards women resembles hardheartedness; the cruel effects which result from it recoil upon ourselves.

You think yourself good and kind-hearted; you are not insensible to the fate of poor women; an old one reminds you of your mother, a young one of your daughter. But you have not the time either to see or know, that the old one and the young one are both literally dying with hunger.

Two machines are constantly working to exterminate them: the convent, that immense workshop, that works for little or nothing, not relying on its labour for subsistence. Then the large shop, with sleeping partners, that buys of the convent*, and destroys by degrees the smaller shops which employed the workwomen. The latter has but

* This is the fatal progress of things. We can accuse no one; but from the evil itself, we hope, will come the remedy.

two chances left the Seine, or to find at night some heartless wretch who takes advantage of her hunger.

Men receive about as much as women from public charity this is unjust. They have infinitely more resources. They are stronger, have a greater variety of work, more initiative, a more active impulse, more locomotion, if I may so express myself, to go and hunt out work. They travel, emigrate, and find engagements. Not to mention countries where manual labour is very dear, I know of provinces in France, where it is very difficult to find either journeymen or man-servants. Man can wander to and fro. Woman remains at home and dies.

Let this work woman, whom the opposition of the convent has crushed, crawl to the gate of the convent -can she find an asylum there? She would want, in default of dowry, the active protection of an influential priest, a protection reserved for devout persons, such as have had the time to follow the "Mois de Marie, the Catechisms of perseverance, &c. &c., and who have been, for a long time past, under ecclesiastical authority. This protection is often very dearly purchased; and for what? to get permission to pass one's life shut up within walls, to be obliged to counterfeit a devotion one has not! Death cannot be

worse.

They die then, quietly, decently, and alone. They * Prayers to the Virgin in the month of May.Transl.