Bartlett Burleigh James

“ The soil of both Ireland and Scotland was bedewed for centuries with the tears of affliction and of persecution; the blood of martyrs who cheerfully laid down their lives at the dictates of religion and that highest social expression of the religious instinct, the noblest piety of the human race—patriotism. Out of all the oppression, rapacity, confiscation, which the two peoples experienced in different forms and different degrees, arose an unworldly ideal, a sense of the invisible realm. ”

“ One of the most curious facts of the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the evolution of the "new woman." Women, representing all manner of social pleas, running the gamut of the extremes, sought a hearing upon the platform, in the pulpit, through the press, and in literature. It looked as if the Anglo-Saxon race were on the verge of a great revolution in which the men would, either passively or in strenuous opposition, be ignominiously relegated to the rear in the lines of new progress. ”

“ This custom so long established and industriously upheld makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses as if it was a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render them the most useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is hardly a creature in the world more despicable or more liable to universal ridicule than a learned woman! ”

“ A beautiful woman—a woman whose beauty is not alone flawless in feature and full of the instinctive intellectuality of a soul mirrored in a countenance, but also typical of the expression of racial characteristics, is as much a product of ages, as much a climax of evolution at the point of perfection, as the saint, the artist, the dramatist who marks a period and exalts a people. To pass down in history as an exceptional beauty is to inspire art ideals and to furnish a theme for the lyricist. Frailty is often found united with such exceptional beauty, so is it with exceptional genius ”

“ Many fantastic changes had taken place in women's attire during the reign of Charles. During the Commonwealth, Puritan sentiment, and proscription as well, had reduced the dress of all classes to a remarkable uniformity. The costume most common to women consisted of a gown with a lace stomacher and starched kerchief, a sad-colored cloak with a French hood, and a high-crowned hat. The Geneva cloak was no fit covering for the courtesan, and was instantly thrown aside that the butterfly which had hidden in this demure chrysalis might emerge fluttering in all its gay and brilliant colors. ”

“ To attempt a portrayal of the miseries entailed upon the women of the Britons by the forays of the barbarians, which followed the withdrawal of the Romans from the country, would be to rehearse the distresses which were but usual to warfare at that period of the world's history. We can pass over the savagery of human passions, inflamed by the heat of strife, and come to the more congenial and, indeed, the only important task of considering the life of woman, not under the exceptional conditions of war, but in the normal state of existence. ”

“ The sturdy Calvinist matron of the Scottish Highlands is no more religious, no more the product of the travails of her country, no more under the inspiration and exaltation of high principle, than her less fortunately placed sister of the Green Isle, whose religion is at the opposite extreme of the forms of Christian faith. The women of both peoples can point with tearful joy to the history of their sex as a scroll of fame and a record of noble achievement. ”

“ And yet, with it all, the young women found leisure to tarry at the spring for the exchange of laughing remarks, as they dropped something into its clear depth—as an offering to the divinity who they fully believed resided therein and who held in keeping their future and their fortunes—before they drew from it the water for the bleaching of the linen that they had already spread out in the sun. ”

“ Even in the middle of the fourteenth century, the celebrated poem of Piers Plowman took up such discussions, and one of the tenets of the Lollards was the natural equality of man. In England, conditions were ripe for the advent of a new era, and in the fulness of time there came forth the spirit of new learning, of new industry, of exploration, of investigation, and of religious freedom, to lead the English people into the inheritance for which they had been prepared by those centuries over a part of which hung such a pall as to secure for them the title of the Dark Ages. ”

“ Lofty as are the summits of human ambition, she has climbed up to the very highest peaks and written her name in letters of immortality on the scroll of the great ones of the earth, in the arts, in literature, in philanthropy. Does she ever pause to take a backward look over the steps by which she has come to her present eminence? ”

“ By reason of environment, wifely equality with her husband was not a matter of theoretical but simply of practical settlement. It was needful that the wife should be a woman of courage and of resources. But while the matter of sex did not constitute a badge of inferiority in the home relations, the peculiar perils to which the women were exposed constituted an appeal to manhood that evoked a chivalrous response; and when life became less hard and there was better opportunity for the expression of the tenderer sentiments, this especial regard for woman rose to the height of an exalted devotion. ”

“ The national struggles of Scotland are as replete with examples of illustrious women as those of Ireland; the tragedy of the lives of some of Scotia's daughters not only serves to mark the brutal spirit of times which, with all their superficial glorifying of the sex, yet could with good conscience make war upon women, but also serves to illustrate the height of feminine devotion when called forth by some great occasion with its demand for self-abnegation. ”

“ Just as truly can we arrive at the characteristics of a race or a period by seeing the people at their play. If we find them given to gladiatorial exhibitions, we shall not err in concluding that they were a vigorous and war-like people; if they are found at the bull fight, we may safely adjudge them to be a brutalized and enervated race. The Anglo-Saxon can safely be brought to this test. If the dress of the women is a criterion of morals, then were these people of early England exemplary; if the games in vogue denote the race characteristics, then were they rude, but wholesome. ”

“ The beautiful devotion of her long and honorable life to the cause of teaching, and the widespread interest which, by her writings, she attracted to the subject both in Europe and America, place her at the source of one of the mighty streams of pervasive influence that have ever permeated human society. So great was her appreciation of the character and the position of woman, that she was able to forecast well-nigh everything that has been enunciated in modern times with regard to the place of the sex in education and in society. ”

“ Had her life been as circumscribed as that of the women of a cultured people, English civilization would not owe to woman the recognition which is her due as a creative force in the arts, in science, in literature, in religion, and in all the ever-widening circle of human interests. ”

“ The woman of the cave-dwellers was a sturdy specimen of her sex, and the long and arduous migrations in which the burden of the work fell upon her shoulders were probably borne with little sense of hardship. We can imagine a tribe, travelling afoot, for as yet neither the horse nor any other animal had been domesticated: the men with their long fish spears across their backs, their stone arrows hanging at their sides, and their bows in hand, always alert for the wild beasts with which they waged a relentless warfare ”

“ It will not do to judge too harshly the character of one whose whole conduct showed how essentially guileless and gentle, as well as generous, were her instincts by the rigorous standards which, however severe, are none too exacting to be held up for women as representing the only possible assurance of security for the status which they have attained; but it is in no spirit of apology for her wrong courses that all who undertake to discuss the life of Nell Gwynn are irresistibly drawn to a recital of her virtues rather than to a reprobation of her faults. ”

“ The contributions to her existence were indeed elements of civilization, and formed the basis for all that the life of the sex has come to be. In the realm of institutions, the home was beginning to have a place and a meaning in the life of the people. Religion, also, had come to widen the horizon of life. Very crude, but real, elements of social progress were all these.
The succeeding age—the Bronze—has been credited with working as great a revolution in life and giving it as great an impetus as did the invention of gunpowder in the Middle Ages. ”

“ The Britons were noted for the warmth of their family affection. The mother was sure of the dutiful regard of her children and did not lack affectionate consideration from her husband. The aged were treated with a reverence in striking contrast to the heartlessness with which in earlier times the old were deserted to die or were put to death—a custom not unusual among primitive peoples. It is pleasant to think of the British matron inculcating into the minds of her children respect for age and the claims of relationship.
The law of hospitality was sacred to the ancient Briton. ”

“ To name the various kinds of business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner, to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. ”

“ Here is a profession, truly a profession, equal to the highest in dignity, open to woman in which she does not compete with man."
Nursing no longer has to be defended as a suitable occupation for the sex, for in its ranks can be found women of all grades of society; it is one of the levelling influences of modern times, as well as one of the most elevating of callings. No other sphere of public activity has opened up to woman in which she has not met the opposition of men. Nursing is a striking instance of the modern trend toward specialization, which is but another term for professionalism. ”

“ The social hypocrisy of the eighteenth century, as it relates to woman, was due to the failure as yet to place the sex in correct adjustment with the times. Instead of considering her as having serious qualities and value other than the realization of matrimony, everything that entered into woman's life pointed in that one direction. The art of pleasing was not cultivated as an opportunity of the sex due to their special graces of spirit and of person, which might legitimately be employed for their own sake to make the world happier and brighter. ”

“ Life cannot long subsist on the [pg 108] perfervid products of a social imagination. As a revulsion of noble minds from coarseness and as a protest against tyranny and vice, chivalry fulfilled a high mission; but, unfortunately, its exalted admiration of woman fell to a physical appreciation of its subject. Not her womanhood, but her graces of person came to evoke the passionate devotion of the knight. An admiration fantastic and romantic, expressing itself in all sorts of extravagance, a worship of mere physical beauty—such was the nature of chivalry in its later expression. ”

“ It always makes me smile when I hear the mother of fine daughters say: 'I always keep my girls at their needle;' one, perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third engaged to make a whole dozen shirts for her father. And then, when she had carried you into the nursery and shown you them all, add: 'It is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not,'" With such a narrow circle of interest, it was not strange that women who had leisure should have wasted it in frivolity. ”

“ It is little wonder that Charles was so affected by the great demonstration in his honor that he marvelled that he should have remained away from the country so long when the people were languishing for his return. The manner with which London threw off its garb of Puritanical gray and manners grave, and donned bright attire and assumed the airs of gayety and frivolity, showed how insincere and superficial was the religious seriousness which had been worn as suited to the temper and times of the austere Protector. ”