gs than the
rougher masculine nature; that her instincts are purer, more poetic,
more refined; that her moral nature has a certain bloom upon it which
contact with the world has brushed off from ours; that while we coarser
creatures are driven to reason out our spiritual conclusions, she
arrives at them by an intuitive process reserved for the angelic nature
and her own.

And on the whole man accepts the claim. He is bribed perhaps into
allowing it by his own desire to have something at home better and purer
than himself. It is a startling thing perhaps to say, but in ninety-nine
homes out of a hundred real humility of heart is to be found in the
husband, not in the wife. The husband has very little belief in his own
religion, in his unworldliness and spirituality; but he has an immense
belief in the spirituality and the devotion of the being who fronts him
over the breakfast-table. He does not profess to understand the
character of her piety, her lore of sermons, the severity with which she
visits the household after family prayers, or the extreme interest with
which she peruses the geographical chapters of the Book of Joshua. But
his incapacity to understand it is mixed with a certain awe. He never
ventures to disturb, by "shadowed hint" of his own thoughts about the
matter, the "simple views" of his spouse. He adroitly diverts the
conversation of his dinner-table when it drifts near to the fatal
pigeons of Colenso.

Sometimes he bends to a little gentle deceit, and wins a smile of
approval by turning up at an early Litany, or by bringing home the
newest photograph of a colonial metropolitan. In one way or another he
practically acknowledges, like King Cnut, that there is a bound to his
empire. Over bonnet bills and butchers' bills he may exercise a certain
nominal control. It is possible that years of struggle might enable him
to alter by half an inch the length of his wife's skirt, if fashion had
not shortened it in the interval. But over the whole domain of moral and
religious thought and action he is absolutely powerless. Woman meets
him, if he attempts any interference, as Christian martyrs have always
met their persecutors, with outstretched neck and on her knees. She
prays for his return to better thoughts, and the whole household knows
she is praying for him. She listens to all his remonstrances, professes
obedience on every point but the one he wants, and keeps her finger all
the time on the particular page