intellect, of much importance, when you trust
the entire formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a
person whom you let your servants treat with less respect than they do
your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child were a less charge than
jams and groceries), and whom you yourself think you confer an honor
upon by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the evening?

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. There is
one more help which we cannot do without--one which, alone, has
sometimes done more than all other influences besides,--the help of
wild and fair nature. Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc:--

"The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present
standard; was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic
standard; and only not good for our age, because for us it would be
unattainable. . . .

"Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages
of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a
boundless forest; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, that
the parish priest (_cure_) was obliged to read mass there once a year,
in order to keep them in any decent bounds. . . .

"But the forest of Domremy--those were the glories of the land; for in
them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into
tragic strength. Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,'--'like Moorish
temples of the Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in
Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that
pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each
its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these
abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region;
yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity
over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness." [5]

Now you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods eighteen miles deep
to the centre; but you can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your
children yet, if you wish to keep them. But _do_ you wish it? Suppose
you had each, at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for
your children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give them
room to run,--no more--and that you could not change your abode; but
that, if you choose, you could double your income, or quadruple it, by
digging a coal-shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the
flower-be