these that the candidate for
womanhood of whom I have spoken was thinking. It is fit that we skim the
surface before we dive into the deeps--especially so attractive a surface
as woman's. He was, doubtless, thinking less of woman as a home comfort or
a beauty, and much more of her as she once used to be among our far-off
sires, Sibyl and Priestess. Is it but an insular fancy to suppose that
Englishmen, beyond any other race, still retain the most living faith in
the sanctity of womanhood? and, if so, can it be doubted that it is an
inheritance from those wild child-hearted Vikings, who were first among
the peoples of Europe to conceive woman as the chosen vessel of the
divine? And how wittily true, by the way, how slily significant, was both
the Norse and the Greek conception of the ruling destinies of man, the
Norns and the Fates, as women!

To speak with authority, one should, doubtless, first sprout petticoats;
and, meanwhile, one must rest content with asking the intelligent women of
our acquaintance--whether man inspires them with anything like the
feelings of reverential adoration, the sense of a being holy and supernal,
with which woman undoubtedly inspires man. He is, of course, their god,
but a god of the Greek pattern, with no little of the familiarising alloy
of earth in his composition. He is strong, and swift, and splendid--but
seems he holy? Is he angel as well as god? Does the dream of him rise
silvery in the imagination of woman? Is he a star to lift her up to heaven
with pure importunate beam? I seem to hear the nightingale-laughter of
women for answer. Man neither is, nor would they have him, any of these
things.

But though some men, by a fortunate admixture of woman silver in their
masculine clay, may be even these, there is one sacred thing no man can
ever be, a privilege by which nature would seem to have put beyond doubt
the divinity of woman: a mother. It is true that it is within his reach
to be a father; but what is 'paternity' compared with motherhood? The very
word wears a droll face, as though accustomed to banter. Let us venture on
the bull: that, though it be possible for most men to be fathers, no man
can ever be a mother. Maybe a recondite intention of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception was the accentuation of the fact that man's share in
the sacred mystery of birth is so small and woman's so great, that the
birth of a child is truly a mysterious traffic between divine powers of
na