was eminently to be desired.
But what she definitely advocated was, first, free education for the
poor, and secondly, some fairer adjustment of the relations to each
other of capital and labor. As to the first, authority has already
sanctioned her opinion; the second question, if unsettled, has become a
first preoccupation with statesmen and philosophers of all denominations
in the present day.

With regard to the complete solution of the problem, she leaves her
socialist heroes, as she herself felt, in doubt and perplexity. There
was something in the schemes and doctrines she conscientiously approved,
irreconcilable with her artist-nature--a materialistic tendency which
clashed with her poetical instincts. When the stern demagogue Michel
denounced the whole tribe of artists as a corrupting influence,
enervating to the courage and will of a nation, she rose up
energetically in defense of the confraternity to which she was born:--

Will you tell me, pray, what you mean, with your declamations
against artists? Cry out against them as much as you please, but
respect art. Oh, you Vandal! I like that stern sectarian who wants
to dress Taglioni in a stuff-gown and _sabots_, and set Liszt's
hands to turn the machinery of a wine-press, and who yet, as he
lies on the grass, finds the tears come into his eyes at the least
linnet's song, and who makes a disturbance in the theatre to stop
Othello from murdering Malibran! The austere citizen would suppress
artists as social excrescences that absorb too much of the sap; but
this gentleman is fond of vocal music, and so will spare the
singers. Let us hope that painters will find one among your strong
heads who appreciates painting, and won't wall up all studio
windows. And as for the poets, they are your cousins; and you don't
despise their forms of language and their rhythmical mechanism when
you want to make an impression on the idle crowd. You will go to
them to take lessons in metaphor, and how to make use of it.

Unfortunately for the cause of the superiority of antiquity,
whenever you go to hear Berlioz's _Funeral March_, the least that
can happen to you will be to confess that this music is rather
better than what they used to give us in Sparta, when we served
under Lycurgus; you will think that Apollo, displeased to see us
sacrificing to Pallas exclusively, has playe