representation ad nauseam of unedifying situations. The spectacle of the passion of love in inevitable antagonism to the claims of duty, to the emotions that consecrate the home and safeguard the highest interests of the generation that is to succeed the present,—such a spectacle, offered without reserve or qualification, does grievous harm to the nation that permits it. It may be a small matter that it should suffer thereby in its reputation with other nations, though such a gratuitous loss of sympathy should not be lightly borne, but it is a terrible pity that what the best people in France hold to be the chief shame of the country should be continually held up to its youth as the main source of emotional interest.

The picture, moreover, though exaggerated, is in the main not unfaithful to reality. It is impossible to know in how many French homes the children are brought up in an atmosphere where there is perfect constancy and confidence between the parents, and in how many cases irresponsible passion usurps the place of hallowed love, preventing or disturbing the family affections which are the foundation of all other virtues; but a judgment may be formed, with a sufficient degree of certainty, from the tone of public opinion in regard to all the social arrangements that affect the relations of the sexes. If the stage and the press are not wholly trustworthy as reflections of general feeling, at least we may rely on the evidence of such an institution as the accepted system of education. It is here that there is really to be traced the most baneful effects of the belief in the mariage de convenance, which casts a dark shadow backwards across all the years of youth. The evil of this particular effect is not generally recognised, but it forms the chief hindrance to any advance either in opinion or in practice. Children are brought up with a view to their being eventually married under a mercenary scheme of selection, and the character of such an upbringing inevitably tends to perpetuate the tendencies and traditions that make it so difficult to substitute a higher ideal. It is not easy to see what point of this vicious circle can be most fruitfully attacked. Probably the reform should begin at both ends, but it is always more profitable to bring influence to bear on the young than on the old. Unfortunately in this

case the children can be directly reached only through their parents. When the French people can be convinced how greatly the strength-perhaps even the safety of their national life depends on the well-being and stability of individual homes, how imperative it is that the coming generations should be nurtured in the fullest enjoyment of all the family affections, they will no doubt give some thought to remodeling their ideas of early education. On the other hand, if the traditions of this education can be attacked from outside, and a more reasonable practice imposed, which the parents can be persuaded or induced to accept, there is good hope that a generation would grow up whose natural instincts would rebel against the current materialistic view of marriage, and who would insist, for their children if not for themselves, on taking full account of the promptings of mutual inclination in forming the permanent ties of life.

The mischief is centered in the practice of sending children. away from home even in the earliest years. The upbringing of girls in convents had no doubt originally a quasi-religious motive, but it has been used for centuries simply as a convenient means of seclusion, by which the daughters of the household could be kept most securely from the chance of any connection that might interfere with the parents' plans for their future. In the case of boys the boarding-house system had a military rather than an ecclesiastical origin, but it matters little whether the discipline be that of a barracks or a monastery; the practical effect is to isolate brothers from their sisters, and from all other family influences, for the greater part of their youth. Though our own country has not kept wholly free from the same grave error, we are at least alive to the dangers it involves in the extreme form that it has taken in France. There is no need now to dwell at length on the results of an artificial separation of the sexes during the critical years of adolescence. If the desired ignorance, which is mistaken for innocence, can be preserved till the world must be entered, the youths and maidens, who have had no training in schooling their feelings and behavior under the stress of sexual attraction, are then in the worst possible position to face the difficulties that present themselves.

The revulsion of instincts that have been unduly repressed will drive them towards extravagances, and even if the choice of partners for life were left to themselves, there is but a small chance that the decision would be wisely considered. In such cases a selection by the parents may often be the less of two evils, but in any event there can be no good prospect of a stable union. The mischief has already been done, in the neglect of the priceless opportunities of accustoming girls and boys to grow up together, with mutual understanding and respect, in the natural environment of a family circle. Where, on the other hand, the monastic upbringing fails to secure the desired ignorance, as is generally the case, the evils that attend the removal of authority will only be intensified. Those who marry without due warrant in genuine attachment and in preparation, are supported by public opinion in taking their legal bonds lightly, and giving free rein to inclinations that they have never been taught to control.

It is customary to account for the comparatively low standard of sexual morality in France by referring to the insufficientlycontrolled sensibility of a Southern temperament. It is no doubt true that the warm blood of the Latin races has encouraged a tradition of greater license than could be claimed in excuse for the colder natures bred in Northern Europe, and while our judgment of French manners and sentiment in these matters must be uncompromising in relation to the ultimate ideal, it is only just to make full allowance for the stress of stronger temptations than we probably have to withstand. Let there be no question of our thanking God that in this respect we are not as our neighbors are across the channel. Every race must work out its own salvation, and if criticism is offered from outside, it should be based less on a comparison of one nation with another than on the possibilities of progress that are disclosed in the form of civilisation that is under review. France has no need to borrow ideals from other lands. In this as in other matters there are many within its borders who bear aloft the torch of a high morality, and who seek, with more ardor than any foreigner can pretend to feel, to lead their countrymen to what they believe to be a loftier plane of con

duct. It would savor of self-righteous impertinence to hold up an Anglo-Saxon example to those who have no less exalted a vision than we can have, of the heights that may be attained in pursuing the true monogamic ideal, and of the regenerating influence that such an attainment would bring to bear on all other forms of social life. One may even hazard the opinion that a higher destiny in this regard may be awaiting France than is likely to be reached by other nations that now pride themselves on their advancement. If sensibility to the influence of women does not necessarily guarantee them a position of dignity, it is at least the foundation on which the fullest respect can alone be based, and in this respect, as has been said, there is good promise for the future of the French people, in their pre-eminent appreciation of the rôle that women may play in almost every department of life. But though the outside critic may well hesitate to preach an ideal to France which is already cherished by its best thinkers and teachers, it is permissible to draw attention to certain of their institutions that seem to interfere with progress, in ways that perhaps strike the foreigner more forcibly than those to whom they have become almost a matter of course. There are features in our methods of bringing up children that the French have recently begun to admire, and are seeking to imitate. Advantage may be taken of this attitude to make certain suggestions in matters that are of even greater moment than the encouragement of athletics, though in so far as this latter movement may prevent an unhealthy emotional precocity, it also is not without value from the present point of view.

It may be said, however, that the seclusion and surveillance of the young, which has been accounted for by the artificial method of arranging marriages in France, is now a thing of the past. It is fortunately true that in recent years the tradition has to some extent broken down, and that its effects are no longer to be seen in such extreme forms. We do not now hear of girls being sent to a convent at the age of two, to remain there with hardly any intercourse with their families till they are taken away at sixteen or seventeen to be rushed into a marriage with someone they have never seen. There are cases

even yet not very far removed from this, but let it be granted that they are rare. The régime of the convent has largely passed away, and in the strict sense it will disappear still more rapidly in the future. Much of this healthy change is due to the initiative of the State, in founding schools for girls that have much more the character of day-schools than of boarding establishments. It is satisfactory to find also that in the boys' lycées the numbers of those sent to board is steadily diminishing in proportion to those who come daily from their homes. But with all these hopeful signs of a better practice there remains a great deal to be done, before it can be said that the best conditions of upbringing, alike in the home and in the school, have been secured both for boys and for girls, so that they may be trained with neither too much nor too little guidance to grow into the proper relations with each other. Parents have still to learn that an unobtrusive watchfulness and an indirect control form the most effective, if not indeed the only admissible, means of influencing their children's conduct, in regard to the relations of the sexes as in other relations of life, as soon as they reach the age of reason. School authorities have still to learn that an attitude of suspicion is sure to defeat its own ends, by encouraging the surreptitious use of opportunities that cannot be supervised, in ways that would not occur to those who were trusted with a fuller responsibility. As long as the majority of French parents who have it in their power think it advisable that their children should be constantly in charge of someone, not only in the streets and in the class-room, but even in their playtime, for fear of what they might possibly say to each other, or of any unauthorized friendships they might form, so long will they expose themselves to being outwitted in what they wish to avert, and to laying up a store of future troubles even when their efforts are successful. Nothing but approval can be given to the solicitude that seeks to provide the children with suitable companionship, but this is not to be done by autocratic methods under the impulse of an essentially worldly motive. Friendship cannot be forced at any age; the only safe guarantee is a wide selection and freedom of choice. If children have been wisely brought up under the influences of a