gifts and high social position
His retirement from political life
His old age soothed by Récamier
Her lovely disposition
Her beautiful old age
Her death
Her character
Remarks on society
Sources of its fascinations

MADAME DE STAËL.

WOMAN IN LITERATURE.

Literature in the 18th Century
Rise of Madame de Staël
Her precocity
Her powers of conversation
Her love of society
Her marriage
Hatred of Napoleon
Her banishment
Her residence in Switzerland
Travels in Germany
Her work on literature
Her book on Germany
Its great merits
German philosophy
Visit to Italy
Sismondi
"Corinne"
Its popularity
A description of Italy
Marriage with Rocca
Madame de Staël in England
Her honors
Return to Paris
Incense offered to her
Her amazing éclat
Her death
Her merits as an author
Inaugurated a new style in literature
Her followers
Her influence
Literary women
Their future

HANNAH MORE.

EDUCATION OF WOMAN.

Progress of female education
Youth of Hannah More
Her accomplishments
Teaches school
Intimacy with great men
Shines in society
Wearied of it
Her ridicule of fashionable gatherings called society
Retirement to Cowslip Green
Her patrons and friends
Labors in behalf of the poor
Foundation of schools
Works on female education
Their good influence
Their leading ideas
Christian education
Removal to Barley Wood
Views of society
Her distinguished visitors
"Coelebs in Search of a Wife"
"Christian Morals"
Her laboring at the age of eighty
The quiet elegance of her life
Removal to Clifton
Happy old age
Death
Exalted character
Remarks on female education
The sphere of woman
What is woman to do?

GEORGE ELIOT.

WOMAN AS NOVELIST.

Notable eras of modern civilization
Nineteenth Century, the age of novelists
Scott, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray
Bulwer; women novelists
Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot
Early life of Marian Evans
Appearance, education, and acquirements
Change in religious views; German translations; Continental travel
Westminster Review; literary and scientific men
Her alliance with George Henry Lewes
Her life with him
Literary labors
First work of fiction, "Amos Barton," with criticism upon
her qualities as a novelist, illustrated by the story
"Mr. Gilfils Love Story"
"Adam Bede"
"The Mill on the Floss"
"Silas Marner"
"Romola"
"Felix Holt"
"Middlemarch"
"Daniel Deronda"
"Theophrastus Such"
General characteristics of George Eliot
Death of Mr. Lewes; her marriage with Mr. Cross
Lofty position of George Eliot in literature
Religious views and philosophical opinions
Her failure as a teacher of morals
Regret at her abandonment of Christianity

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VII.

Madame de Récamier After the painting by Baron François Pascal Gérard.
Abélard Teaching in the Paraclete After the painting by A. Steinheil.
Joan of Arc Hears the Voices After the painting by Eugene Thirion.
The Vision of St. Therese After the painting by Jean Brunet.
Reception of the Great Condé by Louis XIV After the painting by J. L. Gérôme.
Ministerial Conference of Louis XIV. at the Salon of Madam de Maintenon After the painting by John Gilbert.
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough After the painting by Pieter van der Werff, Pitti Palace, Florence.
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough After the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
Mme. de Récamier After the painting by Mlle. Morin
Madame de Staël After the painting by Mlle. de Godefroid, Versailles.
Garrick and His Wife After the painting by William Hogarth.
Hannah More After the painting by H.W. Pickersgill, A.R.A..

BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY

HÉLOÏSE.

A.D. 1101-1164.

LOVE.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,--subtile, mysterious, inexplicable,--a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not only with happiness, but human existence, and pertaining to the soul in its highest aspirations. Allied with the transient and the mortal, even with the weak and corrupt, it is yet immortal in its nature and lofty in its aims,--at once a passion, a sentiment, and an inspiration.

To attempt to describe woman without this element of our complex nature, which constitutes her peculiar fascination, is like trying to act the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet himself,--an absurdity; a picture without a central figure, a novel without a heroine, a religion without a sacrifice. My subject is not without its difficulties. The passion or sentiment I describe is degrading when perverted, as it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,--all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul.

"Socrates," says Legouvé, "who caught glimpses of everything that he did not clearly define, uttered one day to his disciples these beautiful words: 'There are two Venuses: one celestial, called Urania, the heavenly, who presides over all pure and spiritual affections; and the other Polyhymnia, the terrestrial, who excites sensual and gross desires.'" The history of love is the eternal struggle between these two divinities,--the one seeking to elevate and the other to degrade. Plato, for the first time, in his beautiful hymn to the Venus Urania, displayed to men the unknown image of love,--the educator and the moralist,--so that grateful ages have consecrated it by his name. Centuries rolled away, and among the descendants of Teutonic barbarians a still lovelier and more ideal sentiment burst out from the lips of the Christian Dante, kindled by the adoration of his departed Beatrice. And as she courses from star to star, explaining to him the mysteries, the transported poet exclaims:--

"Ah, all the tongues which the Muses have inspired could not tell the thousandth part of the beauty of the smile of Beatrice as she presented me to the celestial group, exclaiming, 'Thou art redeemed!' O woman, in whom lives all my hope, who hast deigned to leave for my salvation thy footsteps on the throne of the Eternal, thou hast redeemed me from slavery to liberty; now earth has no more dangers for me. I cherish the image of thy purity in my bosom, that in my last hour, acceptable in thine eyes, my soul may leave my body."

Thus did Dante