A face with gladness overspread,
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred,
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays.
With no restraint, save such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech.
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life.


Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark
tender-hearted Celtic girl, and the fair deep-hearted Scandinavian
Viking, thank God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou
tendest, and the wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy
fortune, child, in wicked London town; nor import, as they tell me
thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy
copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up
the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother
and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath
days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other
women's hair.

It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls
more and more to that of boys. If that means that girls are
merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are
taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught; then it is
to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the
scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably