The Saxon temperament, with a vein of La Bruyere, gives us George
Eliot.

This new introduction of the feminine element into literature,
which is directly traceable to the salons of the seventeenth
century, suggests a point of special interest to the moralist.
It may be assumed that, whether through nature or a long process
of evolution, the minds of women as a class have a different
coloring from the minds of men as a class. Perhaps the best
evidence of this lies in the literature of the last two
centuries, in which women have been an important factor, not only
through what they have done themselves, but through their reflex
influence. The books written by them have rapidly multiplied.
Doubtless, the excess of feeling is often unbalanced by mental or
artistic training; but even in the crude productions, which are
by no means confined to one sex, it may be remarked that women
deal more with pure affections and men with the coarser passions.
A feminine Zola of any grade of ability has not yet appeared.

It is not, however, in literature of pure sentiment that the
influence of women has been most felt. It is true that, as a
rule, they look at the world from a more emotional standpoint
than men, but both have written of love, and for one Sappho there
have been many Anacreons. Mlle. de Scudery and Mme. de La
Fayette did not monopolize the sentiment of their time, but they
refined and exalted it. The tender and exquisite coloring of
Mme. de Stael and George Sand had a worthy counterpart in that of
Chateaubriand or Lamartine. But it is in the moral purity, the
touch of human sympathy, the divine quality of compassion, the
swift insight into the soul pressed down by