The heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

that we trace the minds of women attuned to finer spiritual
issues. This broad humanity has vitalized modern literature. It
is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly
called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great
literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic
passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but
woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This
masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so
vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines
across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian
ideal--twin lights which have met in the world of today. It may
be that from the blending of the two, the crowning of a man's
vigor with a woman's finer insight, will spring the perfected
flower of human thought.

Robert Browning in his poem "By the Fireside" has said a fitting
word:

Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart.
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the Divine!


CHAPTER VIII. SALONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY