When parents are the energetic, hard-working ones, let them remember a passage in a letter of Madame de Stael's, whose biography is so interesting because she represents in a large sense what most women are in a smaller. She writes from England in 1813:-'II n'y a point de ressources dans mes enfants; ils sont eteints, singulier effet de ma flamme.'so often children by their very natures are only contrasts to ourselves. What our children are born, they remain; of that I am sure. By this I mean that there are certain qualities of character which we can no more change than we can alter the colour of the hair and eyes. What we can do is to help each one to make the best of what he or she actually is, still better said by an old saint, 'Do not try to be not what you are, but very well what you are !'

How many years ago it is since John Stuart Mill wrote: 'When will education consist, not in repressing any mental faculty or power, from the uncontrolled action of which danger is apprehended, but in training up to its proper strength the corrective and antagonistic power ? 'This is only very old wisdom in other words, as it is Aristotle who says that true virtue is placed at an equal distance between the opposite vices.

This quoting the wisdom of others you perhaps will think very cheap philosophy. It is better, however, than trying, like Sydney Smith, to write a book of maxims, and failing to do so, as he himself says he never got further than the following: 'Towards the age of forty, women get tired of being virtuous and men of being honest.'I must, all the same, admit that there are many less true sayings than this one.

A tendency of the present day is towards a kind of hardness-at any rate, outwardly. It is not the fashion to be low-spirited, and for a woman to cry in public is thought a shame. I confess I.think there is a certain danger in the cultivation of qualities in women that bring forth a sort of glittering brightness which gives out light, not heat, and therefore fails to warm. Perhaps this suppression is the very thing that helps to encourage one of the well-known complications of family life-namely, friendships. The difficulty follows us through life, as we all know how hard it often is to appreciate our friends' friends. This, however, is not of much importance, as the friends of our friends we can more or less avoid without discourtesy. But with the friends of our near relations the matter assumes considerable importance, and we absolutely owe it to them to treat their friends with extreme courtesy and kindness, however little may be our sympathy towards them, or however critically we may judge them.

Some people are born without what Mr. George Meredith so well describes as 'the gift of intimacy.'They would be reserved, even in love, the only key that ever unlocks such hearts. Friendships they have none, either with their own sex or with the other. No doubt life is simpler to such people; to others it would be unbearably lonely. There are a few women who would have been very glad of friends, but whose loyalty to the disloyal around them forces them into loneliness and silence, for there is no friendship in the world without confidence.

Friendships are safety-valves, and the wisdom of safety-valves is easy to appreciate. All the same, these intimacies must be regulated and conducted upon the rules of civilised society. I love the young who wish to fight conventionalities and turn and boldly face Mrs. Grundy; but I despise the old who do not help the young to see that they are only making useless martyrs of themselves in a cause which is, at the bottom, not noble and not great, but only a method of giving vent to their own selfishness and self-indulgence. Before you fight conventionality you must prove that conventionality is wrong, and this can never be done by the young. To deny friendships to natures that require them is to force on them what Mr. Morley calls 'the awful loneliness of life-a life full of acquaintances as a cake is full of currants, no two ever touching each other.' It is one of the great sorrows of a high position that people cannot have intimates. Froude says somewhere: 'The great are expected to be universally gracious, and universal graciousness is perhaps only possible to the insincere or the commonplace, or to the supremely great and fortunate.'

We cannot give anyone our experience. This is a common saying, and quite true from the point of view of the old. Nevertheless, if the young determine, through independence or pride, to work out their lives for themselves, and refuse to be helped, guided, or taught by the knowledge and experience of those who have gone before them-in the books of the dead and the speaking of the living-they throw themselves back in the race in a way that generally, to my knowledge, has resulted in failure. Even cases of marked talent and individuality must learn from others. In art and in music they must all work, at first, after the manner of someone else. Supposing, for instance, that Albert Durer had lived in Venice, he would have been a Venetian painter, and not have worked on the lines of the old German painters. This would have been greatly to his advantage. It is true that circumstances do not make talent, but they immensely influence it; so nothing in the lives and training of the young who are no longer children, especially if they are precocious and clever, is unimportant.

On looking back, one of the disappointments of my life, when I recollect how the matter was discussed and written about in my girlhood, is the little progress that has been made in the laying-by and organising of fortunes for girls. I do not only mean leaving them a few thousand pounds at the death of both parents, but, as a matter of course,- either giving them a sum of money, as the French do, when they marry, or giving them a sufficient allowance, according to the fortunes of the father, if they take to any employment and do not marry. The modern hack phrase, that children owe their parents nothing for bringing them into the world without their leave, is of course ridiculous; but I do think a right-minded father ought to realise that a woman who has not a penny she can call her own, is a kind of slave. The same thing applies to a husband if a wife goes to him with nothing. She cannot even give a present without asking him for the money. I think girls would be much happier if at twenty-one they were given allowances sufficient, not only for dress-which should begin, as with boys, much earlier-but to cover all expenses, except board and lodging: namely, journeys, theatres, doctors, dentists, amusements, masters, and so on. One girl would spend her allowance in one way and one in another, but she would get as much profit or pleasure to her individual self out of it as she could afford. If she were well, she would not want doctors and dentists; if she were ill, she would not want amusements: and in either case she would be learning the value of money. We all know the discussions that go on in every family. In one case the mother wishes her daughter to have singing and piano lessons, though the daughter is indifferent; the master is hired, and the money and time are more or less wasted. In another case the daughter is pining for drawing lessons, and the mother looks upon it as rather a waste of money. Both these cases would be adjusted if the deciding of their own education and the paying of the lessons rested with the grown-up daughters. This ought not to prevent mothers and daughters from discussing together what is the most desirable course to adopt; it merely leaves the ultimate decision with the learner. In fact, I would extend these family discussions to all the important matters of life, and even call in some reliable friend or relation, whose opinion is valued by all parties, to help in the decision, on the lines of that powerful legal arrangement which, in French family life, is called conseil de famille. We get so many useful hints on family life by the reading of biographies that, to my mind, it is the most interesting of all literature for the middle-aged. In Darwin's 'Life 'I was immensely struck by an uncle interfering to overrule the decision of the good kind father, who had refused the offer that young Darwin should go for the scientific voyage on the 'Beagle.' The father instantly yielded to the opinion of his brother, and this perhaps decided the whole of Darwin's life.