trenchant pamphleteer, and twice received from the government the painful compliment of imprisonment for his brilliant success in that department. In the fierce clamours of his time one may incessantly-one might almost say always-detect his voice, clear, irrepressible, effective.

Such incessant occupation with burning questions, and such amazing productiveness might well have prepared us to expect little or nothing of permanent literary value from Defoe. The shrewd remark that easy writing makes hard reading at once recurs to us. The man whose tongue is never quiet seldom utters anything worth hearing. The thoughts of him who perpetually thinks aloud are apt to be wanting in finish and in weight. The calamus that is always currens must surely run away with him who holds it, or tries to hold it. But all such criticisms must be applied with caution to the case of Defoe. He had in an eminent degree the gift of ready writing, and this gift he assiduously cultivated, so that to write, and what is more to write with success, was as easy to him as to speak. He never let his gift of ready writing prove his ruin. For usually men are betrayed and ruined by such facility. They cease to be the masters but become the mere slaves of it. They are confounded and confused by their own abundance. Defoe kept his gift well in hand. He never permitted himself to be merely self-confident and careless. Nor, after all, incessantly as he wrote, did he ever yield idly to the impulse to say something when in fact he had nothing to say.

But he never aimed at being a stylist in the ordinary sense of the term at writing elaborately and with the idea of producing what was exquisite in form and expression for its own sake or partly for its own sake. He had no æsthetic purpose; but was always eminently earnest and practical and didactic, a man of affairs and of business. His great object was to speak clearly and forcibly, not to turn out sentences of fine rhythm and choice phrasing. What he specially studied was directness and cogency. For the most part, till the last dozen years of his life, he dealt merely with the questions of the day; he addressed an audience that was excited and inflamed, on which any elegancies of style would have been wholly wasted. Thus for any ornamenting of his weapon, to speak metaphorically, he cared little or nothing; his one supreme care was that it should be trenchant that it should do its work and go home.

And few men have more completely succeeded in their aim than Defoe. He became a potent master of language, and made it do exactly his bidding, such as it was. To play with words

to group them in new and surprising and charming combinations (Horace's callida juncturæ), to place them in novel situations and bring out unrecognised graces-this was not at all his way, not at all his end. Language was with him a mere instrument of expression, not in itself a thing of beauty with claims of its own for consideration. It was his slave rather than his mistress.

But it would be a great misuse of terms to say that Defoe was no artist. Rather within his limits he was an admirable and a most successful artist. He produced precisely the effects he wished to produce; and used always his material with singular judgment and skill. We may feel his world of thought somewhat narrow, and, as we enter it, may be keenly aware that there are more things in heaven and earth-so many more!-than are dreamt of in his philosophy; but in that world he is supreme. Thus no one has ever equalled Defoe in the art of literary deception, that is, in the art of making his own inventions pass for realities, in the art of "lying like truth": no one has ever so frequently and completely taken in his readers. Again and again his fictions have been cited as genuine and original records: from time to time even now is heard a doubt whether The Memoirs of a Cavalier, for instance, is not really a transcript of some seventeenth-century MS. It was once said that Defoe had in fact Alexander Selkirk's papers before him when he wrote Robinson Crusoe; but there is not the least shadow of support for that statement. It is undoubtedly baseless. This art of deception he evidently studied with infinite zest and care. Populus vult decipi, he might have said to himself, and perhaps did say, et decipiatur. In his actual life there was much dissembling and much simulation, however he reconciled his conduct with his conscience. In his novels he carried this art, such as it is, to the highest possible perfection. On internal evidence only it is often not possible to distinguish his fiction from fact. The imposition is absolute. Defoe is the arch deceiver of literature.

In his Robinson Crusoe this sovereign lord of illusion has given us one of the most popular books of the world. And here happily we have not only to admire the incomparable realism of the rendering, but to be grateful for a quite inestimable embodiment of a resolute and indomitable spirit, not to be crushed by

any adversities, but making good out of bad—making the best out of the worst. Rousseau might well except it from the ban he pronounced on the literature commonly put into the hands of children. This is certainly Defoe's most important claim on our remembrance; it is in it that he still lives and moves and has his being amongst us. The author of such a book must for ever be held in high esteem as a friend of the human race.

JOHN W. HALES.

AN ACADEMY FOR WOMEN

I HAVE often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.

One would wonder, indeed, how it should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are only beholden to natural parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew and make baubles. They are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names or so, and that is the height of a woman's education. And I would but ask any who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman, I mean) good for that is taught no more?

I need not give instances, or examine the character of a gentleman with a good estate and of a good family and with tolerable parts, and examine what figure he makes for want of education.

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear and it is manifest that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education carries on the distinction and makes some less brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given them capacities, for He made nothing needless. Besides, I would ask such what they can see in ignorance that they should think it a necessary ornament to a woman? or how much worse is a wise woman than a fool? or what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught? Does she plague us with her pride and impertinence? Why did we not let her learn that she might

have had more wit? Shall we upbraid women with folly, when it is only the error of this inhuman custom that hindered them being made wiser?

The capacities of women are supposed to be greater and their senses quicker than those of the men; and what they might be capable of being bred to is plain from some instances of female wit, which this age is not without; which upbraids us with injustice, and looks as if we denied women the advantages of education for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements.

To remove this objection, and that women might have at least a needful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful learning, I propose the draught of an academy for that purpose.

I know it is dangerous to make public appearances of the sex. They are not either to be confined or exposed; the first will disagree with their inclinations and the last with their reputations, and therefore it is somewhat difficult; and I doubt a method proposed by an ingenious lady in a little book called "Advice to the Ladies" would be found impracticable, for, saving my respect to the sex, the levity, which perhaps is a little peculiar to them, at least in their youth, will not bear the restraint; and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can keep up a nunnery. Women are extravagantly desirous of going to heaven, and will punish their pretty bodies to get thither; but nothing else will do it, and even in that case sometimes it falls out that nature will prevail.

When I talk, therefore, of an academy for women, I mean both the model, the teaching, and the government different from what is proposed by that ingenious lady, for whose proposal I have a very great esteem, and also great opinion of her wit; different, too, from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above all, from vows of celibacy.

Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study should have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius.

But since some severities of discipline more than ordinary would be absolutely necessary to preserve the reputation of the house, that persons of quality and fortune might not be afraid to venture their children thither, I shall venture to make a small scheme by way of essay.

The house I would have built in a form by itself, as well as in a place by itself. The building should be of three plain fronts, without any jettings or bearing-work, that the eye might at a