MORE ABOUT WOMEM IN THE " FORS CLAVIGERA."

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2054, 23 September 1880, Page 4

MORE ABOUT WOMEM IN THE " FORS CLAVIGERA."

[•« Queen."] In a late number we gave an abstraot of Professor Buskin's ideas upon dress. We showed that he treated the matter in no light spirit, but that he looked upon dress as an essential element in a scheme of life where refinement and simplicity are to be allied in the highest attainable degree. That our raiment should be charming, made of the best material and with the soundest work, ornamented only with lovely and skilful bits of workmanship, the professor h3s eloquently pleaded for. Women ought to be pleasant creatures; a room ought to be the brighter for their presence in it. Their highest power and chwrm should Ho in a cultivated habit of sympathy ; but the Professor is very antagonistic to "the temper that would dress sisters of charity in groy and dull colors. It may interest our readers who do not know them already to follow the Master of St. Georgo farther, and see his views on woman's role and influenoe in the Utopian society, whioh he has founded. " The end of ail right education for a woman," he says, " is to make her love her home better than any other place ; that she should so seldom leave it, as a queen her queendom; nor ever feel entirely at rest but within its threshold." To attain this right end of education, the prooess is neither a cheerless nor a severe one. The Professor, it is true, exacts from children of both sexes a habit of unreasoning obedience, and on essential understanding of the nature of honor. But to obey and to be truthful, he believes, ore instincts of naturethat, to be developed, need only proper nourishment and training. In the Utopia of the St. George's Company, the education of the little ones will have no lack of brightness; singing and dancing are held there to be more important faotors in training than learning how to read, write and keep accounts. The latter indeed, in some cases (that of the poorer classes), may be entirely dispessod with ; but the former can in no case be ever spared. Dancing, decorously and rightly taught, is perhaps considered tho most important of all secular arts. The master has no patience with languid paradises of sofas and rocking chairs. A girl's bodily eduoation ought to make sure that she can "stand and sit upright, the ankle vertical and firm as a marble shaft, the waist clastic as a reed, and as unfatiguable." Next in importance to the training of bodily exercise and music come the uses of gardening. It is natural that etress should be laid -upon gardening in the educational soheme of a company started for the work of the redemption of desert land; and which holds "that the substantial wealth of a man consists in the earth he cultivates, with its pleasant or serviceable animals and plants, and in the rightly produced work of his own hands." Professor Buskin would give to every little maid, as soon as may be, a yard or two square of ground, with tools suited to her strength for the culture thereof, and seeds for the sowing. liator on, a beehive might be placed in a suitable corner, and the " crowning aohievment of ber secular virtues would be to produce in its season a piece of snowy and well-filled comb." For townfolk, this crowning achiev ment of their daughter's virtue is a delightful picture, that must, however, partake of the fate of pictures seen in dreamland. There is, nevertheless, muoh that is praotioal and beneficial in the professor's hints on the uses of gardening. Ho would turn tho garden to healthy, economical, as well as educational purposes. He makes war against greenhouses, and esp-cially hothouses. The object of gardening is to keep girl a out laboring in the fresh air. He will have none of the " clipping, potting, petting, and standing dilettantism in a damp and over-scented room." He would have vegetables grown in gardens needing tho observance of seasons, coming to perfection in their own proper time, and with the rare annual taste of the thing grown in its due days. In gardening would come knowledge of plants of beßt use in our oountry, and the power would be given to teac'a others to " take pleasure in the green herb that grows for meat, and the colored flowers grown for joy." On the subjectof gardening, and the refining and delight-giving influence of flowers, the Master of St. George ' writes many suggestive and beautiful pages. In the arrangoment of her life he would that every girl should give every day some spare moments to gardening, or, if Bhe have no garden, to the care of flowers in pots, and their pretty arrangement in her windows. Indoor work next claims the professor's attention. Every girl should do daily a bit of housemaid's work, doing it so thoroughly as to bo a pattern of perfection in that kind—a stair or two or a corner of a room kept polished like a Dutch pioture. Knowledge of cookery he holds to be an absolute necessity. A woman should know " how to cook plain meats and dishes economically and savourily."

Nor is her household only to profit by her profiosency. Bhe should acquaint herself with the poor, not as a patroness, but as a friend. She can then profitably and gracefully give those hints, by which the humble fare may bo made more tasty. Wo have glanced at the directions given by the Master of the St. George's Company for the cultivation of a woman's seoular virtues. She is to charm, to comfort, and to minister. His ideas on the intellectual and artistic culture of woman are liberal and suggestive ; for, it he would fill her daya with a happy and practical industry, ho would also fill her mind eo " that her eyes might be full of sacred imaginings of thingß that they see not."