![]() There were curtains to Phoebe's bed a dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time but which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to be day. It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings in its own hue. Phoebe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends like. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural enough motive for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,-its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system. Congreve, is an old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and character,-are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte,-one of them, Mr. Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future,-these are the ways of Jacobinism. ![]() Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised and no one can safely pronounce that if women's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. I do not say, as they will continue to be for, as I have already said more than once, I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. This fact is in accordance with the best general conclusions which the world's imperfect experience seems as yet to suggest, concerning the peculiar tendencies and aptitudes characteristic of women, as women have hitherto been. It was also observed that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits for ever and anon he would intimate so much by words. Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim. But all the words that he spoke still tended to discover that he had horror of mind, and heart-fears that he should die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the gate. Also here he in a great measure lost his senses, so that he could neither remember nor orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he had met with in the way of his pilgrimage. And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon X, so that he could not see before him. Then said X, Ah! my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about, I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey. Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my brother: I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, X began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters the billows go over my head all his waves go over me.
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