The laurel wreath of fame is bright, Each gentle flower of love." Pretty well for thirteen! Of course, if some one had asked me whether these lines were spoken in my own person, I should not have dared to say yes; but I know that I meant them of myself. When I so expressed myself, I was either girding myself up for, or else I had just finished, a great enterprise, to which I cannot now refer without a smile, but which I know seemed to me unspeakably important at the time. It was nothing less than a grand historical tragedy. Harold was its title, and its theme the eve and day of the battle of Hastings. For by this time I had learned French, and read, in one of Racine's prefaces to his tragedies, of Aristotle's rules and the unity of time and place. I determined to observe them as closely as I could, encouraging myself, where deviations might seem expedient, by the recollection that Shakespeare had not observed them at all. I remember carefully studying one or two of his plays as models, but feeling that I dared not undertake so wide a canvas, and that I had better stick to Racine's method as more easy. My other preparation was a diligent perusal of Thierry's Norman Conquest,' then a very popular book; and, so provided, I set cheerfully to work, in the full belief that I was on the road to occupy a very decently high niche in the temple of fame. Edith, the swan-necked, was the heroine of my drama, in comparison with whose sorrows I fear the anguish of the defeated army and enslaved nation weighed but little with me; though I strove to do it likewise such justice as was in my power. My Edith was, I need not say, a highly correct young person, beloved by Harold, and possessing a ring as his troth-plight. But, faithless to this solemn engagement, in obedience to imperious state exigencies, Harold, by advice of his mother Githa, weds another in her place, the lady known to me and M. Thierry as Algitha, but who figures, I think, on Mr Freeman's pages by the (doubtless correct but) fearful and wonderful name Elfgyth, just as he remorselessly replaces our pretty Edith by Eadgyth. Now Algitha (as we used to call her) was sister to two mighty earls, who ought to have been a great support to their brother-in-law; and my idea was to represent Harold as marrying her entirely in order to secure their fidelity, but as still loving Edith so much, that, at a chance sight of her, he is ready to risk crown and life rather than be unfaithful to her. I had two scenes, in one of which the scheming Githa prevails on the gentle maiden to sacrifice herself for Harold's good, and leave the ring by which she had meant to reclaim him in his mother's hands; and a second, in which that artful dame prevails on her penitent son to repent of his repentance, by making him believe that Edith has deserted him for Oswald, a nobleman of his court, and destined Harold's ring for her new lover. Under this false representation, Harold proceeds to wed Algitha literally the night before that decisive battle which Mr Freeman is teaching us to call the battle of Senlac, and into which night a regard for those misleading unities made me cram all the events aforesaid; not to speak of a scene between Algitha herself and a discarded lover, Eldred, whom I kindly provided beforehand that he might be able to guard, and in due time to forgive and wed, that luckless widowed bride. Certainly the chorus of maidens arranged by me to sing the charms of Algitha and the splendour of her jewellery and attire in strains like these— "Glistening pearls thy vest adorn, would have been rather in the way of Harold's grim warriors preparing for the life-and-death struggle of the morrow; and I fear Algitha's finery could have found but few admirers at so busy a moment. But I think history does tell us that our English forefathers mingled rather too much merriment with their more serious preparations, and that, while the Normans were getting shriven, they were drinking ale; so perhaps the introduction of a bride-ale was not so utterly incongruous. Still, the fourth scene of my second act, which depicts the wedding-guests ranged round the banquet-table engaged in making each other addresses in stilted language, and in listening to somewhat tame war-songs, strikes me now as exceeding the bounds of permissible poetic licence. Especially its conclusion, in which, after listening to a good deal of melodious twaddle from Hilda (a certain prophetess, who has intruded herself unbidden into the royal tent to predict Harold's downfall as the punishment of his broken faith), the king hears a messenger announce that "The Norman host, that silently in prayer Have passed the night, now marshall their array;" and calmly answers "Then must we go forth, Nor fear the event, since righteous is our cause;" suggests a comparison, which I know I was far from intending, with Harold's predecessor on the English throne, Ethelred the Unready. For the matter of that, however, I find that I made the Normans advance at as leisurely a pace as the slowest adversaries could desire; for, setting both armies in presence in scene the fifth, and opening it by a short harangue of William to his troops, I gave Harold time afterwards to say farewell to his mother, to have a long whispered conversation with his confidant Oswald, and to animate his warriors by a speech of forty-one lines, without the smallest disturbance on the part of his obliging enemies. I am glad to see by that speech (I may observe) that I had proper notions in my childhood of the elective nature of the English crown in its origin; for I see that I made Harold tell his In I am also much pleased to find that I made poor old Githa express in a soliloquy the deepest remorse for the very white lies (as many modern dowagers would call them) which she told her son, to keep him firm to an advantageous alliance. fact, the generally virtuous and high-minded sentiments which I find diffused through the play are very edifying; though the evil forebodings freely indulged in by most of the characters have a depressing effect on the mind, and must have gone far to fulfil themselves. When the much-delayed fight could be adjourned no longer, I see that I was quite up to the expedient of making two persons watch it from afar, and of enabling the audience to see it with their eyes. Only I fear that my consideration for my audience equalled that of the renowned Puff in the 'Critic;' and that, just as his Raleigh and Hatton discourse far more for the good of the spectators than for their own, so when my Edith quits the convent, where she had hidden her sorrows, to view the fight, yet declares herself unable to look steadfastly at the battle which rages in the distance, the marvellous insight into its varied fortunes with which her sister Elfrida is endowed is a gift rather to be desired than expected in any young lady similarly situated. The act ends by their retiring from the field on a false report of the victory of the English. My third and last act opened by showing Harold, disappointed of succour from his newmade brother-in-law, and hard pressed by his foes, still finding time to commend his lost Edith to Oswald's care (her supposed new lover), and to learn from him the truth of her unbroken faith to himself. With strong expressions of grief and remorse he meets the fatal arrow, and dies exclaiming "I shall not live to see my country's chains, Or to bewail the loss of Edith's love." That excellent young person's lamentations, when the tidings of Harold's death reach her, are, I regret to say, somewhat wanting in passion. However, she remains at her post, refusing to fly with Oswald and Elfrida, to whom that obliging young man has consented to transfer his affections. I may remark that this is not the only young couple whom I, with some ingenuity, contrived to make happy amidst their country's wreck. Algitha, after rather a spirited scene with her mother-in-law, is rescued from the Norman soldiers by her still faithful Eldred. I recollect that I felt it due to my readers to alleviate their anguish on behalf of Edith and Harold by at least two underplots that ended well. And having got through my battle with singularly little effusion of blood-Harold's death and that of the soldier from whom Algitha was rescued being the only two recorded - I could employ a larger number of my corps dramatique in the task of burying the dead than could the great anonymous author of 'Pyramus and Thisbe,' who, you will remember, leaves no one to discharge the duty but Lion and Moonshine. I, agreeably to history, had Githa ready to enter William's tent (like aged Priam) and beg the body of her son from the Conqueror. But before her entrance, not liking to leave him in undisturbed enjoyment of his hour of victory, I brought in once more the irrepressible Hilda to foretell to the proud Norman the unquiet life and insecure grave which awaited him, with the ills that were to befall his sons. Whether William's fierce refusal at first to allow the burial of the man who broke the oath he swore to him on the holy relics should be ascribed to the irritation produced in his mind by Hilda's well-meant but wearisome effusion, or whether rather his final permission to Githa to inter her son's body was wrung from him by wholesome terror of Hilda's dark picture of his future, I leave for the consideration of others. At all events, my play closed with the battle-field, dimly lighted by the torches of Githa's train, while she vainly searches it for the body of her son. Edith enters after a while and succeeds in finding the slain Harold. Githa bespeaks his brief epitaph, "Harold Infelix," and then dies beside her son. But Edith lives to lead the mournful procession which bears the dead mother with the dead son to her own convent refuge. I know that I strove hard to bring out the pathos of my closing scene. I perhaps did not wholly fail when I made Edith say of her dead lover, that to her self" His voice o'erpowers the music of the world;" but I see that nature was too strong for me. I could not know at thirteen how lovers love. A mother's love I had enjoyed; and so, while I made the forsaken Edith say a good deal that was more or less to the purpose, I made the bereaved Githa say little and die. Schiller, in an earlier play than that which contains his self-sacrificing Thecla (whom I remember childishly thinking I would copy when I made Edith resign Harold for his own good), bids a hero reverence the dreams of his youth. I feel just a little remorse at having invited the public here to laugh at some of mine. Still, I hope it has been harmless fun for both them and me. I do not think I was the worse for having tried so hard to write verses in my childhood, and rather believe that having done so may have helped me to the many hours of happiness which I have enjoyed from that day to this with Spenser or Shakespeare, Dante or the Greek poets before me. And you, my reader, be frank and confess that in your earlier years you were as foolish if not so industrious as I, and if you did not undertake great historical plays, yet wrote lyrics which you thought very charming at the time, and read aloud to an audience, "fit though few," which applauded you to the echo. Or if the pleasing madness never seized you-for sometimes these things do skip one generation-take one of your sons aside and ask him to tell you in strict confidence whether in moments snatched from the serious business of life, such as cricket and football, he too is not preparing himself to write a tragedy by diligent study of, shall we say, Freeman's 'Norman Conquest,' and 'Strafford : an Historical Drama,' by John Sterling? If so, have the goodness to tell him, with my compliments, that 'The Finding of the Body of Harold' is now an interdicted subject to poets as well as to painters, having been done as well as is possible by a person of tender years long before he was born; and that if he doubts my word and proceeds in his rash enterprise, I may revenge myself upon him by even yet publishing Harold' in extenso; but that, if he will oblige me by moving on to 'The Death of Rufus,' or 'Murder of Thomas à Becket,' and send me his tragedy, I may, not impossibly, review it rather more favourably than I have done my own; for we know, on excellent authority, that severe critics are authors who have failed themselves; and how could I bear, by injudicious severity towards another, to confess that my own 'Harold' was after all a failure? A WOMAN-HATER. PART VI.-CHAPTER XV. "WHEN I reached Great Britain, the right of women to Medicine was in this condition-a learned lawyer explained it carefully to me; I will give you his words.-The unwritten law of every nation admits all mankind, and not the male half only, to the study and practice of medicine and the sale of drugs. In Great Britain this law is called the common law, and is deeply respected. Whatever liberty it allows to men or women is held sacred in our courts, until directly and explicitly withdrawn by some Act of the Legislature. Under this ancient liberty women have occasionally practised general medicine and surgery, up to the year 1858. But, for centuries, they monopolised, by custom, one branch of practice, the obstetric, and that, together with the occasional treatment of children, and the nurs ing of both sexes, which is semimedical, and is their monopoly, seems, on the whole, to have contented them, till late years, when their views were enlarged by wider education, and other causes. But their abstinence from general practice, like their monopoly of obstetrics, lay with women themselves, and not with the law of England. That law is the same in this respect as the common law of Italy and France; and the constitution of Bologna, where so many doctresses have filled the chairs of medicine and other sciences, makes no more direct provision for female students than does the constitution of any Scotch or English university. The whole thing lay with the women themselves, and with local civilisation. Years ago, Italy was far more civilised than England; so Ital ian women took a large sphere. Of late the Anglo-Saxon has gone in for civilisation with his usual energy, and is eclipsing Italy; therefore his women aspire to larger spheres of intellect and action, beginning in the States, because American women are better educated than English. The advance of women, in useful attainments, is the most infallible sign in any country of advancing civilisation. All this about civilisation is my observation, sir, and not the lawyer's. Now for the lawyer again.-Such being the law of England, the British Legislature passed an Act in 1858, the real object of which was to protect the public against incapable doctors, not against capable doctresses or doctors. The Act excludes from medical practice all persons whatever, male or female, unless registered in a certain register; and to get upon that register, the person, male or female, must produce a licence or diploma, granted by one of the British examining boards specified in a sched ule attached to the Act. "Now these examining boards were all members of the leading medical schools. If the Legislature had taken the usual precaution, and had added a clause compelling those boards to examine worthy applicants, the Act would have been a sound public measure; but for want of that foresight and without foresight a lawgiver is an impostor and a public pest-the State robbed women of their old common-law rights with one hand, and with the other enabled a respectable trades-union to thrust them out of their new statutory rights. Unfortunately, the respectable union, to whom the Legis |