Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/189

 on a ground less noble and deep than that of women, and to satisfy himself with a lower moral position? The mund system may have succeeded,—in other words, it may have been the best thing possible, in a rude and barbarous age, when serfdom also was in full force and 'succeeded' in its way—a time when force was met by force, and individual protection was a surer resource than that of law. But even as applying to those days, the success of the system seems to have been somewhat incomplete. How it worked—or failed to work—Mr Kingsley shows in a few graphic lines, in his recent tale, 'Hereward.' Describing the fate of the little Torfrida, his hero's daughter, he tells us, that 'she was married to Hugh