Page:Woman in the Nineteenth Century 1845.djvu/149

Rh was seized and carried away captive by the powers of misrule.

As now the gods could not find their friend Iduna, they were confused with grief; indeed they began visibly to grow old and gray. Discords arose, and love grew cold. Indeed, Odur, spouse of the goddess of love and beauty, wandered away and returned no more. At last, however, the gods, discovering the treachery of Loke, obliged him to win back Iduna from the prison in which she sat mourning. He changed himself into a falcon, and brought her back as a swallow, fiercely pursued by the Giant King, in the form of an eagle. So she strives to return among us, light and small as a swallow. We must welcome her form as the speck on the sky that assures the glad blue of Summer. Yet one swallow does not make a summer. Let us solicit them in flights and flocks!

Returning from the future to the present, let us see what forms Iduna takes, as she moves along the declivity of centuries to the valley where the lily flower may concentrate all its fragrance.

It would seem as if this time were not very near to one fresh from books, such as I have of late been—no: not reading, but sighing over. A crowd of books having been sent me since my friends knew me to be engaged in this way, on Woman's “Sphere,” Woman's “Mission,” and Woman's “Destiny,” I believe that almost all that is extant of formal precept has come under my eye. Among these I read with refreshment, a little one called “The Whole Duty of Woman,” “indited by a noble lady at the request of a noble lord,” and which has this much of nobleness, that the view it takes is a religious one. It aims to fit woman