MODERN WOMEN

 AND

 WHAT IS SAID OF THEM

 A REPRINT OF

 A SERIES OF ARTICLES IN THE

 SATURDAY REVIEW

 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

 MRS. LUCIA GILBERT CALHOUN

 NEW YORK _J. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER_ 140 FULTON STREET 1868

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

 J. S. REDFIELD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York. 

 EDWARD O. JENKINS, _PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER_, No. 20 North William St. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

The following papers on Woman were originally published in the columnsof the London SATURDAY REVIEW. Some of them have already been reprintedin the literary and daily journals of this country, and they haveexcited no little discussion and comment among readers of both sexes. 

Whether agreeing or not with the writer, it is impossible not to concedethe eminent ability with which the various subjects are handled. Noseries of essays has appeared in the English language for many yearswhich has been so extensively reprinted and so generally read. 

The authorship of these papers has been attributed to differentindividuals, male and female; but it is more than probable that thewriters whose names have been mentioned in this connection are preciselythose who have had nothing whatever to do with them. It is not unlikelythat, in due time, the publisher of this volume may be in possession ofauthentic information on this head, and that the name of the author maythen appear on the title-page. 

CONTENTS. 

 INTRODUCTION, 5

 I. --THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD, 25

 II. --FOOLISH VIRGINS, 34

 III. --LITTLE WOMEN, 43

 IV. --PINCHBECK, 52

 V. --PUSHING WOMEN, 61

 VI. --FEMININE AFFECTATIONS, 73

 VII. --IDEAL WOMEN, 83

 VIII. --WOMAN AND THE WORLD, 93

 IX. --UNEQUAL MARRIAGES, 101

 X. --HUSBAND-HUNTING, 109

 XI. --PERILS OF "PAYING ATTENTION, " 118

 XII. --WOMEN'S HEROINES, 128

 XIII. --INTERFERENCE, 138

 XIV. --PLAIN GIRLS, 148

 XV. --A WORD FOR FEMALE VANITY, 157

 XVI. --THE ABUSE OF MATCH-MAKING, 167

 XVII. --FEMININE INFLUENCE, 177

 XVIII. --PIGEONS, 188

 XIX. --AMBITIOUS WIVES, 198

 XX. --PLATONIC WOMAN, 206

 XXI. --MAN AND HIS MASTER, 215

 XXII. --THE GOOSE AND THE GANDER, 225

 XXIII. --ENGAGEMENTS, 235

 XXIV. --WOMAN IN ORDERS, 243

 XXV. --WOMAN AND HER CRITICS, 253

 XXVI. --MISTRESS AND MAID, ON DRESS AND UNDRESS, 262

 XXVII. --ÆSTHETIC WOMAN, 272

 XXVIII. --WHAT IS WOMAN'S WORK? 281

 XXIX. --PAPAL WOMAN, 291

 XXX. --MODERN MOTHERS, 300

 XXXI. --PRIESTHOOD OF WOMAN, 309

 XXXII. --THE FUTURE OF WOMAN, 319

 XXXIII. --COSTUME AND ITS MORALS, 329

 XXXIV. --THE FADING FLOWER, 339

 XXXV. --LA FEMME PASSÉE, 347

 XXXVI. --PRETTY PREACHERS, 355

 XXXVII. --SPOILT WOMEN, 364

INTRODUCTION. 

The "Woman Question" will not be put to silence. It demands an answer ofWestern legislators. It besets college faculties. It pursues veteranpoliticians to the fastnesses of so-called National Conventions. Underthe sacred sounding-boards of New England pulpits has its voice beenheard, and its unexpected ally, the London SATURDAY REVIEW, introducesit to the good society of English drawing-rooms. That this introductioncomes in the form of diatribe and denunciation is a matter of the leastmoment. Judgment will finally rest, not on the conclusions of thespecial pleader, but on the strength of the case of the accused. 

Something, clearly, is wrong with fashionable women. They accept thethinnest gilt, the poorest pinchbeck, for gold. They care more for adreary social pre-eminence than for home and children. They find inextravagance of living and a vulgar costliness of dress their onlyexpression of a vague desire for the beauty and elegance of life. Isit, therefore, to be inferred that the race of noble women is dying out?St. Paul was hardly less severe than the London SATURDAY, if lessexplicit, in his condemnation of the fashionable women of his day, yetwe look upon that day as heroic. Certainly neither London nor New Yorkcan rival the luxury of a rich Roman matron, yet it was not the luxuryof her women which destroyed the empire, and Brutus's Portia was quiteas truly a representative woman as the superb Messalina. John Knoxthought that things were as bad as they could possibly be when hethundered at vice in high places; and if there had been a John Knox inthe court of Charles the Second, he would have sighed for a return ofthe innocent days of his great-grandfather. 

On the whole, that hope which springs eternal suggests that thefashionable women of the reign of Victoria, and of our seventeenthPresident, are not essentially more discouraging than all thegenerations of the thoughtless fair who danced idly down forgottenpasts. Nay, we may even hope that they are better. If they will notactually think, yet the fatal contagion of the newspaper and the modernnovel communicates to them an intellectual irritation which mightalmost stand for a mental process. If they have not ideas, they havenotions of things, and however inexact and absurd these may be, they arebetter than emptiness. 

"Worse, decidedly worse, " says our implacable critic; "when women werecontent with looking pretty before marriage, and with good housekeepingafter, they were uninteresting certainly, but they were respectable. Nowthey dabble in all things; are weakly æsthetic, weakly scientific, weakly controversial, and wholly prosy, and contemptible. " Dabbling ispitiful, certainly, and weakness has few allies, but let us do justiceeven to the weak dabblers. Æsthetic, or scientific, or controversialtraining has but recently been made possible to women. Their previousrange of study had been very narrow. It is not strange that the leastattainments should seem to them very profound and satisfactory, and themost manifest deductions pass for original conclusions. It is naturalthat their undisciplined faculties should grapple feebly withdifficulties, and be quite unequal to argument. This is no reason forflinging the baffling volumes at their heads; better so educate theirheads that the volumes shall no longer baffle. 

Scolded because they have not an idea beyond dress, laughed at whenthey try to think of something better, a word may certainly be said forthe good temper and the patience even of the fashionable women, whowould be wiser if they could. 

The fault is, we are assured, that these women take up books only toenhance their matrimonial value, and with no thought of the worth ofstudy. Let us be just. What business or the professions are to most men, marriage is to most women. Men qualify themselves, if they can, for thatcompetitive examination which is always going on, and which insuresclients to the best lawyers, and business to the best merchant, andparishes to the best preacher. Women, compelled to wait at home for thewooing which changes their destiny, qualify themselves with attractionsfor that competitive examination which all marriageable young women feelthat they undergo from every marriageable young man. Each has an eye tobusiness. One does not feel that the motive in the one case is anyhigher than in the other. 

It is very bad, of course, that marriage should be a matter of business. It is, perhaps, the most tragic of all perversions. But, evidently, theevil is not to be abated by jeremiads, nor by lectures to young women, no, nor even by brilliant editorials. So long as women believe thatinglorious ease is better than work, so long as they are taught thatthey are born to be the gentle dependents of a stronger being, so longas courage and capacity are held to be "strong-minded, " so long as therange of employments for women is narrow, and the standard of wageslower than men's, so long they will seek in marriage a home, a largerliberty of action, an establishment, a servant who shall supply themwith money and insure them ease without effort of their own. 

Men take the business opening which seems most congenial and mostprofitable. Women do the same thing, and their choice naturally fallsupon marriage as altogether the most promising speculation of their verysmall list. The remedy seems to be to give women as thorough mentaltraining as men receive, to make their training tend as directly to thebusiness of earning their bread and their pretty feminine adornments, and for the same work to pay them the same wages. If it be objected thatfashionable women will not work, let it be answered that work itselfwould be fashionable if it were held to be a dignity, and not adrudgery, and that the really fine and thoughtful leaders of societycould easily establish the new order of things. In an aristocraticcountry, where labor is the badge of caste, it would be difficult tomake it honorable. In a democracy like our own, it is the mostcontemptible snobbishness which frowns on the honest earning of money. 

The accusation of prodigal and senseless expenditure in dress must standunrefuted. Sums which would adorn our cities with pleasure-gardens, withlibraries, with galleries of art, are spent on perishable gauds thathave not even beauty to commend them. Charities might be founded, livesbe enriched with travel, all lands laid under contribution with themoney that every year flows into Stewart's drawers, and the strong-boxesof fashionable dress-makers. But the jewelled prodigals who spend it arenot more selfish, perhaps, than we plain folks who carp. 

Again, it is a mistake. They have the money. They mean to secure all thepleasure that money can buy. They have that feminine sensuousness whichdelights in color, and odor, and richness of fabric. Their sense ofbeauty is untaught. A little lower in the scale of civilization theywould pierce their noses, and dye their finger-nails, and wear stringsof glass beads. A little higher, they would sacrifice the splendid shawlto a rare marble, banish the chromo-lithograph, and turn the solitaireear-drops into a lovely picture, and build a conservatory with the priceof lace flounces. A little higher still, and we might have modellodging-houses, and foundling hospitals, and music in the squares givenus by kindly women who had saved the money from milliner, and jeweller, and silk-mercer. 

But standing just where they are, clothes seem to these same undevelopedwomen the best things money can buy; and a lack of culture confuses themas to the attributes of clothes. Just now our fashionable women arebitterly reprehended for copying the dress of the "Anonymas, " whoestablish the very pronounced fashions of Paris. Half of them do notknow what model they have taken. The other half accept the various andtasteless costumes, not because they are devised by "Anonyma, " butbecause they are striking. There is something in the commonplaceness offashionable life which smothers all originality of thought, of action, even of device in costume; and the women who give most time and money todress, to whom one would look for perfection in that mixed art, arealmost invariably the women who are exact reproductions of theirneighbors in this regard, as in their house-furnishing, their equipages, and their manners. 

Upon these splendidly monotonous fine ladies flashes the vision of"Anonyma, " with her meretricious beauty, and her daring toilettes. Amenable to no social Mrs. Grundy, her love of dress develops itself inbold contrasts of color, in bizarre and showy ornaments, in picturesque, and often in grotesque and tawdry effects. But whatever the details, thewhole is always striking. Our women longing for the new, accept theabsurd; desiring the picturesque, take the bizarre, and eager for theelegant, content themselves with the costly. 

Nor does the fact that our present fashionable evening costume isimmodest, of necessity impugn the modesty of the women who wear it. Thatthey are wanting in fineness of perception must be admitted. But womenof fashion accept without question the dictum of their modistes. LaBelle Hamilton, the famous beauty of the reign of Charles the Second, sodelicately modest and pure that she passed unbreathed upon by scandalthrough that most dissolute court, is painted in a costume that thefastest of New York belles would not venture to wear at the mostfashionable of receptions. The gracious and self-sacrificing and womanlywomen of our revolution, wore dresses cut lower than those of theirgreat-grand-daughters, as any portrait-gallery will show. The dress isindefensible, but let us not be too ready to condemn the wearer forworse sins than thoughtlessness and vanity. 

One doubts if there is a single Becky Sharp the less, (poor Becky!)since Thackeray gave such terrible immortality to their great prototype. The satirist is not the reformer. The satirized do not see themselves inthe exaggerated type. They go their way, and thank God that they are notas these others. The critic of the London SATURDAY, beginning, perhaps, with the intention of telling sad and sober truth about a class, hasended with a list of the follies and faults of individuals, and theseare set down with the keen and unconvincing clearness of the satirist. 

It is a good thing indeed, that any aspect of the "woman question"should claim place, week after week, in a leading English journal. It isa good thing that it has been thought wise to reprint these essays here. All this talk about the wrong ways of women suggests that there is aright way, as yet very much involved in the dust of discussion and thefogs of speculation. All these accusations against her folly imply aproportionate tribute to her possible wisdom, if once she can get a fairchance to be wise. 

What the reviewer urges against the effect of fashionable life on theintellect, cannot be gainsayed. But in America, at least, the injury tothe young men is greater apparently than to the young women. At anyevening party in New York, at any "Hop" in Newport or Saratoga, thefaces of the men are of a lower type, their talk is more inane, theirmanners are more vulgar. The girls are empty enough, heaven knows! butthey seem capable of better things, most of them. And they are not sowholly spoiled in character. I have found very fashionable girls capableof large sacrifices for love, or kindred, or obedience to some divinevoice. This proves that they have only to be taught that there issomething better than being very fashionable, to take it thankfully. Butthe men seemed sordid and selfish, and grown worldly-wise before theirtime. 

Yet it might make us both more just and more generous to remember thatduring our time of peril as a nation, these very ranks of purposelessmen furnished us soldiers and money, and a cheerful faith in the cause, just as these very legions of idle women gave us workers and nurses. 

There is this cheer for American readers of these pages: What we havebeen told is our national sin of extravagance, the too pronouncedcharacter of our social life, the frivolity and ignorance of our women, the lack of a universal and high-toned society, we find not to be inborndefects peculiar to our system of government, and hopeless of change, but vices, also, of an old and cultivated and dignified nation. 

A cheerful optimist may well believe that we are in a transition state;that women, impatient of the old life which was without thought andculture and motive, in the blind struggle to something better havefallen for the time on something worse; that with the movement of theage toward mutual helpfulness, man to man, women will move not lesssteadily, if more slowly, and come gradually into truer relations witheach other and with men. It will not hurt woman to be criticised. Shehas too long been assured of her angelhood, and denied her womanhood. Itwill not help her very greatly to be criticised as if she were beingtomahawked. If they who come to scoff would but remain to teach! Therehas been much ungentle judgment of men by women, of women by men. Thoreau said, "Man is continually saying to Woman, 'Why are you not morewise?' Woman is continually saying to Man, 'Why are you not moreloving?' Unless each is both wise and loving there can be no realgrowth. "

 L. G. C. 

THE

MODERN WOMEN. 

THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD. 

Time was when the stereotyped phrase, "a fair young English girl, " meantthe ideal of womanhood; to us, at least, of home birth and breeding. Itmeant a creature generous, capable, and modest; something franker than aFrenchwoman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as anAmerican, but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful. It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of theinnate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neither bold inbearing nor masculine in mind; a girl who, when she married, would beher husband's friend and companion, but never his rival; one who wouldconsider their interests identical, and not hold him as just so muchfair game for spoil; who would make his house his true home and place ofrest, not a mere passage-place for vanity and ostentation to go through;a tender mother, an industrious house-keeper, a judicious mistress. Weprided ourselves as a nation on our women. We thought we had the pickof creation in this fair young English girl of ours, and envied no othermen their own. 

We admired the languid grace and subtle fire of the South; the docilityand affectionateness of the East seemed to us sweet and simple andrestful; the vivacious sparkle of the trim and sprightly Parisienne wasa pleasant little excitement when we met with it in its own domain; butour allegiance never wandered from our brown-haired girls at home, andour hearts were less vagrant than our fancies. This was in the old time, and when English girls were content to be what God and nature had madethem. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to theworld a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if wehad created another nation altogether. The girl of the period, and thefair young English girl of the past, have nothing in common saveancestry and their mother-tongue: and even of this last the modernversion makes almost a new language through the copious additions it hasreceived from the current slang of the day. 

The girl of the period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints herface, as the first articles of her personal religion; whose sole idea oflife is plenty of fun and luxury; and whose dress is the object of suchthought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavor in this is tooutvie her neighbors in the extravagance of fashion. No matter whether, as in the time of crinolines, she sacrificed decency, or, as now in thetime of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness; no matter either, whethershe makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience to every one shemeets. 

The girl of the period has done away with such moral muffishness asconsideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke. It was allvery well in old-fashioned times, when fathers and mothers had someauthority and were treated with respect, to be tutored and made to obey, but she is far too fast and flourishing to be stopped in mid-career bythese slow old morals; and as she dresses to please herself, she doesnot care if she displeases every one else. Nothing is too extraordinaryand nothing too exaggerated for her vitiated taste; and things which inthemselves would be useful reforms if let alone become monstrositiesworse than those which they have displaced so soon as she begins tomanipulate and improve. If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of themud, she raises hers midway to her knee. If the absurd structure of wireand buckram, once called a bonnet, is modified to something that shallprotect the wearer's face without putting out the eyes of her companion, she cuts hers down to four straws and a rosebud, or a tag of lace and abunch of glass beads. 

If there is a reaction against an excess of Rowland's Macassar, and hairshiny and sticky with grease is thought less nice than if left clean andhealthy crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out on end likecertain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back like MadgeWildfire's, and thinks herself all the more beautiful the nearer sheapproaches in look to a maniac or a negress. With purity of taste shehas lost also that far more precious purity and delicacy of perceptionwhich sometimes mean more than appears on the surface. What the_demi-monde_ does in its frantic efforts to excite attention, she alsodoes in imitation. If some fashionable _dévergondée en evidence_ isreported to have come out with her dress below her shoulder-blades, anda gold strap for all the sleeve thought necessary, the girl of theperiod follows suit next day; and then wonders that men sometimesmistake her for her prototype, or that mothers of girls not quite so fargone as herself refuse her as a companion for their daughters. She hasblunted the fine edges of feeling so much that she cannot understand whyshe should be condemned for an imitation of form which does not includeimitation of fact; she cannot be made to see that modesty of appearanceand virtue ought to be inseparable, and that no good girl can afford toappear bad, under penalty of receiving the contempt awarded to the bad. 

This imitation of the _demi-monde_ in dress leads to something in mannerand feeling, not quite so pronounced, perhaps, but far too like to behonorable to herself or satisfactory to her friends. It leads to slang, bold talk, and fastness; to the love of pleasure and indifference toduty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; touselessness at home, dissatisfaction with the monotony of ordinary life, and horror of all useful work; in a word, to the worst forms of luxuryand selfishness, to the most fatal effects arising from want of highprinciple and absence of tender feeling. 

The girl of the period envies the queens of the _demi-monde_ far morethan she abhors them. She sees them gorgeously attired and sumptuouslyappointed, and she knows them to be flattered, fêted, and courted with acertain disdainful admiration of which she catches only the admirationwhile she ignores the disdain. They have all for which her soul ishungering, and she never stops to reflect at what a price they havebought their gains, and what fearful moral penalties they pay for theirsensuous pleasures. She sees only the coarse gilding on the base token, and shuts her eyes to the hideous figure in the midst, and the foullegend written around the edge. 

It is this envy of the pleasures, and indifference to the sins, of thesewomen of the _demi-monde_ which is doing such infinite mischief to themodern girl. They brush too closely by each other, if not in actualdeeds, yet in aims and feelings; for the luxury which is bought by vicewith the one is the thing of all in life most passionately desired bythe other, though she is not yet prepared to pay quite the same price. Unfortunately, she has already paid too much, all, indeed, that oncegave her distinctive national character. No one can say of the modernEnglish girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. The oldfault so often found by keen-sighted Frenchwomen, that, she was sofatally _romanesque_, so prone to sacrifice appearances and socialadvantages for love, will never be set down to the girl of the period. Love, indeed, is the last thing she thinks of, and the least of thedangers besetting her. Love in a cottage, that seductive dream whichused to vex the heart and disturb the calculations of prudent mothers, is now a myth of past ages. The legal barter of herself for so muchmoney, representing so much dash, so much luxury and pleasure; that isher idea of marriage; the only idea worth entertaining. 

For all seriousness of thought respecting the duties or the consequencesof marriage, she has not a trace. If children come, they find but astepmother's cold welcome from her; and if her husband thinks that hehas married anything that is to belong to him--a _tacens et placensuxor_ pledged to make him happy--the sooner he wakes from hishallucination and understands that he has simply married some one whowill condescend to spend his money on herself, and who will shelter herindiscretions behind the shield of his name, the less severe will be hisdisappointment. She has married his house, his carriage, his balance atthe banker's, his title; and he himself is just the inevitable conditionclogging the wheels of her fortune; at best an adjunct, to be toleratedwith more or less patience as may chance. For it is only theold-fashioned sort, not girls of the period _pur sang_, that marry forlove, or put the husband before the banker. 

But she does not marry easily. Men are afraid of her; and with reason. They may amuse themselves with her for an evening, but they do not takeher readily for life. Besides, after all her efforts, she is only apoor copy of the real thing; and the real thing is far more amusing thanthe copy, because it is real. Men can get that whenever they like; andwhen they go into their mother's drawing-rooms, to see their sisters andtheir sisters' friends, they want something of quite different flavor. _Toujours perdrix_ is bad providing all the world over; but a continualweak imitation of _toujours perdrix_ is worse. If we must have only onekind of thing, let us have it genuine; and the queens of St. John's Woodin their unblushing honesty, rather than their imitators andmake-believes in Bayswater and Belgravia. For, at whatever cost ofshocked self-love or pained modesty it may be, it cannot be too plainlytold to the modern English girl that the net result of her presentmanner of life is to assimilate her as nearly as possible to a class ofwomen whom we must not call by their proper--or improper--name. And weare willing to believe that she has still some modesty of soul lefthidden under all this effrontery of fashion, and that, if she could bemade to see herself as she appears to the eyes of men, she would mendher ways before too late. 

It is terribly significant of the present state of things when men arefree to write as they do of the women of their own nation. Every word ofcensure flung against them is two-edged, and wounds those who condemn asmuch as those who are condemned; for surely it need hardly be said thatmen hold nothing so dear as the honor of their women, and that no oneliving would willingly lower the repute of his mother or his sisters. Itis only when these have placed themselves beyond the pale of masculinerespect that such things could be written as are written now; when theybecome again what they were once they will gather round them the loveand homage and chivalrous devotion which were then an Englishwoman'snatural inheritance. The marvel, in the present fashion of life amongwomen, is how it holds its ground in spite of the disapprobation of men. It used to be an old-time notion that the sexes were made for eachother, and that it was only natural for them to please each other, andto set themselves out for that end. But the girl of the period does notplease men. She pleases them as little as she elevates them; and howlittle she does that, the class of women she has taken as her models ofitself testifies. 

All men whose opinion is worth having prefer the simple and genuine girlof the past, with her tender little ways and pretty bashful modesties, to this loud and rampant modernization, with her false red hair andpainted skin, talking slang as glibly as a man, and by preferenceleading the conversation to doubtful subjects. She thinks she is piquantand exciting when she thus makes herself the bad copy of a worseoriginal; and she will not see that though men laugh with her they donot respect her, though they flirt with her they do not marry her; shewill not believe that she is not the kind of thing they want, and thatshe is acting against nature and her own interests when she disregardstheir advice and offends their taste. We do not see how she makes outher account, viewing her life from any side; but all we can do is towait patiently until the national madness has passed, and our women havecome back again to the old English ideal, once the most beautiful, themost modest, the most essentially womanly in the world. 

FOOLISH VIRGINS. 

The heroines of the London season--the fillies, we mean, who have beenentered for the great matrimonial stakes, and have been mentioned in thebetting--have by this time exchanged the fast pleasures of the town forthe vapid pastimes of the country. We do not of course concern ourselveswith those poor simple girls who only repeat the lives and morals ofold-fashioned English homes, and who are too respectable and too modestto be pointed at as the girls of the season. We speak of the fastsisterhood only. After three months of egregious dissipation they enterduly upon the next stage of their regular yearly alternations. Threemonths of headlong folly are succeeded by three months of deadly_ennui_. Action and reaction are always equal. The pains and wearinessof moral crapulousness arise in nice proportion to the passion of thedebauch. It is a dismal hour when we look on the withered leaves of lastnight's garland. 

The lovely and unlovely beings who are now living depressed days farfrom Belgravia and the Row have, it is true, but joyless orgies to lookback upon. Their pleasures gave but a pinchbeck joviality after all, were but a thin lacker spread over mercenary cares and heart-achingjealousies--not the jealousies of passion, but the nipping vulgarvexation with which a shopkeeper trembles lest a customer should go tohis rival over the way. Still there was excitement--the excitement ofoutdoing a rival in shamelessness of apparel, in reckless abandonment ofmanner, in the unblushing tolerance of impudent speech, in all the otherelements of ignoble casino-emulation. Above all, there was the ticklingexcitement of knowing that all this was in some sort clandestine; thatostensibly, and on the surface, things looked as if they were allexhibiting human nature at its stateliest, most dignified, and mostrefined pitch. The consciousness that the thin surface only concealssome of the worst elements of character in full force and activity mustgive a pleasantly stinging sensation to an acutely cynical woman. However, this is all over for a time. 

For a time the half-dressed young Mænads of the season will be foundclothed and in their right minds. And what sort of a right mind is it?We know the kind of preparation which they have had for the business ofthe season--for flirting, husband-hunting, waltzing, dressing so as toescape the regulations of the police, and the rest. For this theirtraining has been perfect. But wise men agree that education shouldcomprehend training for all the parts of life equally--for pleasure notless than for business, for hours of relaxation as well as for hours ofstrain and pressure, for leisure just as much as for active occupation. Education is supposed to arm us at every point. Nobody in this world wasever perfectly educated. Everybody has at least one side on which he isweak--one quarter where temptations are either not irresistible, or elseare not recognised as alluring to what is wrong. But we all know thattraining, though never perfect, can make the difference between adecently right and happy life and a bad, corrupt half-life or no life. What does training do for the nimble-footed young beauties of the Londonball-room? It makes them nimble-footed, we admit. And what else?

The root-idea of the training of girls of the uppermost class in thiscountry is perhaps the most absolutely shameless that ever existedanywhere out of Circassia or Georgia. It puts clean out of sight thenotion that women are rational beings as well as animals, or that theyare destined to be the companions of men who are, or ought to be, alsosomething more than animals. It takes the mind into account only as anoccasionally useful accident of body. The mind ought to be developed alittle, and in such a way as to make the body more piquant andattractive. Like the candle inside a Chinese lantern, it may serve tolight up and show to advantage the pretty devices outside. But theoutside is the important thing, and the inside only incidental. Insipidity of mind is perhaps a trifle objectionable, because there area few young men of property who dislike insipidity, and who thereforemight be lost from the toils in consequence. It is a crotchet and aneccentricity in a man to desire a wife with a bright mind, but sincethere are such persons, it is just as well to pay a slight attention tothe mind in odd moments when one is not engaged upon the more urgentbusiness of the body. You don't know what may happen, and it is possiblethat the most eligible _parti_ of a season may dislike the idea oftaking a female idiot to wife. Still it would be absurd to change theentire system of up-bringing for our girls merely because here and therea man has a distaste for a fool. 

The majority of men are incapable of gauging power of intellect andfineness of character. But the veriest blockhead and simpleton who everlounged in a doorway or lisped in Pall Mall can tell a fine woman whenhe sees her, and is probably able to find pleasure and hope in thespectacle. It is these blockheads and simpletons who thus set the mode. They fix the standard of fashionable female education. Education, or theastounding modern conception of it, means preparation of girls for themarriage market. If a girl does not get well married, it were better forher and for her mother also if she had never been born, or had been castwith a millstone round her neck into the sea. Whom she marries--whethera man old enough to be her father, whether a pattern of imbecility, whether a man of a notoriously debauched character--this matters not ajot. Only let him have money. This being the conception of marriage, andmarriage being the aim of all sagacious up-bringing, as most menunhappily are more surely taken on their animal than on their rationalside, it is perfectly natural that you should strive to bring up aworthy family of attractive young animals. And let us pause upon this. 

If the idea which, even at its best, would be so deplorably imperfect, were rationally carried out, still it would not be so absolutelypestilent and debasing as it is. Physical education, rightly practiced, is a fine and indispensable process in right living. If the system hadfor its end the rearing of really robust and healthy creatures, it wouldmean something. On the contrary, however, anybody who makes a tourthrough fashionable rooms in the season may see that, in a vast quantityof cases, the heroines of the night are just as sorrily off in bodilystamina as they are for intellectual ideas and interests. Here we againencounter the fundamental blunder, that it is only the outside aboutwhich we need concern ourselves. Let a woman be well dressed (orjudiciously undressed), have bright eyes, a whitish skin, roundedoutlines, and that suffices. All this a wise English mother willcertainly secure, just as a wise Chinese woman will take care to havetiny feet, plucked eyebrows, and black finger-nails. 

If you go into a nursery you will see the process already at work. Thelittle girl, who would fain exercise her young limbs by manifold rudesprawlings and rushing hither and thither, and single combats with herbrothers, is tricked out in ribbons and gay frocks, and bid sit still insolemn decorum. With every year of her growth this principle ofattention to outside trickeries and fineries is more rigidly pursued. Less and less every year are the nerves and muscles, the restlessactivities of arms and legs, exercised and made to purvey new vigor tothe life. The blood is allowed to grow stagnant. The life of the woman, even as mere animal, becomes poor and morbid and artificial. By dint ofmuch attention and many devices, the outside of the body is maintainedcomely in the eyes of people whose notions of comeliness are thoroughlyartificial and sophisticated. But how can there be any health with higheating, little exercise, above all, with the mind left absolutely vacantof all interests? The Belgravian mother does not even understand themiserable trade she has chosen. She is as poor a physical trainer as sheis poor morally and intellectually. 

The truth is that in a human being, even from the physical point ofview, it is rather a dangerous thing to ignore the intellect and theemotions. Nature resents being ignored. If you do not cultivate her, shewill assuredly avenge herself. If you do not get wheat out of your pieceof ground, she will abundantly give you tares. And there can be no otherrule expressly invented for the benefit of fashionable young women. Their moral nature, if nobody ever taught them to keep an eager eye uponit, is soon overgrown, either with flaunting poison plants, or at bestwith dull gray moss. The parent dreams that the daughter's mind is allswept and garnished. Lo, there are seven or any other number of devilsthat have entered in and taken possession, more or less permanently. Thehuman creature who has never been taught to take an interest in what isright and wholesome will, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, take aninterest in what is wrong and unwholesome. You cannot keep minds in astate of vacuum. A girl, like anybody else, will obey the bent of thecharacter which has been given either by the education of design or themore usual education of mere accidental experience. Everything depends, in the ordinary course of things, upon the general view of the aims andobjects of life which you succeed, deliberately or by hazard, increating. 

A girl is not taught that marriage has grave, moral and rationalpurposes, itself being no more than a means. On the contrary, it isalways figured in her eyes as an end, and as an end scarcely at allconnected with a moral and rational companionship. It is, she fancies, the gate to some sort of paradise whose mysterious joys are not to beanalysed. She forgets that there are no such swift-coming spontaneousparadises in this world, where the future can never be anything morethan the child of the present, indelibly stamped with every feature andline of its parent. This castle-building, however, is harmless. If itdoes not strengthen, still it does not absolutely impoverish or corrupt, characters. Of some castle-building one cannot say so much. Character_is_ assuredly corrupted by avaricious dreams of marriage as a road tomaterial opulence and luxury. There is, indeed, no end to the depravedbroodings which may come to an empty and undirected mind. If theemotions and the intellect are not tended and trained, they will run toan evil and evil-propagating seed. Rooted and incurable frivolty is thebest that can come of it; corruption is the worst. 

People madly suppose that going to church, or giving an occasionalblanket to a sick old woman, will suffice to implant a worthy conceptionof the aims of life. At this moment, some mothers are, perhaps, believing that the dull virtue of the country will in a few days redressthe balance which had been too much discomposed by the rush and whirl ofthe town. As if one strong set of silly interests and emotions could beeffaced at will by simple change of scene, without substitution of newinterests and emotions. Excess of frivolous excitement is not repairedor undone by excess of mere blankness and nothingness. The dreariness ofthe virtue of the _villeggiatura_ is as noxious as the whirl of themercenary and little virtuous period of the season. Teach young womenfrom their childhood upwards that marriage is their single career, andit is inevitable that they should look upon every hour which is notspent in promoting this sublime end and aim as so much subtracted fromlife. Penetrated with unwholesome excitement in one part of theirexistence, they are penetrated with killing _ennui_ in the next. 

If mothers would only add to their account of marriage as the end of awoman's existence--which may be right or it may not--a definition ofmarriage as an association with a reasonable and reflective being, theywould speedily effect a revolution in the present miserable system. Tothe business of finding a husband a young lady would then add the notless important business of making herself a rational person, instead ofa more or less tastefully decorated doll with a passion for a greatdeal of money. She might awaken to the fact, which would at firststartle her very much no doubt, that there is a great portion of auniverse outside her own circle and her own mind. This simple discoverywould of itself effect a revolution that might transform her from beingan insipid idiot into a tolerably rational being. As it is, the universeto her is only a collection of rich bachelors in search of wives, and ofodious rivals who are contending with her for one or more of these toowary prizes. All high social aims, fine broad humanizing ways ofsurveying life, are unknown to her, or else appear in her eyes as theworship of Mumbo Jumbo appears in the eyes of the philosopher. Shethinks of nothing except her private affairs. She is indifferent topolitics, to literature--in a word, to anything that requires thought. She reads novels of a kind, because novels are all about love, and lovehad once something to do with marriage, her own peculiar and absorbingbusiness. Beyond this her mind does not stir. Any more positively grossstate one cannot imagine. There are women who are by accident moredegraded physically. _Mutatis mutandis_, there are none more degraded, morally and intellectually, than those whose minds are constantly bentupon marriage at any cost, and with anybody, however decrepit, howeversilly, and however evil, who can make a settlement. 

LITTLE WOMEN. 

The conventional idea of a brave, an energetic, or a supremely criminalwoman is a tall, dark-haired, large-armed virago, who might pass as theyounger brother of her husband, and about whom nature seemed to havehesitated before determining whether to make her a man or a woman--akind of debatable land, in fact, between the two sexes, and almost asmuch one as the other. Helen Macgregor, Lady Macbeth, Catharine de'Medici, Mrs. Manning, and the old-fashioned murderesses in novels, areall of the muscular, black-brigand type, with more or less of regalgrace superadded according to circumstances; and it would be thoughtnothing but a puerile fancy to suppose the contrary of those whosepersonal description is not already known. Crime, indeed, especially inart and fiction, has generally been painted in very nice proportion tothe number of cubic inches embodied, and the depth of color employed;though we are bound to add that the public favor runs towards muscularheroines almost as much as towards muscular murderesses, which to acertain extent redresses the overweighted balance. 

Our later novelists, however, have altered the whole setting of thepalette. Instead of five foot ten of black and brown, they have gone infor four foot nothing of pink and yellow; instead of tumbled masses ofraven hair, they have shining coils of purest gold; instead of hollowcaverns whence flash unfathomable eyes eloquent of every damnablepassion, they have limpid lakes of heavenly blue; and their worstsinners are in all respects fashioned as much after the outwardsemblance of the ideal saint as can well be managed. The original notionwas a very good one, and the revolution did not come before it waswanted; but it has been a little overdone of late, and we are threatenedwith as great a surfeit of small-limbed, yellow-headed criminals as wehave had of the man-like black. One gets weary of the most perfect modelin time, if too constantly repeated; as now, when we have all begun tofeel that the resources of the angel's face and demon's soul have beenmore heavily drawn on than is quite fair, and that, given "heavy braidsof golden hair, " "bewildering blue eyes, " "a small lithe frame, " "aspecial delicacy of feet and hands, " and we are booked for thecompanionship, through three volumes, of a young person to whomMessalina or Lucretia Borgia would be a mere novice. 

And yet there is a physiological truth in this association of energywith smallness; perhaps, also, with a certain tint of yellow hair, which, with a dash of red through it, is decidedly suggestive of nervousforce. Suggestiveness, indeed, does not go very far in an argument; butthe frequent connection of energy and smallness in women is a thingwhich all may verify in their own circles. In daily life, who is thereally formidable woman to encounter?--the black-browed, broad-shouldered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as aman's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no more biceps thana ladybird, and of just about equal strength with a sparrow? Nine timesout of ten, the giantess with the heavy shoulders and broad blackeyebrows is a timid, feeble-minded, good tempered person, incapable ofanything harsher than a mild remonstrance with her maid, or a gentlechastisement of her children. Nine times out of ten her husband has herin hand in the most perfect working order, so that she would swear themoon shone at midday if it were his pleasure that she should make a foolof herself in that direction. One of the most obedient and indolent ofearth's daughters, she gives no trouble to any one, save the trouble ofrousing, exciting, and setting her agoing; while, as for the conceptionor execution of any naughty piece of self-assertion, she is as utterlyincapable as if she were a child unborn, and demands nothing better thanto feel the pressure of the leading-strings, and to know exactly bytheir strain where she is desired to go and what to do. 

But the little woman is irrepressible. Too fragile to come into thefighting section of humanity, a puny creature whom one blow from a man'shuge fist could annihilate, absolutely fearless, and insolent with theinsolence which only those dare show who know that retribution cannotfollow--what can be done with her? She is afraid of nothing, and to becontrolled by no one. Sheltered behind her weakness as behind a tripleshield of brass, the angriest man dare not touch her, while she provokeshim to a combat in which his hands are tied. She gets her own way ineverything, and everywhere. At home and abroad she is equally dominantand irrepressible, equally free from obedience and from fear. Who breaksall the public orders in sights and shows, and, in spite of king, kaiser, or policeman X, goes where it is expressly forbidden that sheshall go? Not the large-boned, muscular woman, whatever her temperament;unless, indeed, of the exceptionally haughty type in distinctly inferiorsurroundings, and then she can queen it royally enough, and seteverything at most lordly defiance. But in general the large-boned womanobeys the orders given, because, while near enough to man to be somewhaton a par with him, she is still undeniably his inferior. She is toostrong to shelter herself behind her weakness, yet too weak to asserther strength and defy her master on equal grounds. She is like aflying-fish, not one thing wholly; and while capable of theinconveniences of two lives, is incapable of the privileges of either. 

It is not she, for all her well-developed frame and formidable looks, but the little woman, who breaks the whole code of laws and defies alltheir defenders--the pert, smart, pretty little woman, who laughs inyour face, and goes straight ahead if you try to turn her to the righthand or to the left, receiving your remonstrances with the most sublimeindifference, as if you were talking a foreign language she could notunderstand. She carries everything before her, wherever she is. You maysee her stepping over barriers, slipping under ropes, penetrating to thegreen benches with a red ticket, taking the best places on the platformover the heads of their rightful owners, settling herself among thereserved seats without an inch of pasteboard to float her. You cannotturn her out by main force. British chivalry objects to the publiclaying on of hands in the case of a woman, even when most recalcitrantand disobedient; more particularly if a small and fragile-looking woman. So that, if it is only a usurpation of places especially masculine, sheis allowed to retain what she has got amid the grave looks of theelders--not really displeased though at a flutter of her ribbons amongthem--and the titters and nudges of the young fellows. 

If the battle is between her and another woman, they are left to fightit out as they best can, with the odds laid heavily on the little one. All this time there is nothing of the tumult of contest about her. Fieryand combative as she generally is, when breaking the law in publicplaces she is the very soul of serene daring. She shows no heat, nopassion, no turbulence; she leaves these as extra weapons of defence towomen who are assailable. For herself she requires no such aids. Sheknows her capabilities and the line of attack that best suits her, andshe knows, too, that the fewer points of contact she exposes the morelikely she is to slip into victory; the more she assumes, and the lessshe argues, the slighter the hold she gives her opponents. She iseither perfectly good-humored or blankly innocent; she either smiles youinto indulgence or wearies you into compliance by the sheer hopelessnessof making any impression on her. She may, indeed, if of the veryvociferous and shrill-tongued kind, burst out into such a noisydemonstration that you are glad to escape from her, no matter whatspoils you leave on her hands; just as a mastiff will slink away from abantam hen all heckled feathers and screeching cackle, and tremendousassumption of doing something terrible if he does not look out. Any waythe little woman is unconquerable; and a tiny fragment of humanity at apublic show, setting all rules and regulations at defiance, is onlycarrying out in the matter of benches the manner of life to which naturehas dedicated her from the beginning. 

As a rule, the little woman is brave. When the lymphatic giantess fallsinto a faint or goes off into hysterics, she storms, or bustles about, or holds on like a game terrier, according to the work on hand. She willfly at any man who annoys her, and bears herself as equal to the biggestand strongest fellow of her acquaintance. In general she does it all bysheer pluck, and is not notorious for subtlety or craft. Had Delilahbeen a little woman she would never have taken the trouble to shearSamson's locks. She would have defied him with all his strengthuntouched on his head, and she would have overcome him too. Judith andJael were both probably large women. The work they went about demanded acertain strength of muscle and toughness of sinew; but who can say thatJezebel was not a small, freckled, auburn-haired Lady Audley of hertime, full of the concentrated fire, the electric force, the passionaterecklessness of her type? Regan and Goneril might have been beautifuldemons of the same pattern; we have the example of the Marchioness deBrinvilliers as to what amount of spiritual deviltry can exist with theface and manner of an angel direct from heaven; and perhaps Cordelia wasa tall dark-haired girl, with a pair of brown eyes, and a long nosesloping downwards. 

Look at modern Jewesses, with their flashing Oriental orbs, theirnight-black tresses, and the dusky shadows of their olive-coloredcomplexions; as catalogued properties according to the ideal, they wouldbe placed in the list of the natural criminals and lawbreakers, while inreality they are about as meek and docile a set of women as are to befound within the four seas. Pit a fiery little Welsh woman or a petulantParisienne against the most regal and Junonic amongst them, and let themtry conclusions in courage, in energy, or in audacity; the IsraelitishJuno will go down before either of the small Philistines, and thefallacy of weight and color in the generation of power will be shownwithout the possibility of denial. Even in those old days of long ago, when human characteristics were embodied and deified, we do not findthat the white-armed, large-limbed Here, though queen by right ofmarriage, lorded it over her sister goddesses by any superior energy orforce of nature. On the contrary, she was rather a heavy-going person, and, unless moved to anger by her husband's numerous infidelities, tookher Olympian life placidly enough, and once or twice got cheated in away that did no great credit to her sagacity. A little Frenchwoman wouldhave sailed around her easily; and as it was, shrewish though she was inher speech when provoked, her husband not only deceived but chastisedher, and reduced her to penitence and obedience as no little woman wouldhave suffered herself to be reduced. 

There is one celebrated race of women who were probably thepowerfully-built, large-limbed creatures they are assumed to have been, and as brave and energetic as they were strong and big--the Norse womenof the sagas, who, for good or evil, seem to have been a veryinfluential element in the old Northern life. Prophetesses, physicians, dreamers of dreams and the accredited interpreters as well, endowed withmagic powers, admitted to a share in the councils of men, brave in war, active in peace, these fair-haired Scandinavian women were the fitcomrades of their men, the fit wives and mothers of the Berserkers andthe Vikings. They had no tame or easy life of it, if all we hear of themis true. To defend the farm and the homestead during their husbands'absence, and to keep themselves intact against all bold rovers to whomthe Tenth Commandment was an unknown law; to dazzle and bewilder bymagic arts when they could not conquer by open strength; to unite craftand courage, deception and daring, loyalty and independence, demandedno small amount of opposing qualities. But the Steingerdas and Gudrunaswere generally equal to any emergency of fate or fortune, and slashedtheir way through the history of their time more after the manner of menthan women; supplementing their downright blows by side thrusts ofcraftier cleverness when they had to meet power with skill, and werefain to overthrow brutality by fraud. The Norse women were certainly aslargely framed as they were mentally energetic, and as crafty as either;but we know of no other women who unite the same characteristics, andare at once cunning, strong, brave and true. 

On the whole, then, the little women have the best of it. More pettedthan their bigger sisters, and infinitely more powerful, they have theirown way in part because it really does not seem worth while to contest apoint with such little creatures. There is nothing that wounds a man'sself-respect in any victory they may get or claim. Where there isabsolute inequality of strength, there can be no humiliation in theself-imposed defeat of the stronger; and as it is always more pleasantto have peace than war, and as big men for the most part rather likethan not to put their necks under the tread of tiny feet, the littlewoman goes on her way triumphant to the end, breaking all the laws shedoes not like, and throwing down all the barriers that impede herprogress, perfectly irresistible and irrepressible in all circumstancesand under any condition. 

PINCHBECK. 

Not many years ago no really refined gentlewoman would have wornpinchbeck. False jewelry and imitation lace were touchstones with thesex, and the woman who would condescend to either was assumed, perhapsnot quite without reason, to have lost something more than the mereperception of technical taste. This feeling ran through the whole ofsociety, and pinchbeck was considered as at once despicable anddisreputable. The successful speculator, sprung from nothing, who hadmade his fortune during the war, might buy land, build himself amansion, and set up a magnificent establishment, but he was never lookedon as more than a lucky adventurer by the aboriginal gentry of theplace; and the blue blood, perhaps nourishing itself on thin beer, turned up its nose disdainfully at the claret and madeira which had beenpersonally earned and not lineally inherited. This exclusiveness wasnarrow in spirit, and hard in individual working; and yet there was awholesome sentiment underlying its pride which made it valuable insocial ethics, if immoral on the score of natural equality and humancharity. It was the rejection of pretentiousness, however gilded andglittering, in favor of reality, however poor and barren; it was thecondemnation of make-believes--the repudiation of pinchbeck. It is not ageneration since this was the normal attitude of society towards its_nouveaux riches_ and Brummagem jewelry; but time moves fast in theselater days, and national sentiments change as quickly as nationalfashions. 

We are in the humor to rehabilitate all things, and pinchbeck has nowits turn with the rest. The lady of slender means who would refuse towear imitation lace and false jewelry is as rare as the country societywhich would exclude the _nouveau riche_ because of his newness, and notadopt him because of his riches. The whole anxiety now is, not what athing is, but how it looks--not its quality, but its appearance. Everypart of social and domestic life is dedicated to the apotheosis ofpinchbeck. It meets us at the hall door, where miserable make-believesof stuccoed pillars are supposed to confer a quasi-palatial dignity on awretched little villa, run up without regard to one essential of homecomfort or of architectural truth. It goes with us into the cold, conventional drawing-room, where all is for show, nothing for use, whereno one lives, and which is just the mere pretence of a dwelling-room, set out to deceive the world into the belief that its cheap finery isthe expression of the every-day life and circumstances of the family. Itsits with us at the table, which a confectioner out of a back street hasfurnished, and where everything, down to the very flowers, is hired forthe occasion. It glitters in the brooches and bracelets of the women, inthe studs and signet-rings of the men; it is in the hired broughams, the hired waiters, the pigmy page-boys, the faded paper flowers, thecheap champagne, and the affectation of social consideration that meetus at every turn. The whole of the lower section of the middle classesis penetrated through and through with the worship of pinchbeck, and forone family that holds itself in the honor and simplicity of truth, tenthousand lie, to the world and to themselves, in frippery and pretence. 

The greatest sinners in this are women. Men are often ostentatious, often extravagant, and not unfrequently dishonest in that broadway ofdishonesty which is called living beyond their means--sometimes makingup the deficit by practices which end in the dock of the Old Bailey;but, as a rule, they go in for the real thing in details, and theirpinchbeck is at the core rather than on the surface. Women, on thecontrary, give themselves up to a more general pretentiousness, and, provided they can make a show, care very little about the means;provided they can ring their metal on the counter, they ignore the wantof the hall-stamp underneath. Locality, dress, their visiting-list, anddomestic appearances are the four things which they demand shall be inaccord with their neighbor's; and for these four surfaces they willsacrifice the whole internal fabric. They will have a showy-lookinghouse, encrusted with base ornamentation and false grandeur, though itlets in wind, rain, and sound almost as if it were made of mud orcanvas, rather than a plain and substantial dwelling-place, with comfortinstead of stucco, and moderately thick walls instead of porches andpilasters. Most of their time is necessarily passed at home, but theyundergo all manner of house discomfort resulting from this preference ofcheap finery over solid structure, rather than forego their "genteellocality" and stereotyped ornamentation. A family of daughters on theone side, diligent over the "Battle of Prague;" a nursery full of cryingbabies on the other; more Battles of Prague opposite, diversified by afuture Lind practicing her scales unweariedly; water-pipes bursting inthe frost, walls streaming in the thaw, the lower offices reeking andgreen with damp, and the upper rooms too insecure for unrestrictedmovement--all these, and more miseries of the same kind, she willinglyencounters rather than shift into a locality relatively unfashionable toher sphere, but where she could have substantiality and comfort for thesame rent that she pays now for flash and pinchbeck. 

In dress it is the same thing. She must look like her neighbors, nomatter whether they can spend pounds to her shillings, and run up amilliner's bill beyond what she can afford for the whole family living. If they can buy gold, she can manage pinchbeck; glass that looks likejet, like filagree work, like anything else she fancies, is every bit toher as good as the real thing; and if she cannot compass Valenciennesand Mechlin, she can go to Nottingham and buy machine-made imitationsthat will make quite as fine a show. How poor soever she may be, shemust hang herself about with ornaments made of painted wood, glass, orvulcanite; she must break out into spangles and beads and chains and_benoîtons_, which are cheap luxuries, and, as she thinks, effective. Flimsy silks make as rich a rustle to her ear as the stateliest brocade, and cotton-velvet delights the soul that cannot aspire to Genoa. Thelove of pinchbeck is so deeply ingrained in her that even if, in amomentary fit of aberration into good taste, she condescends to a simplematerial about which there can be neither disguise nor pretence, shemust load it with that detestable cheap finery of hers till she makesherself as vulgar in a muslin as she was in a cotton velvet. 

The _simplex munditiis_, which used to be held as a canon of femininegood taste, is now abandoned altogether, and the more she can bedizenherself according to the pattern of a Sandwich islander the morebeautiful she thinks herself, the more certain the fascination of themen, and the greater the jealousy of the women. This is the cause of allthe tags and streamers, the bits of ribbon here and flying ends of lacesthere, the puffed-out chignons, and the trailing curls cut off some deadgirl's head, wherewith the modern Englishwoman delights to make herselfhideous. It is pinchbeck throughout. But we fear she is past praying forin the matter of fashion, and that she is too far given over to theabomination of pretence to be called back to truth for any ethicalreason whatsoever, or indeed by anything short of high examples. Andthen, if simplicity became the fashion, we should have our pinchbeckvotaries translating that into extremes as they do now withornamentation; if my lady took to plainness, they would go tonakedness. 

Another bit of pinchbeck is the visiting-list--the cards of invitationstuck against the drawing-room glass--with the grandest names andlargest fortunes put forward, irrespective of dates or tenses. Thechance contact with the people represented may be quite out of theordinary circumstances of life, but their names are paraded as if anaccident, which has happened once and may never occur again, were in thedaily order of events. They are brought to the front to make othersbelieve that the whole social thickness is of the same quality; thatgenerals and admirals and sirs and ladies are the common elements of thespecial circle in which the family habitually moves; that pinchbeck isgood gold, and that stucco means marble. Women are exceedingly tenaciousof these pasteboard appearances. 

In a house with its couple of female servants, where formal visitors arevery rare, and invitations, save by friendly word of mouth, rarer still, you may see a cracked china bowl or cheap mock _patera_ on the halltable, to receive the cards which are assumed to come in the thickshowers usual with high people who have hall-porters, and a thousandnames or more on their books. The pile gets horribly dusty to be sure, and the upper layer turns by degrees from cream-color to brown; butantiquity is not held to weaken the force of grandeur. The titled cardleft on a chance occasion more than a year ago still keeps the uppermostplace, still represents a perpetual renewal of aristocratic visits, andan unbroken succession of social triumphs. Yellowed and soiled, it isnone the less the trump-card of the list; and while the outside worldlaughs and ridicules, the lady at home thinks that no one sees throughthis puerile pretence, and that the visiting-list is accepted accordingto the status of the fugleman at the head. She is very happy if she cansay that the pattern of her dress, her cap, her bonnet, was taken fromthat of Lady So and So; and we may be quite sure that all personalcontact with grand folks does so express itself, and perpetuate thememory of the event, by such imitation--at a distance. It is too good anoccasion for the airing of pinchbeck to be disregarded, and, consequently, for the most part is turned to this practical account. Whether the fashion will be suited to the material, or to the otherparts of the dress, is quite a secondary consideration, it being of theessence of pinchbeck to despise both fitness and harmony. 

There is a large amount of pinchbeck in the appearance of socialinfluence, much cultivated by women of a certain activity of mind, andwith more definite aims than all women have. This belongs to a grade onestep higher than the small pretences we have been speaking of--to womenwho have money, and so far have one reality, but who have not, by theirown birth or their husband's, the original standing which would givethem this influence as of right. Some make themselves notorious fortheir drawing-room patronage of artists, which, however, does not ofteninclude buying their pictures; others gather around them scores ofobscure authors, whose books they talk of, if they do not read; a few, ashort time since, were centres of spiritualistic circles, and got aqueer kind of social influence thereby, so far as Philistine desire towitness the "manifestations" went; and one or two are names of weight inthe emancipated ranks, and take chiefly to what they call "workingwomen. " These are they who attend Ladies' Committees, where they talkbosh, and pound away at utterly uninteresting subjects, as diligently asif what they said had any point in it, and what they did any ultimateissue in probability or common sense. But beyond the fact of having alarge house, where their several sets may assemble at stated periods, these would-be lady patronesses are utterly impotent to help or hinder;and their patronage is just so much pinchbeck, not worth the trouble ofweighing. 

In all this gaudy attempt at show, this restless dissatisfaction withwhat they are, and ceaseless endeavour to appear something they are not, our middle-class ladies are doing themselves and society infinitemischief. They set the tone to the world below them, and the smalltradespeople and the servants, when they copy the vices of theirsuperiors, do not imitate her grace the duchess, but the doctor's wifeover the way, and the lawyer's lady next door, and the young ladieseverywhere, who all try to appear women of rank and fortune, and who areashamed of nothing as much as of industry, truth and simplicity. Hencethe rage for cheap finery in the kitchen, just a trifle more ugly anddebased than that worn in the drawing-room; hence the miserablepretentiousness, and pinchbeck fine-ladyism, filtering like poisonthrough every pore of our society, to result God only knows in whatgrave moral cataclysm, unless women of mind and education will come tothe front, and endeavour to stay the plague already begun. 

Chains and brooches may seem but small material causes for importantmoral effects, but they are symbols; and, as symbols, of deep nationalvalue. No good will be done till we get back some of our fine old horrorof pinchbeck, and once more insist on truth as the foundation of ournational life. Education and refinement will be of no avail if they donot land us here; and the progress of the arts and society must not bebrought to mean chiefly the travesty of civilized ladies into thesemblance of savages, by the cheap imitation of costly substances. Womenare always rushing about the world eager after everything but their homebusiness. Here is something for them to do--the regeneration of societyby means of their own energies; the bringing people back to the dignityof truth and the beauty of simplicity; and the substitution of thatself-respect which is content to appear what it is, for the feeble pridewhich revels in pinchbeck because it cannot get gold, and whichendeavors so hard to hide its real estate, and to pass for what it isnot and never could be. 

PUSHING WOMEN. 

The achievements of Anglo-Saxon energy present a rich mine of materialto the bookmaker. We are justly proud of our self-made men--of ourChancellors who have risen from the barber's-shop to the Woolsack, ofour low-born inventors who have fought their way to scientificrecognition, of our merchant princes who have begun life with a capitalof one half-crown. The story of the man who has raised himself toeminence by his own exertions, in the face of overwhelming disadvantagesand obstacles, is a thrice-told tale, thanks to Mr. Smiles and otherbiographers. But our admiration has been almost exclusively drawn tothese signal examples of pushing _men_. The analogous exploits of thefair sex remain comparatively unchronicled. No one has hithertopublished a book about Self-made Women. Yet this branch of the subjectwould be very interesting, and even instructive. Of course theopportunity for the display of energy in pushing is, in the case ofwoman, much more limited. She cannot push at the Bar or in the Church, or in business. Her sphere for pushing is practically narrowed down toone department of human life--society. But within the limits of thatsphere she exhibits very remarkable proofs of this peculiar form ofactivity. Moreover, pushing is a feature so peculiarly characteristic ofthe English, as distinct from the Continental _salon_, that no attemptto place a picture of the Englishwoman in her totality before herforeign critics would be complete without it. 

There are three periods in the career of a pushing woman. The first isthat in which she emerges from obscurity, or, worse perhaps, from thenotoriety of commercial antecedents, and carried, by a vigorous push, the outworks of fashionable society. The wife of a successful speculatorin cotton or guano, who is also the mistress of a comfortable mansion inBloomsbury, gradually becomes restless and dissatisfied with hersurroundings. It would be curious to trace the growth of thisdiscontent. Ambition is deeply rooted in the female bosom. Evenhousemaids are actuated by an impulse to better themselves, and villageschool-mistresses yearn for a larger sphere. Perhaps it is this instinctto rise, so creditable to the sex, which compels a lady with a longpurse, and a name well known in the city, to enter the lists as anaspirant to fashion. Perhaps her career is developed by a more gradualprocess. Climbing social Alps is like climbing material Alps--for a timethe intervening heights shut out from view the grander peaks. It is nottill one has topped Peckham or Hackney that a more extended horizonbursts on the eye, and one catches sight of the glittering summits ofBelgravia. Account for it as we may, the phenomenon of a woman in theenjoyment of every comfort and luxury that wealth can give, but readyto barter it all for a few crumbs of contemptuous notice from persons ofrank, is by no means uncommon. Probably the fashionable newspaper is agreat stimulus to pushing. 

The rich vulgarian pores over _Court Circulars_ and catalogues ofaristocratic names till the fascination becomes irresistible, and thedesire to see her own name, purged of cotton or guano, figuring in thesame sheet grows to a monomania. But how is this to be done? Fortunatelyfor the purpose which she has in view, there exist in these latter daysamphibious beings, half trader, half fop, with one set of relations withthe world of commerce and another set of relations with the world offashion. The dandy, driven into the city by the stress of his fiscalexigencies, forms a link between the East-end and the West. Among hisother functions is that of giving aid and counsel, not exactly gratis, to any fair outsider who wants to "get into" society. For everyapplicant he has but one bit of advice. She must spend money. 

For a woman who is neither clever nor beautiful nor high-born, there isbut one way to proceed. She must bribe right and left. No rotten boroughabsorbs more cash than the fashionable world. Its recognition is merelya question of money. All its distinctions have their price. It exactsfrom the pushing woman a thumping entrance-fee in the shape of asumptuous concert or ball. Nor is it only the first push which costs. Every subsequent advance is as much a matter of purchase as a step inthe army. 

There is a tariff of its honors, and any Belgravian actuary cancalculate to a nicety the price of a stare from a great lady, or a cardfrom a leader of fashion. This is the philosophy expounded by theamphibious dandy to his civic pupil. The upshot is, that she must givean entertainment, or a series of entertainments, on a scale of greatsplendor. Of course the house in Bloomsbury must be exchanged foranother in a fashionable quarter. A more profuse style of living must beadopted. Her equipages must be gorgeous, her flunkeys numerous and wellpowdered. Above all, she must at once and for ever make a clean sweep ofall her old friends. Upon these conditions, and in consideration of a_douceur_ for himself, he agrees to be her friend, and help her to push. Then follows a delicate negotiation with one of those dowagers whorather pique themselves on their good nature in standing sponsors topushing nobodies. She, too, makes her conditions. For the sake of theelderly pet to whom she is indebted for her daily supply of scandal, sheconsents to countenance his _protegée_. But she declines to ask her toher own house. She will dine with her, provided the dinner is exquisite, and two or three of her own cronies are included in the invitation. Lastand crowning condescension, she will ask the company for the proposedconcert or ball, provided the thing is done regardless of expense. Itwould be hard to say which a cynic would think most charming--thereadiness to accept, or the inclination to impose, such conditions. 

At last the great occasion arrives. Planted at the top of her staircase, under the wing of her fashionable allies, the nominal giver of theentertainment is duly stared at and glared at by a supercilious crowd, who examine her with the same sort of languid interest which they devoteto a new animal at the Zoological. The greater number are "going on" toanother party. But the next morning brings balm for every mortification. Her ball is blazoned in the fashionable journals, and the well-bredreporter, while elaborately complimentary to the exotics, is discreetlysilent as to the supercilious stares. She does not exactly awake to findherself famous, but at least she is no longer outside the Pale. At aconsiderable outlay, she has got into what a connoisseur in shades offashion would call tenth-rate society. This is not much; still, it is abeginning, and a beginning is everything to a pushing woman. 

In the pushing woman of the transition period we behold a lady who hasgot a certain footing in society, but who is straining every nerve, inseason and out of season, by hook and by crook, to improve her position. Society within the Pale is divided into a great many "zones" or "sets. "It is like a target, with outer, middle, inner, and innermost circles. The exterior circle, corresponding to "the black" in archery, consistsof persona, for the most part, with limited means and moderate ambition. People who try to combine fashion with economy stick here, and advanceno further. Carpet-dances and champagneless suppers are typical of thiscircle. Here mothers and daughters prey upon the inexperienced youth ofthe Universities and green young officers, who are deluded for oneseason by their pretensions to fashion, but who cut them the next. Here, too, may be found persons whose social progress has been retardedby foolish scruples about cutting their old friends. Between this bandof prowlers upon the outskirts of fashion and "the best set"--the goldenring in the centre of the shield--are many intermediate circles, eachrepresenting a different stage of distinction and exclusiveness. It isthe multiplicity of these invisible lines of demarcation which makespushing so laborious. 

The world of fashion is not one homogeneous camp, but it is parcelledout into a number of cliques and coteries. Into one after another ofthese a pushing woman effects her entrance. She is always edging her wayinto a new and better set. At every step there are obstacles to beencountered, rivals to be jostled, fierce snubs to be endured. There issomething almost sublime in the spectacle of this untiring activity ofshoulder and elbow. The mere shoving--_vis consilî expers_--would neverbring her near to her goal. An adept in the art of pushing does not relyon sheer impudence alone. She has recourse to artificial aids andappliances. A great deal of ingenuity is exhibited in the selection ofher self-propelling machinery. It is a good plan to acquire a name forsome one social speciality. 

Private theatricals, for instance, or similar entertainments, may beturned to excellent account. Exhibitions of this kind pique curiosity, and people who come to stare remain to supper, and possibly return todrop a card on the following afternoon. But, if you go in for this sortof thing, you must resign yourself to certain inconveniences. Yourpretty drawing-room will be like Park Lane in a state of chronicobstruction. The carpenter's work will interfere somewhat with yourcomfort, and it is tiresome to be perpetually unhinging your doors andpulling your windows out of their frames. The jealousies and bickeringsamong the performers are another source of vexation. Miss A. Declines tosit as Rowena to Miss B. 's Rebecca; and the drawing-room Rosciusinvariably objects to the part for which he is cast. Altogether, unlessyou have a positive taste for carpentry and green-room squabbles, it isbetter to steer clear of private theatricals. 

Then there is the musical dodge. In skillful hands there is no betterleverage for pushing operations than drawing-room music. Every one knowsLady Tweedledum and her amateur concerts. The fuss she makes about themis prodigious. They are a cheap sort of entertainment, but they cost thethrifty patroness of art a vast deal of trouble. She is alwaysorganizing practices, arranging rehearsals, drawing up programmes, orscouring London for musical recruits. She has been known to invade dingyGovernment offices for a tenor, and to run a soprano to earth in distantBloomsbury. After all, her "music" is only so-so. You may hear betterany night at Even's or the Oxford. One has heard "Dal tuo stellatosoglio" before, and Niedermeyer insipidities are a little _fadé_. Sometimes, to complete the imposture, the names of Mendelssohn andMozart are invoked, and, under cover of doing honor to an immortalcomposer, a chorus of young people assemble for periodical flirtation. On the whole, it is wise not to attempt too much. Miss Quaver, with herstaccato notes and semi-professional _minauderies_, is not exactly aqueen of song. Nor does it give one any exquisite delight to hear SirRaucisonous Trombone give tongue in a French romance. The talented bandof the Piccadilly Troubadours, floundering through the overture to_Zampa_, hardly satisfies a refined musical ear. But, howeverindifferent in a musical point of view, from the point of view of thefair projector the thing is a success. It serves as a trap to catchduchesses, a device for putting salt on the tails of the popinjays offashion. One fine day Lady Tweedledum's pretended zeal for musicreceives its crowning reward. The noise of it reaches august ears. Anact of gracious condescension follows. Her Ladyship has the supremedelight of leading a scion of Royalty to a chair of state in herdrawing-room, to hear Sir Raucisonous bleat and Miss Quaver trill. 

There are subtler means of pushing than amateur concerts and privatetheatricals. There is the push vertical, as in the case of thecommercial lady; and there is also the push lateral. A good example ofthe latter style of operation is afforded by the dowager who isfortunate enough to have an eldest son to use as a pushing machine. Handled with tact, a young heir, not yet cut adrift from the maternalapron-string, may be turned to excellent account. There is, or was, asentimental ballad entitled, "I'll kiss him for his mother. " One mightreverse the sentiment in the case of _Madame Mère_. Of her the dowagerswith daughters to marry sing in chorus, "I'll visit her for her son. "Civility to the mother is access to the son. A sharp tactician sees heradvantage, and works the precious relationship for her own private ends. It is a mine of invitations of an eligible kind. By aid of it shesprings over barriers which it would otherwise take her years tosurmount, and is lifted into circles which by their unassisted effortsshe and her daughters would never reach. Scheming dowagers are glad tohave her at their balls when there is a chance of young Hopefulfollowing in her train, and her five o'clock tea is delightful whenthere is a young millionaire to sip it with. Deprived of her decoy duckshe would soon lose ground, and be left to push her way in society withuncomfortably reduced momentum. 

Another capital instrument for pushing is a country-house. The mistressof a fine old hall and a cypher of a husband is apt to take a peculiarview of the duties of property. One might expect her to be content withso dignified and enviable a lot, and to pass tranquil days in coddlingthe cottagers, patronizing the rector's wife, and impressing hercrotchet on the national school. But no--she is bitten with thetarantula of social success. She wants to "get on" in society. She mustpush as vigorously as any trumpery adventuress in May Fair. A good oldname is dragged into the dirt inseparable from pushing. The familyportraits look disdainfully from their frames, and the ancestral oakshang their heads in shame. The company reflects the peculiar ambition ofthe hostess. The neighboring squires are conspicuous by their absence. The local small fry are of course ignored, though to the great lady ofthe county, who cuts her in town, she is cringingly obsequious. Thevisitors consist mainly of relays of youths, fast, foolish, andfashionable, with now and then a stray politician or journalist thrownin to give the party a _soupçon_ of intellect. The principle ofinvitation is very simple. No one is asked who will not be of use intown. Any brainless little fop, any effete dandy, is sure of a welcome, provided he is known to certain circles and can help her to scrambleinto a little more vogue. 

One more instance of lateral pushing. A connection with literature maybe very effectively worked. The wives of poets, novelists, andhistorians have great facilities for pushing if they care to use them. Even the sleek parasite who fattens on a literature which he has donenothing to adorn, and conceals his emptiness under the airs of SirOracle, has been known to hoist his female belongings into the highlevels of society. 

The last period in the career of a pushing woman is the triumphant. Thisis when she has achieved fashion, and has virtually done pushing. Thereis nothing left to push for. The Belgravian citadel has fairlycapitulated. Like Alexander weeping that there are no more worlds toconquer, she may indulge a transient regret that there are no more_salons_ left to penetrate. But rest is welcome after so harassing astruggle. And with rest comes a sensible improvement in her characterand manners. The last stage of a pushing woman is emphatically betterthan the first. It is curious to notice what a change for the better isproduced in her by the partial recovery of her self-respect. One mightalmost call her a pleasant person. She can at last afford to be civil, occasionally even good-natured. And this is only natural. In the thickof a struggle which taxes her energies to the uttermost, there is notime for courtesies and amenities. The better instincts of her naturenecessarily remain in abeyance. But they reassert themselves, unless shebe irretrievably spoilt, when the struggle is over. 

At last she can afford to speak her true thoughts, consult her owntastes, and receive her own friends, not another's, like a lady to themanner born. And if this emancipation from a self-imposed thraldom isnot too long deferred, if it finds her at sixty with a relish for gaietystill unslaked, she may yet be able to enjoy society herself and torender it enjoyable to others. How many women there are of whom onesays, How pleasant they will be when they have done pushing! or havepushed enough to allow themselves and others a little rest! One longsfor the time to arrive when they shall have kicked down the ladders bywhich they have mounted, and effaced the trace of the rebuffs which theyhave encountered. One longs to see them cleansed from the stains withwhich their toilsome struggle has bespattered them, enjoying the easeand tranquillity of the after-push. If "getting on in society" mustcontinue to be an object of female ambition, would it not be wise toabate the nuisance by rendering the process somewhat more easy? Mightnot some central authority be established to grant diplomas to pushingwomen, which would admit them _per saltum_ to those select circles whichthey go through so much dirt to reach?

FEMININE AFFECTATIONS. 

The old form of feminine affectation used to be that of a die-away finelady afflicted with a mysterious malady known by the name of the vapors, or one, no less obscure, called the spleen. Sometimes it was anetherealized being who had no capacity for homely things, but who passedher life in an atmosphere of poetry and music, for the most partexpressing her vague ideas in halting rhymes that gave more satisfactionto herself than to her friends. She was probably an Italian scholar, andcould quote Petrarch and Tasso, and did quote them pretty often; shemight even be a Della Cruscan by honorable election, with her ownpeculiar wreath of laurel and her own silver lyre; any way she was "asister of the Muses, " and had something to do with Apollo and Minerva, whom she was sure to call Pallas, as being more poetical. Probably shehad dealings with Diana too, for this kind of woman does not in any ageaffect the "sea-born, " save in a hazy sentimental way that bears nofruits; a neatly-turned sonnet or a clever bit of counterpoint being toher worth all the manly love or fireside home delights that the worldcan give. 

What is the touch of babies' dimpled fingers or the rosy kisses ofbabies' lips compared to the pleasures of being a sister of the Muses, and one of the beloved of Apollo? The Della Cruscan of former days, orher modern avatar, will tell you that music and poetry are godlike andbear the soul away to heaven, but that the nursery is a prison, andbabies no dearer gaolers than any other, and that household dutiesdisgrace the aspiring soul mounting to the empyrean. This was theEthereal Being of the last generation--the Blue-stocking, as a poetessin white satin, with her eyes turned up to heaven, and her hair indishevelled cascades about her neck. She dropped her mantle as shefinally departed; and we still have the Della Cruscan essence, if not inthe precise form of earlier times. We still have ethereal beings who, asthe practical outcome of their etherealization, rave about music andpoetry, and Hallé and Ruskin, and horribly neglect their babies and theweekly bills. 

A favorite form of feminine affectation among certain opposers of theprevalent fast type is in an intense womanliness, an aggravatingintensity of womanliness, that makes one long for a little roughness, just to take off the cloying excess of sweetness. This kind is generallyfound with large eyes, dark in the lids and hollow in the orbit, bywhich a certain spiritual expression is given to the face, a certainlook of being consumed by the hidden fire of lofty thought, that is veryeffective. It does not destroy the effectiveness that the real cause ofthe darkened lids and cavernous orbits, when not antimony, is mostprobably internal disease; eyes of this sort stand for spirituality andloftiness of thought and intense womanliness of nature, and, as all menare neither chemists nor doctors, the simulation does quite as well astruth. 

The main characteristic of these women is self-consciousness. They livebefore a moral mirror, and pass their time in attitudinizing to whatthey think the best advantage. They can do nothing simply, nothingspontaneously and without the fullest consciousness as to how they doit, and how they look while they are doing it. In every action of theirlives they see themselves as pictures, as characters in a novel, asimpersonations of poetic images or thoughts. If they give you a glass ofwater, or take your cup from you, they are Youth and Beauty ministeringto Strength or Age, as the case may be; if they bring you a photographicalbum, they are Titian's Daughter carrying her casket, a triflemodernized; if they hold a child in their arms, they are Madonnas, andlook unutterable maternal love, though they never saw the littlecreature before, and care for it no more than for the puppy in the mews;if they do any small personal office, or attempt to do it, makingbelieve to tie a shoestring, comb out a curl, fasten a button, they areCharities in graceful attitudes, and expect you to think them bothcharitable and graceful. Nine times out of ten they can neither tie astring nor fasten a button with ordinary deftness, for they have a trickof using only the ends of their fingers when they do anything with theirhands, as being more graceful, and altogether fitting in better thanwould a firmer grasp with the delicate womanliness of the character;and the less sweet and more commonplace woman who does not attitudinizemorally, and never parades her womanliness, beats them out of the fieldfor real helpfulness, and is the Charity which the other only plays atbeing. 

This kind, too, affects, in theory, wonderful submissiveness to man. Itupholds Griselda as the type of feminine perfection, and--still intheory--between independence and being tyrannized over, goes in for thetyranny. "I would rather my husband beat me than let me do too much as Iliked, " said one before she married, who, after she was married, managedto get entire possession of the domestic reins, and took good care thather nominal lord should be her practical slave. For, notwithstanding thesweet submissiveness of her theory, the intensely womanly woman has themost astonishing knack of getting her own way and imposing her own willon others. The real tyrant among women is not the one who flounces andsplutters, and declares that nothing shall make her obey, but theself-mannered, large-eyed, and intensely womanly person, who says thatGriselda is her ideal, and that the whole duty of woman lies inunquestioning obedience to man. 

In contrast with this special affectation is the mannish woman--thewoman who wears a double-breasted coat with big buttons, of which sheflings back the lappels with an air, understanding the suggestiveness ofa wide chest and the need of unchecked breathing; who wearsunmistakeable shirtfronts, linen collars, vests, and plain ties, like aman; who folds her arms or sets them akimbo, like a man; who evennurses her feet and cradles her knees, in spite of her petticoats, andmakes believe that the attitude is comfortable because it is manlike. Ifthe excessively womanly woman is affected in her sickly sweetness, themannish woman is affected in her breadth and roughness. She adores dogsand horses, which she places far above children of all ages. She boastsof how good a marksman she is--she does not call herself markswoman--andhow she can hit right and left, and bring down both birds flying. Whenshe drinks wine she holds the stem of the glass between her first twofingers, hollows her underlip, and tosses it off, throwing her head wellback--she would disdain the ladylike sip or the closer gesture ofordinary women. She is great in cheese and bitter beer, in claret cupand still champagne, but she despises the puerilities of sweets or ofeffervescing wines. She rounds her elbows and turns her wrist outward, as men round their elbows and turn their wrists outward. She is fond ofcarpentry, she says, and boasts of her powers with the plane and saw;for charms to her watch-chain she wears a corkscrew, a gimlet, a bigknife, and a small foot-rule; and in entire contrast with the intenselywomanly woman, who uses the tips of her fingers only, the mannish womanwhen she does anything uses the whole hand, and if she had to thread aneedle would thread it as much by her palm as by her fingers. All ofwhich is affectation--from first to last affectation; a mere assumptionof virile fashions utterly inharmonious to the whole being, physicaland mental, of a woman. 

Then there is the affectation of the woman who has taken propriety andorthodoxy under her special protection, and who regards it as a personalinsult when her friends and acquaintances go beyond the exact limits ofher mental sphere. This is the woman who assumes to be the antisepticelement in society, who makes believe that without her the world andhuman nature would go to the dogs, and plunge headlong into the abyss ofsin and destruction forthwith; and that not all the grand heroism ofman, not all his thought and energy and high endeavor and patientseeking after truth, would serve his turn or the world's if she did notspread her own petty preserving nets, and mark out the boundary lineswithin which she would confine the range of thought and speculation. Sheknows that this assumption of spiritual beadledom is mere affectation, and that other minds have as much right to their own boundary lines asshe claims for herself; but it seems to her pretty to assume that womangenerally is the consecrated beadle of thought and morality, and thatshe, of all women, is most specially consecrated. 

As an offshoot of this kind stands the affectation of simplicity--thewoman whose mental attitude is self-depreciation, and who poses herselfas a mere nobody when the world is ringing with her praises. "Is itpossible that your Grace has ever heard of _me_?" said one of this classwith prettily affected _naïveté_ at a time when all England was astirabout her, and when colors and fashions went by her name to make themtake with the public at large. No one knew better than the fair_ingénue_ in question how far and wide her fame had spread, but shethought it looked modest and simple to assume ignorance of her ownvalue, and to declare that she was but a creeping worm when all theworld knew that she was a soaring butterfly. 

There is a certain little kind of affectation very common among prettywomen; and this is the affectation of not knowing that they are pretty, and not recognising the effect of their beauty on men. Take a woman withbewildering eyes, say, of a maddening size and shape, and fringed withlong lashes that distract you to look at; the creature knows that hereyes are bewildering, as well as she knows that fire burns and that icemelts; she knows the effect of that trick she has with them--the suddenuplifting of the heavy lid, and the swift, full gaze that she givesright into a man's eyes. She has practiced it often in the glass, andknows to a mathematical nicety the exact height to which the lid must beraised, and the exact fixity of the gaze. She knows the whole meaning ofthe look, and the stirring of men's blood that it creates; but if youspeak to her of the effect of her trick, she puts on an air of extremestinnocence, and protests her entire ignorance as to anything her eyes maysay or mean: and if you press her hard she will look at you in the sameway for your own benefit, and deny at the very moment of offence. 

Various other tricks has she with those bewildering eyes of hers--eachmore perilous than the other to men's peace; and all unsparinglyemployed, no matter what the result. For this is the woman who flirts tothe extreme limits, then suddenly draws up and says she meant nothing. Step by step she has led you on, with looks and smiles, and prettydoubtful phrases always susceptible of two meanings, the one for the earby mere word, the other for the heart by the accompaniments of look andmanner, which are intangible; step by step she has drawn you deeper anddeeper into the maze where she has gone before as your decoy; then, whenshe has you safe, she raises her eyes for the last time, complains thatyou have mistaken her cruelly, and that she has meant nothing more thanany one else might mean; and what can she do to repair her mistake? Loveyou? marry you? No; she is engaged to your rival, who counts histhousands to your hundreds; and what a pity that you had not seen thisall along, and that you should have so misunderstood her! Besides, whatis there about her that you or any one should love?

Of all the many affectations of women, this affectation of their ownharmlessness when beautiful, and of their innocence of design when theypractice their arts for the discomfiture of men, is the most dangerousand the most disastrous. But what can one say to them? The very factthat they are dangerous disarms a man's anger and blinds his perceptionuntil too late. That men love though they suffer is the woman's triumph, guilt, and condonation; and so long as the trick succeeds it will bepracticed. 

Another affectation of the same family is the extreme friendliness andfamiliarity which some women adopt in their manners towards men. Younggirls affect an almost maternal tone to boys of their own age, or a yearor so older; and they, too, when their wiser elders remonstrate, declarethey mean nothing, and how hard it is that they may not be natural. Thisform of affectation, once begun, continues through life, being tooconvenient to be lightly discarded; and youthful matrons not long out oftheir teens assume a tone and ways that would about befit middle agecounselling giddy youth, and that might by chance be dangerous even thenif the "Indian summer" was specially bright and warm. 

Then there is the affectation pure and simple, which is the mereaffectation of manner, such as is shown in the drawling voice, themincing gait, the extreme gracefulness of attitude that by consciousnessceases to be grace, and the thousand little _minauderies_ and coquetriesof the sex known to us all. And there is the affectation which people ofa higher social sphere show when they condescend to those of low estate, and talk and look as if they were not quite certain of their company, and scarcely knew if they were Christian or heathen, savage orcivilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal passion withwomen who are never by any chance seen with their children, but whospeak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectationof wifely adoration with women who are to be met about the world withevery man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands;the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughlyself-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation of politicalfervor in those who would not give up a ball or a new dress to saveEurope from universal revolution. 

Go where we will, affectation of being something she is not meets us inwoman, like a ghost we cannot lay or a mist we cannot sweep away. In theholiest and the most trivial things alike we find it penetratingeverywhere--even in church, and at her prayers, when the prettypenitent, rising from her lengthy orison, lifts her eyes and looks abouther furtively to see who has noticed her self-abasement and to whom herpicturesque piety has commended itself. 

All sorts and patterns of good girls and pleasant women are very dearand delightful; but the pearl of great price is the thoroughly naturaland unaffected woman--that is, the woman who is truthful to her core, and who would as little condescend to act a pretence as she would dareto tell a lie. 

IDEAL WOMEN. 

It is often objected against fault-finders, writers or others, that theydestroy but do not build up, that while industriously blaming errorsthey take good care not to praise the counteracting virtues, that intheir zeal against the vermin of which they are seeking to sweep thehouse clean they forget the nobler creatures which do the good work ofkeeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible to becontinually introducing the saving clause, "all are not so bad asthese. " The seven thousand righteous who have not bowed the knee to Baalare understood to exist in all communities; and, vicious as any specialsection may be, there must always be the hidden salt and savor of thevirtuous to keep the whole from falling into utter corruption. This isspecially true of modern women. Certainly, some of them are asunsatisfactory as any of their kind that have ever appeared on earthbefore, but it would be very queer logic to infer, therefore, that allare bad alike, and that our modern womanhood is as ill off as the Citiesof the Plain which could not be saved for want of the ten just men tosave them. 

Happily, we have noble women among us yet; women who believe insomething beside pleasure, and who do their work faithfully, whereverit may lie; women who can and do sacrifice themselves for love and duty, and who do not think they were sent into the world simply to run one madlife-long race for wealth, for dissipation, or for distinction. But thelife of such women is essentially in retirement; and though the lessonthey teach is beautiful, yet its influence is necessarily confined, because of the narrow sphere of the teacher. When such public occasionsfor devotedness as the Crimean war occur, we can in some sort measurethe extent to which the self-sacrifice of women can be carried; but ingeneral their noblest virtues come out only in the quiet and secresy ofhome, and the most heroic lives of patience and well-doing go on inseclusion, uncheered by sympathy and unrewarded by applause. 

Still, it is impossible to write of one absolute womanly ideal--onesingle type that shall satisfy every man's fancy; for, naturally, whatwould be perfection to one is imperfection to another, according to thespecial bent of the individual mind. Thus one man's ideal of womanlyperfection is in beauty, mere physical outside beauty; and not all thevirtues under heaven could warm him into love with red hair or a snubnose. He is entirely happy if his wife is undeniably the handsomestwoman of his acquaintance, and holds himself blessed when all men admireand all women envy. But for his own sake rather than for hers. Pleasantas her loveliness is to look on, it is pleasanter to know that he is thepossessor of it. The "handsomest woman in the room" comes into the samecategory as the finest picture or the most thoroughbred horse within hissphere, and if the degree of pride in his possession is different, thekind is the same. And so in minor proportions, from the most beautifulwoman of all, to simply beauty as a _sine qua non_, whatever else may bewanting. One other thing only is as absolute as this beauty, and that isits undivided possession. 

Another man's ideal is a good housekeeper and a careful mother, and hedoes not care a rush whether his wife, if she is these, is pretty orugly. Provided she is active and industrious, minds the house well, andbrings up the children as they ought to be brought up, has goodprinciples, is trustworthy, and even-tempered, he is not particular asto color or form, and can even be brought to tolerate a limp or asquint. Given the great foundations of an honorable home, and he willforego the lath and plaster of personal appearance which will not bearthe wear and tear of years and their troubles. The solid virtues stand. His balance at the banker's is a fact; his good name and credit with thetradespeople is a fact; so is the comfort of his home; so are thehealth, the morals, the education of his children. All these are thetrue realities of life to him; but the beauty which changes to deformityby the small-pox, which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale by habit, andis worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a skin-deep gracewhich he does not value. Perhaps he is right. Certainly, some of thehappiest marriages among one's acquaintances are those where the wifehas not one perceptible physical charm, and where the whole force of hermagnetic value lies in what she is, not in how she looks. 

Another man wants a tender, adoring, fair-haired seraph, who willworship him as a demigod, and accept him as her best revelation ofstrength and wisdom. The more dependent she is, the better he will loveher; the less of conscious thought, of active will, of originative powershe has, the greater his regard and tenderness. To be the one soleteacher and protector of such a gentle little creature seems to him themost delicious and the best condition of married life; and he holdsMilton's famous lines to be expressive of the only fitting relationbetween men and women. The adoring seraph is his ideal; Griselda, Desdemona, Lucy Ashton, are his highest culminations of womanly grace;and the qualities which appeal the most powerfully to his generosity arethe patience which will not complain, the gentleness that cannot resent, and the love which nothing can chill. 

Another man wants a cultivated intelligence in his ideal. As an author, an artist, a student, a statesman, he would like his wife to be able tohelp him by the contact of bright wit and ready intellect. He believesin the sex of minds, and holds only that work complete which has beencreated by the one and perfected by the other. He sees how women havehelped on the leaders in troubled times; he knows that almost all greatmen have owed something of their greatness to the influence of a motheror a wife; he remembers how thoughts which had lain dumb in men'sbrains for more than half their lifetime suddenly woke up into speechand activity by the influence of a woman great enough to call themforth. The adoring seraph would be an encumbrance, and nothing betterthan a child upon his hands; and the soul which had to be awakened anddirected by him would run great chance of remaining torpid and inactiveall its days. He has his own life to lead and round off, and so far fromwishing to influence another's, wants to be helped for himself. 

Another man cares only for the birth and social position of the woman towhom he gives his name and affection; to another yellow gold standshigher than blue blood, and "my wife's father" may have been arag-picker, so long as rag-picking had been a sufficiently rich alembicwith a residuum admitting of no kind of doubt. Venus herself without adowry would be only a pretty sea-side girl with a Newtown pippin in herhand; but Miss Kilmansegg would be something worth thinking of, if butlittle worth looking at. One man delights in a smart, vivacious littlewoman of the irrepressible kind. It makes no difference to him howpetulant she is, how full of fire and fury; the most passionate burstsof temper simply amuse him, like the anger of a canary-bird, and heholds it fine fun to watch the small virago in her tantrums, and to sether going again when he thinks she has been a long enough time insubsidence. His ideal of woman is an amusing little plaything, with agreat facility for being put up, and a dash of viciousness to give itpiquancy. 

Another wants a sweet and holy saint whose patient humility springsfrom principle rather than from fear; another likes a blithe-tempered, healthy girl with no nonsense about her, full of fun and ready foreverything, and is not particular as to the strict order or economy ofthe housekeeping, provided only she is at all times willing to be hispleasant playmate and companion. Another delights in something veryquiet, very silent, very home-staying. One must have first-rate music inhis ideal woman; another unimpeachable taste; a third, strict orders; afourth, liberal breadth of nature; and each has his own ideal, not onlyof nature but of person--to the exact shade of the hair, the color ofthe eyes, and the oval of the face. But all agree in the greatfundamental requirements of truth, and modesty, and love, andunselfishness; for though it is impossible to write of one womanly idealas an absolute, it is very possible to detail the virtues which ought tobelong to all alike. 

If this diversity of ideals is true of individuals, it is especiallytrue of nations, each of which has its own ideal of woman varyingaccording to what is called the genius of the country. To the Frenchman, if we are to believe Michelet and the novelists, it is a feverish littlecreature, full of nervous energy, but without muscular force; of frailhealth and feeble organization; a prey to morbid fancies which she hasno strength to control or to resist; now weeping away her life in thepain of finding that her husband, a man gross and material becausehusband, does not understand her; now sighing over her delicious sinsin the arms of the lover who does; without reasoning faculties, butwith divine intuitions that are as good as revelations; without cooljudgment, but with the light of burning passions that guide her just aswell; thinking by her heart, yet carrying the most refined metaphysicsinto her love; subtle; incomprehensible by the coarser brain of man; acreature born to bewilder and to be misled, to love and to be adored, tomadden men and to be destroyed by them. 

It does not much signify that the reality is a shrewd, calculating, unromantic woman, with a hard face and keen eyes, who for the most partmakes a good practical wife to her common-sense middle-aged husband, whothinks more of her social position than of her feelings, more of herchildren than of her lovers, more of her purse than of her heart, andwhose great object of life is a daily struggle for centimes. It pleasesthe French to idealize their eminently practical and worldly-wise womeninto this queer compound of hysterics and adultery; and if it pleasesthem it need not displease us. 

To the German his ideal is of two kinds--one, his Martha, the domesticbroad-faced _Hausmutter_, who cooks good dinners at small cost, andmends the family linen as religiously as if this were the EleventhCommandment especially appointed for feminine fingers to keep, thepoetic culmination of whom is Charlotte cutting bread and butter; theother, his Mary, his Bettina, full of mind and æsthetics, andheart-uplifting love, yearning after the infinite with holes in herstockings and her shoes down at heel. For what are coarse materialmendings to the æsthetic soul yearning after the infinite, andworshipping at the feet of the prophet?

In Italy the ideal woman of modern times is the ardent patriot, full ofactive energy, or physical force, and dauntless courage. 

In Poland it is the patriot too, but of a more refined and etherealizedtype, passively resenting Tartar tyranny by the subtlest feminine scorn, and living in perpetual music and mourning. 

In Spain it is a woman beautiful and impassioned, with the slightdrawback of needing a world of looking after, of which the men areundeniably capable. 

In Mohammedan countries generally it is a comely smooth-skinned Dudù, patient and submissive, always in good humor with her master, economicalin house-living to suit the meanness, and gorgeous in occasional attireto suit the ostentation, of the genuine Oriental; but by no means Dudùever asleep and unoccupied; for, if not allowed to take part in activeoutside life, the Eastern's wife or wives have their home duties andtheir maternal cares like all other women, and find to their cost that, if they neglect them unduly, they will have a bad time of it with AliBen Hassan when the question comes of piastres and sequins, and the dogsof Jews who demand payment, and the pigs of Christians who follow suit. 

The American ideal is of two kinds, like the German--the one, the clevermanager, the woman with good executive faculty in the matters ofbuckwheat cakes and oyster gumbo, as is needed in a country so poorlyprovided with "helps;" the other, the aspiring soul who puts heraspirations into deeds, and goes out into the world to do battle withthe sins of society as editress, preacher, stump orator, and the like. It must be rather embarrassing to some men that this specialmanifestation of the ideal woman at times advocates miscegenation andfree love; but perhaps we of the narrow old conventional type are not upto the right mark yet, and have to wait until our own women arethoroughly emancipated before we can rightly appreciate these questions. At all events, if this kind of thing pleases the Americans, it is nomore our business to interfere with them than with the French compound;and if miscegenation and free love seem to them the right manner oflife, let them follow it. 

In all countries, then, the ideal woman changes, chameleon-like, to suitthe taste of man; and the great doctrine that her happiness doessomewhat depend on his liking is part of the very foundation of herexistence. According to his will she is bond or free, educated orignorant, lax or strict, house-keeping or roving; and though we advocateneither the bondage nor the ignorance, yet we do hold to the principlethat, by the laws which regulate all human communities everywhere, sheis bound to study the wishes of man, and to mould her life in harmonywith his liking. No society can get on in which there is totalindependence of sections and members, for society is built up on themutual dependence of all its sections and all its members. Hence thedefiant attitudes which women have lately assumed, and theirindifference to the wishes and remonstrances of men, cannot lead to anygood results whatever. It is not the revolt of slaves against theirtyrants--in that we could sympathize--which they have begun, but arevolt against their duties. And this it is which makes the presentstate of things so deplorable. It is the vague restlessness, the fierceextravagance, the neglect of home, the indolent fine-ladyism, thepassionate love of pleasure which characterise the modern woman, thatsaddens men, and destroys in them that respect which their very prideprompts them to feel. And it is the painful conviction that the idealwoman of truth and modesty and simple love and homely living has somehowfaded away under the paint and tinsel of this modern reality which makesus speak out as we have done, in the hope, perhaps a forlorn one, thatif she could be made to thoroughly understand what men think of her, shewould, by the very force of natural instinct and social necessity, orderherself in some accordance with the lost ideal, and become again what weonce loved and what we all regret. 

WOMAN AND THE WORLD. 

This, we are told in a tone of pathetic resignation, is a day of hardsayings for women. It is, we will venture to add, a day when women haveto meet hard sayings with replies a little less superficial than theconventional stare of outraged womanhood or the trivial retort on thefollies of men. Grant that woman's censors are as cynical andhollow-hearted as you will, there can be no doubt that their criticismsare simply the expression of a general uneasiness, and that thatuneasiness has some ground to go upon. It is possible that observersacross the water may be cynical in denouncing the "magnificentindecency" of the heroines of New York. It is possible that theschoolmasters of Berlin may be cynical in calling public opinion totheir aid against the degrading exhibitions of the Prussian capital. Itis possible that the thunders of the Vatican are merely an instance ofPapal cynicism. It is possible that the protest of the Bishop of Orleansis as hollow-hearted as the protests of censors nearer home. But such aworld-wide outbreak of cynicism without a cause is a somewhat improbableevent, and the improbability is increased when we remark the silentacquiescence of the women of America and the Continent in the justice ofthese censures. 

It is only the British mother who ventures to protest. Now, weEnglishmen have always felt a sort of national pride in the Britishmother. It has been a part of our patriotic self-satisfaction to piqueourselves on her icy decorum, on the merciless severity of her virtue. Colorless, uninteresting, limited as Continental critics pronounced herto be, we cherished her the more as something specially our own, andregarded the Channel as a barrier providentially invented for theisolation of her spotless prudery. It was peculiarly gratifying tosuppose that on the other side of it there were no British homes, noBritish maidens, no British mothers. And it must be owned that theBritish mother took her cue admirably. She owned, with a sigh ofcomplacency, that she was not as other women. She shuddered at foreignmorals, and tabooed French novels. She shook all life and individualityout of her girls as un-English and Continental. She denounced allaspirations after higher and larger spheres of effort as unfeminine. Such a type of woman was naturally dull enough, but it fairly came up toits own standard; and if its respectability was prudery, it stillearned, and had a right to claim, man's respect. The amusing thing isthe persistence in the claim when the type has passed away. 

The British spouse has bloomed into the semi-detached wife, with ahusband always conveniently in the distance, and a cicisbeo asconveniently in the corner. The British mother has died into the fadedmatrimonial schemer, contemptuous of younger sons. The innocent simperof the British maiden has developed into the loud laugh and the horseyslang of the girl of the season. But maiden and matron are still on onepoint faithful to the traditions of their grandmothers, and front allcensorious comers with a shrug of their shoulder-straps and a flutter ofindignant womanhood. And maiden and matron still claim their insularexemption from the foibles of their sex. The Pope may do what he willwith the women of Italy, and Monseigneur of Orleans may deal sternjustice out to the women of France; Continental immorality is in thenature of things; but there is something else that is in the nature ofthings too, and before the impeccable majesty of British womanhood everycritic must stand abashed. 

Unfortunately, we are no sooner awed with the marble silence of ourHermione than Hermione descends from her pedestal and falls a-talkinglike other people. Woman, in a word, protests; and protests are oftenvery dangerous things to the protesters. Nothing, for instance, can seemmore simple or more effective than the _tu quoque_ retort, and as it isfamiliar to feminine disputants, we are favored with it in everypossible form. If the girl of the period is fast and frivolous, is theyoung man of the period any better? No sketch can be more telling thanthe picture which she is ready to draw of his lounging ways, hisepicurean indolence, his boredom at home, his foppery abroad, thevacancy of his stare, the inanity of his talk, his incredible conceit, his life vibrating between the Club and the stable. She hits off with acharming vivacity the list of his accomplishments--his skill atflirtation, his matchless ability at croquet, his assiduity over _Bell'sLife_, the cleverness of his book on the Derby. No sensible orwell-informed girl, she tells us, can talk for ten minutes to thiscreature without weariness and disgust at his ignorance, his narrowness, his triviality; no modestly-dressed or decently-mannered girl can winthe slightest share of his attentions. Married, he is as frivolous asbefore marriage; he selects the toilette of the _demi-monde_ as anagreeable topic of domestic conversation, he resents affection andproclaims home a bore, he grudges the birth of children as an additionalexpense, he stunts and degrades the education of his girls, he is thedespot of his household and the dread of his family. 

The sketch is powerful enough in its way, but the conclusion which thefair artist draws is at least an odd one. We prepare ourselves to hearthat woman has resolved to extirpate such a monster as this, or that shewill remain an obstinate vestal till a nobler breed of wooers arises. What woman owns that she really does is to mould herself as much on themonster's model as she can. According to her own account, she putsnature's picture of herself into the hands of this imbecile, invites himto blur it as he will, and lets him write under the daub "_Ego feci. _"As he cannot talk sense, she stoops to bandy chaff and slang. As herefuses to be attracted by modesty of dress and manner, she apes thedress and manner of the _demi-monde_. His indolence, his triviality, hisworldliness become her own. As he finds home a bore, she too plungesinto her round of dissipation; as he objects to children, she declinesto be a mother; as he wishes to get the girls off his hands, she flingsthem at the head of the first comer. 

Now, if such a defence as this at all adequately represents the facts ofthe case, we can only say that the girl of the period must be a farlower creature than we have ever asserted her to be. A sensible girlstooping to slang, a modest girl flinging aside modesty, simply toconquer a fool and a fop, is a satire upon woman which none but a womancould have invented, and which we must confess to be utterly incredibleto men. But the assumption upon which the whole of this mimetic theoryis based is one well worthy of a little graver consideration. 

"Tell me how to improve the youth of France, " said Napoleon one day toMadame de Campan. "Give them good mothers, " was the reply. There aresome things which even a Napoleon may be pardoned for feeling a littlepuzzled in undertaking, and Madame de Campan would no doubt have addedmuch to the weight of her reply by a few practical words as to themachinery requisite for the supply of the article she recommended. Buther request is now the cry of the world. The general uneasiness of whichwe have spoken before arises simply from the conviction that woman isbecoming more and more indifferent to her actual post in the socialeconomy of the world, and the criticisms in which it takes form, whethergrave or gay, could all be summed up in Madame de Campan's request, "Give us good mothers. "

After all protests against limiting the sphere of the sex to a singlefunction of their existence, public opinion still regards womanprimarily in her relation to the generation to come. If it censures thesensible girl who stoops to slang, or the modest girl who stoops toindecency, it is because the sense and the modesty which they abandon isnot theirs to hold or to fling away, but the heritage of the human race. But this seems to be less and less the feeling of woman herself. Forgood or for evil, or, perhaps more truly, for both good and evil, womanis becoming conscious every day of new powers, and longing for anindependent sphere in which she can exert them. Marriage is aimed atwith a passionate ardor unknown before, not as a means of gratifyingaffection, but as a means of securing independence. 

To the unmarried girl life is a sheer bondage, and there is no sacrificetoo great to be left untried if it only promises a chance ofdeliverance. She learns to despise the sense, the information, thewomanly reserve which fail to attract the deliverer. She has to sellherself to purchase her freedom; and she will take very strong measuresto secure a purchaser. The fop, the fool, little knows the keen scrutinywith which the gay creature behind her fan is taking stock of his feeblepreferences, is preparing to play upon his feebler aversions. Pitiful ashe is, it is for him that she arranges her artillery on thetoilette-table, the "little secrets, " the powder bloom, the rouge"precipitated from the damask rose-leaf, " the Styrian lotion that gives"beauty and freshness to the complexion, plumpness to the figure, clearness and softness to the skin. " He has a faint flicker of likingfor brunettes; she lays her triumphant fingers on her "walnut stain, "and darkens into the favorite tint. He loves plumpness, and her "SinaiManna" is at hand to secure _embonpoint_. Belladonna flashes on him fromher eyes, Kohl and antimony deepen the blackness of her eyebrows, "bloomof roses" blushes from her lips. She stoops to conquer, and it is nowonder that the fop and the fool go down. 

The freedom she covets comes with marriage, but it is a freedomthreatened by a thousand accidents, and threatened, above all, bymaternity. It is of little use to have bowed to slang andshoulder-straps, if it be only to tie oneself to a cradle. The nurserystands sadly in the way of the free development of woman; it clips hersocial enjoyment, it curtails her bonnet bills. "The slavery of nursinga child, " one fair protester tells us, "only a mother knows. " And so sheinvents a pretty theory about the damage done to modern constitutions byour port-drinking forefathers, and ceases to nurse at all. But even thisis only partial independence; she pants for perfect freedom from thecares of maternity. Her tone becomes the tone of the household, and thespouse she has won growls over each new arrival. She is quite ready towelcome the growl. "Nature, " a mother informs us, "turns restive afterthe birth of two or three children, " and mothers turn restive withnature. "Whatever else you may do, " she adds, "you will never persuadeus into liking to have children, " and, if we did, we should not greatlyvalue the conversion. And so woman wins her liberty, and bows heremphatic reply to the world's appeal, "Give us good mothers, " bydeclining to be a mother at all. 

By the sacrifice of womanliness, by the sacrifice of modesty, byflattering her wooer's base preferences before marriage, by encouraginghis baser selfishness afterwards, by hunting her husband to the club andrestricting her maternal energies to a couple of infants, woman has atlast bought her freedom. She is no slave to a husband as her mother was, she is not buried beneath the cares of a family like her grandmother. She has changed all that, and the old world of home and domestictenderness and parental self-sacrifice lies in ruins at her feet. Shehas her liberty; what will she do with it? As yet, freedom means simplymore slang, more jewelry, more selfish extravagance, less modesty. As wemeet her on the stairs, as we see the profuse display of her charms, aswe listen to the flippant, vapid chatter, we turn a little sickened fromwoman stripped of all that is womanly, and cry to Heaven, as Madame deCampan cried to the Emperor--"Give us good mothers. "

UNEQUAL MARRIAGES. 

Acute ladies who concern themselves much with the superficial socialcurrents of the time are beginning to perceive, or at least to thinkthat they perceive, a fatal and growing tendency to _mésalliances_ onthe part of men who ought to know better. They complain not merely ofthe doting old gentleman who has been a bachelor long enough to lose hiswits, and so marries his cook or his housemaid, nor of the debauchedyoung simpleton who takes a wife from a casino or the bar of anight-_café_. Actions of this sort are as common at one time as atanother. Old fools and young fools maintain a pretty steady average. Their silly exploits are the issue, not of the tendencies of the age, but of their own individual and particular lack of wits. They do notaffect the general direction of social feeling, nor have we any right toargue up from their preposterous connexions to the influences andconditions of the society of which they are only the abnormal andirregular growths. What people mean, when they talk of an increase inthe number of men who marry beneath them, is that men otherwise sensibleand respectable and sober-minded perpetrate the irregularity insomething like cold blood, and with a measure of deliberation. Whetherobservers who have formed this opinion are right, or are onlyanticipating their own apprehensions and alarms, is difficult toascertain. A good deal depends on the accidental range of the observer'sown acquaintances, and still more on their candor or discreet reticence. 

Besides, how are we to know how far one generation is worse thangenerations which have gone before it? Men are, after due time, forgivenfor this defiance of social usage, and women who were barely presentablein youth become presentable enough by the time they reach middle age. People may seem to us to be very equally and justly mated whofive-and-twenty years ago were the town's talk. It is practicallyimpossible, therefore, to compare the actual number of unequal marriagesin our day with those of a generation back. People may have their ideas, but verification is not to be had. All we can do is to estimate theincrease in the conditions which are likely to make men find wives in arank below their own. If we look at these, there may be a good manyreasons for believing that the apprehensions of the shrewd and alarmedobservers are not without justification. 

When a wise man with a living or a name to make, or both, looks for awife, he certainly does not desire a person who shall be troublesome andan impediment to him. He wants a cheerful, sensible, and decentlythrifty person. He probably has no inclination for a bluestocking, norfor a lady with aggressive views on points of theology, nor for one whocan beat him in political discussion. Strong intellectual power he canmost heartily dispense with. But then, on the other hand, he has nofancy for sitting day after day at table with a vapid, flippant, frivolous, empty soul who can neither talk nor listen, who takes nointerest in things herself, and cannot understand why other peopleshould take interest in them, who is penetrated with feeble littleegoisms. An aggressive woman with opinions about prevenient grace, orthe advantages of female emigration, or the functions of the deaconess, would be far preferable to this. She would irritate, but she would notfill the soul with everlasting despair, as the pretty vapid creaturedoes. To discuss predestination and election over dinner is not nice, but still less is it nice to have to make talk with a fool, and to beobliged to answer her according to her folly. 

As the education of modern girls of fashion chiefly aims at making themeither very fast or very slow, it is not to be wondered at that men findit hard to realize their ideals among their equals in position. It isnot merely that so many marriageable young ladies are ignorant. They arethis, but they are more. They are exacting and pretentious, anduneducated in the worst sense, for they are ignorant how ignorant theyare, or even that they are ignorant at all. 

Then there is a still more obvious, palpable, and impressivecircumstance. A man with ordinary means looks with alarm on the toovisible and too unbounded extravagance of the ladies from among whom heis expected to take a partner. The thought of the apparel, of theluxuries, of the attendants, of the restless moving about, to which theyhave been accustomed, fills him with deep consternation. He mightperhaps deceive himself into thinking that he could get on very wellwith an empty-minded woman, but he cannot forget the stern facts ofarithmetic, nor hoodwink himself as to what would be left out of hisincome after he had paid for dresses, servants, household charges, carriages, parties, opera-boxes, traveling, and all the rest. 

Besides the flippancy of so many women, and the extravagance of mostwomen, arising from their inexperience of the trouble with which moneyis made and of the importance of keeping it after it has been made, there is something in the characteristics of modern social intercoursewhich makes men of a certain temper intensely anxious to avoid a sort ofmarriage which would, among other things, have the effect of committingthem more deeply to this kind of intercourse. Such men shrink withaffright from giving hostages to society for a more faithful compliancewith its most dismal exactions. To them there is nothing moreunendurable than the monotonous round of general hospitalities andceremonials, ludicrously misnamed pleasure. A detestation of wearisomeformalities does not imply any clownish or misanthropic reluctance toremember that those who feel it live in a world with other people, andthat a thoroughly social life is the only just and full life. 

But there is all the difference between a really social life and ahollow phantasmic imitation of it. A person may have the pleasantestpossible circle of friends, and may like their society above all things. This is one thing. But to have to mix much with numbers of thoroughlyindifferent people, and in a superficial, hollow way, is a verydifferent thing. Of course, men who take life just as it comes, who arenot very sedulous about making the most of it in their own way, and arequite willing to do all that their neighbors do just because theirneighbors do it, find no annoyance in this. Men cast in another mouldfind not only annoyance but absolute misery. They know also thatmarriage with a woman who is in the full tide of society means aninfinite augmentation of this round of tiresome and thoroughly uselessceremonies. Add this consideration to the two other considerations ofelaborate vapidness and unfathomable extravagance, and you have threetolerably good arguments why a man with large discourse of reason, looking before and after, should be slow to fasten upon himself bondswhich threaten to prove so leaden. 

The faults of the women of his own position, however, are a very poorreason why he should marry a woman beneath his own position. A man mustbe very weak to believe that, because fine ladies are often inane andextravagant, therefore women who are not fine ladies must be wise, clever, prudent, and everything else that belongs to the type ofcompanionable womanhood. The fact of the mistress being a blank does notprove that the maid would be a prize. It may be wise to avoid the one, but it is certainly folly to seek the other. Granting that thehousemaid or the cook or the daughter of the coachman is virtuous, high-minded, refined, thoughtful, thrifty, and everything else that isdesirable under the sun, all will fail to counterbalance the drawbacksthat flow from the first inequality of position. 

The misguided husband believes that he is going to live a plainunsophisticated life, according to nature and common sense, in companywith one whom the hollowness and trickishness of society has neverinfected. He is not long in finding out his irreparable blunder. Thelady is not received. People do not visit her, and although one of hismotives in choosing a sort of wife whom people do not visit was theexpress desire of avoiding visits, yet he no sooner gets what he wishedthan his success begins to make him miserable. What he expected toplease him as a relief mortifies him as a slight. Even if he beunsympathetic enough in nature not to care much for the disapproval ofhis fellows, he will rapidly find that his wife is a good deal less of aphilosopher in these points, and that, though he may relish his escapefrom the miseries of society, she will vigorously resent her exclusionfrom its supposed delights. 

Again, from another point of view, he is tolerably sure to find that thecommon opinion of society about unequal unions is not so unsound as heused scornfully to suppose it to be. The vapidity of a polite woman isbad, but the vapidity of a woman who is not polite is decidedly worse. Asimpering unthinking woman with good manners is decidedly better thanan unthinking woman with imperfect manners; and if polish can spoilnature among one set of people, certainly among another set nature maybe as much spoilt by lack of polish. It does not follow, from a personbeing indifferently well-bred, that therefore she is profoundly wise andthoughtful and poetic, and capable of estimating the things of thisworld at their worth. Boys at college indulge in this too generousfallacy. For grown-up men there is less excuse. They ought to know thatobscure uneducated women are all the more likely on that account to fallshort of magnanimity, self-control, self-containing composure, thangirls who have grown up with a background of bright and gracioustradition, however little their education may have done to stimulatethem to make the foreground like it. To have a common past is the firstsecret of happy association--a past common in ideas, sentiments, andgrowth, if not common in external incidents. 

One reason why a cultivated man is wretched with a vapid woman is thatshe has not traveled over a yard of that ground of knowledge and feelingwhich has in truth made his nature what it is. But a woman in his ownstation is more likely to have shared a past of this sort than a womanof lower station. Mere community of general circumstances andsurrounding does something. The obscure woman taken from inferior placehas not the common past of culture, nor of circumstance either. Thefoolish man who has married away from his class trusts that somehow orother nature will repair this. He assumes, in a real paroxysm of folly, that obscurity is the fostering condition of a richness of characterwhich could not be got by culture. He pays the price of his blindness. Untended nature is more likely to produce weeds than choice fruits, andthe chances in such cases as this are beyond calculation in favor of hishaving got a weed--in other words, having wedded himself to a life ofwrangling, gloom, and swift deterioration of character. This result maynot be invariable, but it must be more usual than not. 

In the exceptional cases where a man does not repent of an unequal matchof this sort, you will mostly find that the match was unequal only inexternals, and that his character had been a very fit counterpart forthat of a vulgar and uneducated woman before he made her his wife. Thismay lead one to think that there is something to be said for the womanin morganatic marriages. The men who do these things are not always, noteven generally, philosophic men in search of an unsophisticated life, but unamiable, defiant persons, who only hate society either because ithas failed to appreciate their qualities, or because they cannot be atthe trouble to go through the ordinary amount of polite usage. 

HUSBAND-HUNTING. 

What we have said in another place about the odium which attaches to"match-making" naturally applies in a far greater degree to"husband-hunting. " Practically the two words mean much the same thing, since the successful result of a husband-hunt is of course a match, andmatch-making, in the common acceptation of the term, involves ahusband-hunt. This latter fact is somewhat curious. There is no reasonin the nature of things why the word match-making should be associatedonly with the pursuit of the unmarried male. On the contrary, the theoryof marriage has always been that it is the woman who has to be hunteddown. It is curious to note under what completely differentcircumstances, and occasionally in what grotesque forms, the same theoryhas been found all over the world, both in civilized and savage life. Sometimes the bride is carried away bodily from her home, as if nothingshort of physical force could make a woman quit her maiden state. Sometimes the panting bridegroom has to run her down--no slight task ifthe adorer happens to be stout, and the adored one coquettish and fleetof foot. In marriage, this custom prevails only, we believe, among thesavages, but visitors to the Crystal Palace may see how moderncivilization has adapted it to courtship in the popular pastime ofkiss-in-the-ring. 

We have read of a savage tribe in which the bride is thought no betterthan she should be, if, on the day after the wedding, the bridegroomdoes not show signs of having been vigorously pinched and scratched. This custom, again, is perhaps represented in civilized life by thekissing and struggling which are supposed every Christmas to go on underthe mistletoe. It is not unworthy of remark, as regards these two pointsof comparison between civilization and barbarism, that, as the womangets more civilized, she seems more disposed to meet her pursuerhalfway. In the game of kiss-in-the-ring, for instance, although thelady does not run after the gentleman, but, on the contrary, shows hermaiden modesty by giving him as hard a chase as she can, she stilldelicately paves the way for osculation by throwing thepocket-handkerchief. And, in the Christmas fights under the mistletoe(if we may take Mr. Dickens as an authority), slapping, and evenpinching in moderation, are considered allowable--perhaps we ought tosay proper--on the lady's part; but scratching--serious scratching, wemean, which would make her admirer's face look next morning as if he hadbeen taking liberties with a savage bird or a cat--is thought not merelyunnecessary, but unfair. 

The difference between civilized and savage woman may perhaps help toindicate the reason why, now-a-days, match-making should, as a matter offact, be associated with husband-hunting in spite of the theory that itis the woman who has to be hunted, not the man. Popular phraseology hasan awkward trick of making people unconsciously countenance the theoriesagainst which they most vehemently protest. Husband-hunting is a farmore generally obnoxious word than even the much-injured match-making, simply because it flies in the face of the pet theory which we havedescribed. But, if the theory really hold good in modern practice, whyshould man, not woman, be recognised as the professional match-maker'svictim and legitimate game? Why does not wife-hunting, the word whichthis theory entitles us to expect, take its proper place in society?Heiress-hunting, indeed, is well known, but this can scarcely beconsidered a form of wife-hunting, for it is not the woman who is theobject of pursuit, but her money-bags. We have the word heiress-huntingfor the very obvious reason that heiresses are recognised game. The wordhusband-hunting exists for the same reason. 

Are we to infer from the non-existence, or at any rate thenon-appearance in good society, of the word wife-hunting, that thepractice is anything but common--that, since a hunt necessarily impliespursuit on one side and flight on the other, a man cannot well be saidto hunt a woman who is either engaged in hunting him, or else only tooready to meet him halfway? Are we gradually tending towards an advancedstage of civilization in which woman will be formally recognized as thepursuer, and man as the pursued? We are not bold enough to take underour protection a view so glaringly heterodox, but still we think itonly common justice to point out that there are difficult problems inthe present state of society which the view helps materially to solve. We fear, for instance, there can be no doubt that there is a good dealof truth in the Belgravian mother's lament that marriage is graduallyceasing to be considered "the thing" among the young men of the presentday; that girls of good families and even good looks are taking tosisterhoods, and nursing-institutes, and new-fangled abominations, simply because there is no one to marry them. 

It is not merely that the young men are getting every day rarer; though, unless there is some system, like Pharaoh's, for putting male infants todeath, what can become of them all is a mystery. India and the coloniesmay absorb a good many, though these places also do duty in theabsorption of spinsterhood. But this will not account for the alarmingfact, that in almost every ball-room, no matter whether in the countryor in town, there are usually at least three crinolines to onetail-coat, and that dancing bachelors are becoming so scarce that it isa question whether hostesses ought not, for their own peace of mind, toconnive at the introduction of the Oriental nautch. Yet even thealarming scarcity of marriageable men is not so serious an evil as theirgrowing disinclination to marry. 

With the causes of this disinclination we are not now concerned. Someattribute it to the increase of luxurious and expensive habits amongbachelors--habits specially fostered by "those hateful clubs;" some tothe "snobbishness" which makes a woman consider it beneath her dignityto marry into an establishment less stylish than that which it hasperhaps taken her father all his life to secure; some to the_demi-monde_--an explanation very like the theory that small-pox iscaused by pustules. But, whatever may be the causes of thedisinclination, there can be but little doubt that it exists, and theworst part of the matter is, that it is found among rich men no lessthan among poor. That really poor men should not wish to marry is, eventhe Belgravian mother must admit, an admirable arrangement of nature. But it is too bad that so many men-about-town should seem rich enoughfor yachting, or racing, or opera-boxes, or even diamond necklaces--foranything, in short, but a wife. The fact is, that in the eyes of poormen a wife is associated chiefly with handsome carriages, showy dresses, fine furniture, and other forbidden luxuries; and, inasmuch as there isnot one law of association for the rich and another for the poor, thisview spreads, until even rich men consider whether it is not possible tosecure the luxuries without the wife. 

Now, since marriage is, on the whole, an institution with which societycannot very well dispense--at any rate not until some good substitutehas been found for it--it is clear that rich men ought not to be allowedto treat it in this way. If modern civilization tends to beget adisinclination to marry, it ought also, on the principle ofcompensation, to provide some means for counteracting this tendency, orkeeping it under control. Is the increase of husband-hunting--we ask thequestion in a respectful and, we trust, purely philosophical spirit ofinquiry--calculated to supply this great and obvious want? What are itsmerits, in this respect, as compared with the old-fashioned theory thatwoman should be wooed, not woo? Even the most inveterate hater ofhusband-hunting must admit that, so far as the great end of matrimony isconcerned, the two sexes nowadays stand to each other in a mostunnatural relation. It is alike the mission of both to marry, butwhereas women are honorably anxious to fulfill this mission, men, as wehave already seen, are too ready to shirk it. Yet, by a strangeinversion of the usual order of things, to the very sex which evades themission is its furtherance and chief control entrusted. 

Besides, not only does woman take more kindly to the duty of matrimonythan man--or at least nineteenth-century man--but she has comparativelynothing else to think about. A dozen occupations are open to him, buther one object in life, her whole being's end and aim, is to marry. Surely, if the art of marriage requires cultivation, it ought, likeeverything else, to be entrusted to those who can give their whole timeto it, not to those who have so much else to do. Even when a bachelor isin a position to marry, and not unwilling to make the experiment, he isstill far less fitted for the furtherance of matrimony than a woman. He, perhaps, meets a nice girl at a ball, is taken with her, and after amild flirtation thinks, as he walks home in the moonlight, that shewould make a charming wife. He dreams about her, and next morning atbreakfast, as he pensively eats a pound of steak, resolves that on thesame afternoon, or the next at the very latest, he will contrive anaccidental meeting, or even find some excuse for a call. But then comesoffice-work, or the _Times_, or some other distraction, and later onperhaps a visit from some matter-of-fact friend with an unromantic tastefor "bitter, " or a weakness for the Burlington Arcade. One day slipsaway, and by the next the image of the evening's idol has waxedcomparatively faint. At least it is not sufficiently vivid to inspirehim with courage enough for a call, or a too suspicious-lookingrencontre. In a week he bows to the image, as it is driven by, as coollyas if he had never had a thought of making his heart its shrine; andthus a golden opportunity for bringing together two young people, inwhose auspicious union the whole community has an interest, has beencruelly thrown away. 

How different might the case have been if fashion had allowed the ladyto take the initiative, instead of compelling her to sit idly at home!She has no office-work, nor _Times_, nor any business but that ofbringing last night's flirtation to a practical issue. Assuming her tobe satisfied as to the eligibility of her partner, there is nothing toprevent her giving her whole time and attention to his capture. She isas little likely to throw away any chance of an interview calculated tohelp in bringing about this result as he is to neglect an opportunityfor winning the lawn sleeves or silk gown. Marriage is of as muchimportance to her as either of these to him. It is, perhaps, notimpossible that the mere notion of a woman's thus taking the initiativein courtship may to some appear outrageously immodest. But with thispoint we have nothing to do, as we have been discussing the theory ofhusband-hunting, not with any reference to its modesty, but solely andexclusively in its connexion with the great question, how marriage is tobe carried on. We put together the three facts that nineteenth-centurycivilization makes men indisposed to marry, that it gives women noobject in life but marriage, and yet that it assigns the furtherance ofmarriage, which we assume to be an institution deserving of carefulcultivation, not to those whose interest it is to promote it, but tothose who are comparatively averse to it. Modest or immodest, husband-hunting obviously tends to remedy this misdirection and waste offorce. 

We take this to be the right explanation--and we have endeavored to makeit an impartial one--of the charge not uncommonly brought against theyoung ladies of the present day, that, as compared with their mothersand grandmothers, they are rather forward and fast, and thathusband-hunting in their hands, is gradually being developed to anextent scarcely compatible with the old-fashioned theories aboutmaidenly modesty and reserve. The change may be considered the effort ofmodern civilization to remedy an evil of its own creation. The tideadvances in one direction because it recedes in another. If the menwill not come forward, the women must. It is all very well for satiriststo call this immodest, but even modesty could be more easily dispensedwith than marriage. Besides, without quitting our position as impartialobservers, we may point out that it is only fair to the professor ofhusband-hunting to remember that there are two kinds of immodesty, andthat some actions are immodest merely because it is the custom toconsider them so. It would, no doubt, be immodest for a young lady toride through Hyde Park in man's fashion. Yet what is there in the natureof things to make a side-saddle more modest than any other? The Amazonswere positive prudes, and would never have even spoken to man if theycould have contrived to carry on society without him; yet they rodeastraddle. And if fashion could make this practice feminine, why shouldit not some day do as much for husband-hunting?

THE PERILS OF "PAYING ATTENTION. "

We have elsewhere asserted that the art of match-making requirescultivation. We are told, however, that, on the contrary, match-makingis so zealously studied and skillfully pursued that it bids fair to bethe great social evil of nineteenth-century civilization. The growingdifficulty of procuring sons-in-law has called forth a correspondingincrease in the skill required for capturing them, just as the wits ofthe detective are sharpened to keep pace with the expertness which thegeneral spread of useful knowledge has conferred upon the thief. Eligible bachelors complain that scarcity of marrying men has much thesame effect upon the match-making mother as scarcity of food upon thewolf. It makes her at once more ferocious and more cunning. Herinvitations to croquet-parties and little dinners are so constant and sopressing that it is scarcely possible for her destined prey to refusethem all without manifest rudeness, and yet it is equally hard for himto go without being judiciously manoeuvred into "paying attention" tothe one young lady who has been selected to make him happy for life. 

This chivalrous and graceful synonym for courtship in itself speaksvolumes for the serious nature of the risk which he runs. The trulygallant assumption which underlies it, that an Englishman only "paysattention" to a woman when he has a solid businesslike offer of marriageto make her, not only puts a formidable weapon into the hands of thematch-maker, but also leaves her victim without a most effectual meansof protection. The national gallantry towards women upon which aFrenchman so plumes himself may be, as your true Briton declares, a poorsort of quality enough; a mere grimace and trick of the lips--notgenuine stuff from the heart; having much the same relation to truechivalry that his _bière_ has to beer, or his _potage_ to soup. But atany rate it has this advantage, that it enables him to pay any amount offlowery compliments to a woman without risk of committing himself, or ofbeing misunderstood. 

If an Englishman asks a young lady after her sore throat, or her invalidgrandmother, and throws into his voice that tone of eager interest ortender sympathy which a polite Frenchman would assume as a matter ofcourse, he is at once suspected of matrimonial designs upon her. He isobliged to be as formal and businesslike in his mode of address as thelawyer's clerk who added at the end of a too ardent love-letter thesaving clause "without prejudice. " We have heard of a young lady whoconfided to her bosom friend that she that morning expected a proposal, and, when closely pressed for her reasons, blushingly confessed that thenight before a gentleman had twice asked her whether she was fond ofpoetry, and four times whether she would like to go into therefreshment-room. 

We do not mean to say that this tendency to look upon every "attention"as a preliminary step to an offer is entirely, or even principally, dueto British want of gallantry. Our national theory of courtship andmarriage has probably much more to do with it. We say "theory"advisedly, for our practice approaches every day nearer to that of theContinental nations whose mercenary view of the holy estate of matrimonywe righteously abjure. Our system is, in fact, gradually becoming aclumsy compromise between the _mariage de convenance_ and the _mariaged'amour_, with most of the disadvantages, and very few of theadvantages, of either. Theoretically, English girls are allowed to marryfor love, and to choose whichever they like best of all the admiringswains whom they fascinate at croquet-parties or balls. Practically, themajority marry for an establishment, and only flirt for love. They leavethe school-room, no doubt, with an unimpeachably romantic conception ofa youthful bridegroom who combines good looks, great intellect, andfervent piety with a modest four thousand a year, paid quarterly. 

But they are not very long in finding out that the men whom they likebest, as being about their own age or still young enough to sympathisewith their tastes and enter heartily into all their notions of fun, arerarely such as are pronounced by parents and guardians to be eligible;and so, after one or two attacks, more or less serious, of love-fever, they tranquilly look out for an admirer who can place the proper numberof servants and horses at their disposal, while they in returnmagnanimously decline to make discourteously minute inquiries as to thecondition of his hair or teeth. A marriage made in this spirit, evenwhere no pressure is put upon the young lady by parents or friends, andshe is allowed full liberty of action, is open to all the chargesordinarily brought against the Continental _mariage de convenance_. Yet, on the other hand, it has not the advantage of being formally arrangedbeforehand by a couple of elderly people, who are in no hurry, and whohave seen enough of the world to know thoroughly what they are about;nor, we may add, does it usually take place in time to avert some one ormore of those troublesome flirtations with handsome, but penniless, ball-room heroes which are not always calculated to improve eithertemper or character. 

Still, whatever our practice may be, we nevertheless do homage to thetheory that, in this favored country, young ladies choose whateverhusbands they like best, and marry for love; and although this theory isin some respects a serious obstacle to marriage, and often standscruelly in the way of people with weak nerves, it places a powerfulweapon in the hands of the dauntless and determined match-maker. Ifyoung people are to marry for love, they must obviously have everyfacility afforded them for meeting and fascinating each other. It isthis consideration which reconciles the philosopher to some of our leastentertaining entertainments, although, at the same time, it makes somuch of our hospitality an organized hypocrisy. 

It is, indeed, a hard fate to be obliged to leave your after-dinnercigar and George Eliot's last novel in order to drive four miles throughwind and snow to a party which your hostess has given, not because shehas good fare, or good music, or agreeable guests, or anything, inshort, really calculated to amuse you, but simply and solely because shehas a tribe of daughters who somehow must be disposed of. Yet even a manof the Sir Cornewall Lewis stamp, who thinks that this world would be avery tolerable place but for its amusements, may forgive her when hereflects that business, not pleasure, is at the bottom of theinvitation. If marriage is to be kept up, we must either abandon ourtheory that young ladies are allowed to choose husbands for themselves, or we must give them every possible facility for exercising the choice. Bachelors must be dragged, on every available pretext, and without theslightest reference to the nominal ends of amusement or hospitality, from the novel or cigar, and made to run the gauntlet of female charms. 

From the Sir Cornewall Lewis point of view, with which nearly allEnglishmen over thirty more or less sympathise, it is the only sounddefence of many of our so-called entertainments that they are virtuallydaughter-shows--genteel auctions, without which a sufficiently brisktrade in matrimony could not possibly be carried on. The consciousnessof this is doubtless in one way somewhat of an obstacle to flirtation, and gives the frisky matron a cruel advantage over her unmarried rival. A man must have oak and triple brass round his heart who can flirtperfectly at his ease when he knows that his "attentions" are notmerely watched by vigilant chaperons, but are actually reduced to amatter of numerical calculation--that a certain number of dances, orcalls, or polite speeches will justify a stern father or big brother inasking his "intentions. "

This application of arithmetic is, in some respects, as dangerous tocourtship as to the Pentateuch. But, nevertheless, it gives the cleverand courageous match-maker an advantage of which the eligible bachelorcomplains that she makes the most pitiless use. He finds himselfmanoeuvred into "paying the attentions" which society considers theusual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all butimpossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much thesame sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There areperhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation withwhom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hopespeedily turns out a delusion. One lady is vigilantly guarded by ajealous betrothed; a second is a poor relation, or humble friend, whoknows that she would never get another invitation to the house if sheonce interfered with her patron's plans; a third is too plain to beapproached on any ordinary calculation of probabilities; a fourth ishopelessly dull; the rest are married, and if not actually themselves inthe conspiracy--which, however, is as likely as not--are still carefullychosen for their freedom from the flirting propensities of the friskymatron. The destined victim finds, in short, that he must eitherdeliberately resign himself to be bored to death, or boldly face theperil in store for him, and take his chance of evading or breaking thenet. Nine men out of ten naturally choose the latter alternative, toooften in that presumptuous spirit of self-confidence which is thematch-maker's best ally. 

A bachelor is perhaps never in so great danger of being caught as whenhe has come to the conclusion that he sees perfectly through themother's little game and merely means to amuse himself by carrying on astrictly guarded flirtation with the daughter. We mean, of course, onthe assumption that the daughter is either a pretty or clever girl, withwhom any sort of flirtation is in itself perilous. His danger is all thegreater if it happens--and it is only fair to young-ladydom to admitthat it often does happen--that the daughter has sufficient spirit andself-respect to repudiate all share in the maternal plot. Many a man hasbeen half surprised, half piqued, into serious courtship by findinghimself vigorously snubbed and rebuffed where he had been led to imaginethat his slightest advances would be only too eagerly received. But, inany case, the match-maker knows that, if she can only bring the twopeople whom she wishes to marry sufficiently often into each other'ssociety, the battle is half won. According to Lord Lytton, whom everyone will admit to be an authority on the philosophy of flirtation, "proximity is the soul of love. " And eligible bachelors complain that itbecomes every day harder to avoid this perilous proximity, and the dutyof "paying attention" which it implies, without being positively rude. 

We have not much consolation to offer the sufferers who prefer thiscomplaint. As regards our own statement that the art of match-makingrequires cultivation, we did not mean by it to imply that match-makingis not vigorously carried on. So long as there are mothers left withdaughters to be married, so long will match-making continue to bepursued; and it must obviously be pursued all the more energetically tokeep pace with the growing disinclination of bachelors among the upperand middle classes to face the responsibilities of married life. Wemeant that match-making does not receive the sort of cultivation whichit seems to us fairly to deserve, when we consider the paramountimportance of the object which it at least professes to have in view, and the delicate nature of the instruments and experiments with which itis concerned. 

We have not yet mustered up courage for the attempt to show what shouldbe its proper cultivation; but we may safely say that so long as it isleft in the hands of those who are influenced by merely mercenary orinterested motives, and who watch the "attentions" of a bachelor, not inthe spirit of a philosopher or a philanthropist, but in that of aBelgravian mother, it cannot be cultivated as a fine art. It can only berescued from the unmerited odium into which it has fallen by being takenunder the patronage of those who are in a position to practice it onpurely artistic and disinterested grounds. In their hands, the nowperilous process of "paying attention" would be studied and criticizedin a new spirit. It might still, indeed, be treated arithmetically, asperhaps the most promising way of reducing it to the precision andcertainty of an exact science. But still the problem would be todetermine, not what is the least possible number of dances, calls, orcompliments which may justify the intervention of a big brother or heavyfather, but what number warrants the assumption that the flirtation haspassed out of the frivolous into the serious stage. Three dances, forinstance, may expose a man to being asked what are his "intentions, "where six dances need not imply that he really has any. The mercenarymatch-maker considers only the first point; our ideal match-maker wouldlay far more stress upon the second. But still, in any case, thisgrowing tendency to treat the practice of "paying attention" in thespirit of exact science offers at least one ray of hope to those whocomplain that, do what they will, they cannot escape having to pay thisdangerous tribute. The tendency must sooner or later bear fruit in agenerally recognised code of courtship (whether written or unwrittendoes not much matter), prescribing the precise number and character ofthe "attentions"--in their adaptation to dancing, croquet-playing, cracker-pulling, and other conventional pretexts for flirtation--whichvirtually amount to an offer of marriage. This scheme, we may mention, is not wholly imaginary. There is somewhere or other a stratum ofEnglish society in which such a code already exists. At least we haveseen a book of etiquette in which, among similar ordinances, it was laiddown that to hand anything--say a flower or a muffin--to a lady withthe left hand was equivalent to a proposal. The general introduction ofa system of this kind, although it might shorten the lives of timid orforgetful men, would obviously confer an unspeakable boon upon themajority of the match-maker's present victims. They would not only knowexactly how far to go with safety, but also how at once to recede. Tooffer, for instance, two pieces of muffin firmly and decidedly with theright hand would probably make up for offering one flower with the left, at least if there were no guardian or chaperon on the spot to takeinstant advantage of the first overture. But it would now perhaps bepremature to enter into the details of a system which it may take ageneration or so more of match-making to introduce. 

WOMEN'S HEROINES. 

A vigorous and pertinacious effort has of late years been made topersuade mankind that beauty in women is a matter of very little moment. As long as literature was more or less a man's vocation, an oppositetendency prevailed; and a successful novelist would as soon have thoughtof flying as of driving a team of ugly heroines through three volumes. The rapid and portentous increase of authoresses changed the current ofaffairs. As a rule, authoresses do not care much about lovely women; andthey must naturally despise the miserable masculine weakness which isled captive by a pretty face, even if it be only upon paper. They canhave no patience with such feebleness, and it may well seem to them tobe a high and important mission to help to put it down. 

It became, accordingly, the fashion at one time among the femininewriters of fiction to make all their fascinating heroines plain girlswith plenty of soul, and to show, by a series of thrilling loveadventures, how completely in the long run the plain girls had the bestof it. There is a regular type of ideal young lady in women's novels, towhich we have at last become accustomed. She is not at all a perfectbeauty. Her features are not as finely chiseled as a Greek statue; sheis taller, we are invariably told, than the model height, her nose is_retroussé_; and "in some lights" an unfavorable critic might affirmthat her hair was positively tawny. But there is a well of feeling inher big brown eyes, which, when united to genius, invariably bowls overthe hero of the book. And the passion she excites is of that stirringkind which eclipses all others. 

Through the first two volumes the predestined lover flirts with thebeauties who despise her, dances with them under her eye, and wearstheir colors in her presence. But at the end of the third an expressiveglance tells her that all is right, and that big eyes and a big soulhave won the race in a canter. Jane Eyre was perhaps the firsttriumphant success of this particular school of art. And Jane Eyrecertainly opened the door to a long train of imitators. For many yearsevery woman's novel had got in it some dear and noble creature, generally underrated, and as often as not in embarrassed circumstances, who used to capture her husband by sheer force of genius, and bypretending not to notice him when he came into the room. Some pleasantwomanly enthusiasts even went further, and invented heroines withtangled hair and inky fingers. We do not feel perfectly certain thatMiss Yonge, for instance, has not married her inky Minervas to nicer andmore pious husbands, as a rule, than her uninky ones. The advantage ofthe view that ugly heroines are the most charming is obvious, if onlythe world could be brought to adopt it. It is a well-meant protest infavor of what may be called, in these days of political excitement, the"rights" of plain girls. It is very hard to think that a few morefreckles or a quarter of an inch of extra chin should make all thedifference in life to women, and those of them who are intellectuallyfitted to play a shining part in society or literature may be excusedfor rebelling against the masculine heresy of believing in beauty only. 

Whenever such women write, the constant moral they preach to us is thatbeauty is a delusion and a snare. This is the moral of Hetty in _AdamBede_, and it is in the unsympathetic and cold way in which Hetty isdescribed that one catches glimpses of the sex of the consummate authorof the story. She is quite alive to Hetty's plump arms and prettycheeks. She likes to pat her and watch her, as if Hetty were a cat, orsome other sleek and supple animal. But we feel that the writer of _AdamBede_ is eyeing Hetty all over from the beginning to the end, andconsidering in herself the while what fools men are. It would be unjustand untrue to say that George Eliot in all her works does not do amplejustice, in a noble and generous way, to the power of female beauty. Theheroines of _Romola_ and _Felix Holt_ prove distinctly that she does. But one may fairly doubt whether a man could have painted Hetty. Whenone sees the picture, one understands its truth; but men who draw prettyfaces usually do so with more enthusiasm. 

A similar sort of protest may be found lurking in a great many women'snovels against the popular opinion that man is the more powerful animal, and that a wife is at best a domestic appanage of the husband. Authoresses are never weary of attempts to set this right. They like toprove, what is continually true, that feminine charms are the lever thatmoves the world, and that the ideal woman keeps her husband and allabout her straight. In religious novels woman's task is to exercise thehappiest influence on the man's theological opinions. Owing to theerrors he has imbibed from the study of a false and shallow philosophy, he sees no good in going to church twice on Sundays, or feels that hecannot heartily adopt all the expressions in the Athanasian creed. It isthe heroine's mission to cure this mental malady; to point out to him, from the impartial point of view of those who have never committed thefolly of studying Kant or Hegel, how thoroughly superficial Kant andHegel are; and to remind him by moonlight, and in the course ofspiritual flirtation on a balcony, of the unutterable truths in theologywhich only a woman can naturally discern. We are far from wishing tointimate that there is not a good deal of usefulness in such femininepoints of view. The _argumentum ad sexum_, if not a logical, is often nodoubt a practical one, and women are right to employ it whenever theycan make it tell. And as it would be impossible to develop it to anyconsiderable extent in a dry controversial work, authoresses have noother place to work it in except in a romance. What they do for religionin pious novels, they do for other things in productions of a morestrictly secular kind. 

There is, for instance, a popular and prevalent fallacy that women oughtto be submissive to, and governed by, their lords and masters. Infeminine fiction we see a very wholesome reaction against this mistakensupposition. The hero of the female tale is often a poor, frivolous, easily led person. When he can escape from his wife's eye, he speculatesheavily on Stock Exchange, goes in under the influence of evil advisersfor any sort of polite swindling, and forgets, or is ill-temperedtowards, the inestimable treasure he has at home. On such occasions theheroine of the feminine novel shines out in all her majesty. She is kindand patient to her husband's faults, except that when he is more thanusually idiotic her eyes flash, and her nostrils dilate with a sort ofgrand scorn, while her knowledge of life and business is displayed atcritical moments to save him from ruin. When every one else deserts him, she takes a cab into the city, and employs some clever friend, who hasalways been hopelessly in love with her--and for whom she entertains, unknown to her husband, a Platonic brotherly regard--to intervene in thenick of time, and to arrest her husband's fall. 

In a story called _Sowing the Wind_, which has recently been published, the authoress (for we assume, in spite of the ambiguous assertion on thetitle-page, that the pen which wrote it was not really a man's) goes tovery great lengths. The hero, St. John Aylott, is always snubbing andlecturing Isola, whom he married when she was half a child, and whom hetreats as a child long after she has become a great and glorious woman. He administers the doctrine of conjugal authority to her in season andout of season, and his object is to convert her into a loving feminineslave. Against this revolting theory her nature rebels. Though shepreserves her wifely attachment to a man whom she has once thoughtworthy of better things, her respect dies away, and at last she openlydefies him when he wants her, in contravention of her plain duty, not toadopt as her son a deserted orphan-boy. At this point her characterstands out in noble contrast to his. She does adopt the boy, and bringshim to live with her in spite of all; and when St. John is unnaturallypeevish at its childish squalling, Isola bears his fretfulanimadversions with a patient dignity that touches the hearts of allabout her. 

Any husband who can go on preaching about conjugal obedience throughthree volumes to a splendid creature who is his wife, must havesomething wrong about his mind. And something wrong about St. John'smind there ultimately proves to be. It flashes across Isola that this isthe case, and before long her worst suspicions are confirmed. At lastSt. John breaks out into open lunacy, and dies deranged--a fate which ispartly the cause, and partly the consequence, of his continualindulgence in such wild theories about the relations of man and wife. Itis not every day that we have the valuable lesson of the rights of wivesso plainly or so practically put before us, but when it is put beforeus, we recognize the service that may be conferred on literature andsociety by lady authors. To assert the great cause of the independenceof the female sex is one of the ends of feminine fiction, just as theassertion of the rights of plain girls is another. Authoresses do notask for what Mr. Mill wishes them to have--a vote for the borough, orperhaps a seat in Parliament. They do ask that young women should have afair matrimonial chance, independently of such trivial considerations asgood looks, and that after marriage they should have the right todespise their husbands whenever duty and common sense tell them it isproper to do so. 

The odd thing is that the heroines of whom authoresses are so fond innovels, are not the heroines whom other women like in real life. Eventhe popular authoresses of the day, who are always producing some lovelypantheress in their stories, and making her achieve an endless series ofimpossible exploits, would not care much about a lovely pantheress in adrawing-room or a country-house; and are not perhaps in the habit ofmeeting any. The fact is that the vast majority of women who writenovels do not draw upon their observation for their characters so muchas upon their imagination. In some respects this is curious enough, forwhen women observe, they observe acutely and to a good deal of purpose. Those of them, however, who take to the manufacture of fiction havegenerally done so because at some portion of their career they have beenthrown back upon themselves. They began perhaps to write whencircumstances made them feel isolated from the rest of their littleworld, and in a spirit of sickly concentration upon their own thoughts. 

A woman with a turn for literary work who notices that she is distanced, as far as success or admiration goes, by rivals inferior in mentalcapacity to herself, flies eagerly to the society of her own fancies, and makes her pen her greatest friend. It is the lot of many girls topass their childhood or youth in a somewhat monotonous round of domesticduties, and frequently in a narrow domestic circle, with which, exceptfrom natural affection, they may have no great intellectual sympathy. The stage of intellectual fever through which able men have passed whenthey were young is replaced, in the case of girls of talent, by a stageof moral morbidity. At first this finds vent in hymns, and it turns inthe end to novels. Few clever young ladies have not written religiouspoetry at one period or other of their history, and few that have doneso, stop there without going further. It is a great temptation toconsole oneself for the shortcomings of the social life around, bybuilding up an imaginary picture of social life as it might be, full ofromantic adventures and pleasant conquests. 

In manufacturing her heroines, the young recluse author puts on paperwhat she would herself like to be, and what she thinks she might be ifonly her eyes were bluer, her purse longer, or men more wise anddiscerning. In painting the slights offered to her favorite ideal, sheconceives the slights that might possibly be offered to herself, and thetriumphant way in which she would (under somewhat more auspiciouscircumstances) delight to live them down and trample them under foot. The vexations and the annoyances she describes with considerable spiritand accuracy. The triumph is the representation of her own deliciousdreams. The grand character of the imaginary victim is but a species ofphantom of her ownself, taken, like the German's camel, from the depthsof her own self-consciousness, and projected into cloudland. This is thereason why authoresses enjoy dressing up a heroine who is ill-used. Theyknow the sensation of social martyrdom, and it is a gentle sort ofrevenge upon the world to publish a novel about an underrated martyr, whose merits are recognised in the end, either before or after herdecease. They are probably not conscious of the precise work they areperforming. They are not aware that their heroine represents what theybelieve they themselves would prove to be under impossiblecircumstances, provided they had only golden hair and a wider sphere ofaction. 

This is but another and a larger phase of a phenomenon which all of ushave become familiar with who have ever had a large acquaintance withyoung ladies' poems. They all write about death with a pertinacity thatis positively astounding. It is not that the young people actually wantto die. But they like the idea that their family circle will find out, when it is too late, all the mistakes and injustices it has committedtowards them, and that this world will perceive that it has beenentertaining unawares an angel, just as the angel has taken flightupwards to another. The juvenile aspirant commences with revenging herwrongs in heaven, but it occurs to her before long that she can withequal facility have them revenged upon earth. Poetry gives way to prose, and hymnology to fiction. The element of self-consciousness, unknown toherself, still continues to prevail, and to color the character of theheroines she turns out. Of course great authoresses shake themselvesfree from it. Real genius is independent of sex, and first-rate writers, whether they are men or women, are not morbidly in love with anidealized portrait of themselves. 

But the poorer or less worthy class of feminine novelists seldom escapefrom the fatal influence of egotism. Women's heroines, except in thecase of the best artists, are conceptions borrowed, not from without, but from within. The consequence is that there is a sameness about themwhich becomes at last distasteful. The conception of the injured wife orthe glorified governess is one which was a novelty fifteen or twentyyears ago, while it cannot be said any longer to be lively orentertaining. As literature has grown to be a woman's occupation, we areafraid that glorified governesses in fiction will, like the poor, bealways with us, and continue to the end to run their bright course ofuniversal victory. The most, perhaps, that can be hoped is that theywill in the long run take the wind out of the sails of the glorifiedadulteresses and murderesses which at present seem the latest and mostsuccessful efforts of feminine art. 

INTERFERENCE. 

About the strongest propensity in human nature, apart from the purelypersonal instincts, is the propensity to interfere. Not tyranny, whichis another matter--tyranny being active while interference is negative;the one standing as the masculine, the other as the feminine, form ofthe same principle. Besides, tyranny has generally some personal gain inview when it takes in hand to force people to do what they do not liketo do; while interference seeks no good for itself at all, but simplyprevents the exercise of free will for the mere pleasure to be had outof such prevention. Again, the idea of tyranny is political rather thandomestic, but the curse of interference is seen most distinctly withinthe four walls of home, where also it is felt the most. Very many peoplespend their lives in interfering with others--perpetually putting spokesinto wheels with which they have really nothing to do, and thrustingtheir fingers into pies about the baking of which they are not in anyway concerned; and of these people we are bound to confess that womenmake up the larger number and are the greater sinners. 

To be sure there are some men--small, fussy, finicking fellows, withwhom nature has made the irreparable blunder of sex--who are astroublesome in their endless interference as the narrowest-minded andmost meddling women of their acquaintance; but the femininecharacteristics of men are so exceptional that we need not take theminto serious calculation. For the most part, when men do interfere inany manly sense at all, it is with such things as they think they have aright to control--say, with the wife's low dresses, or the daughter'stoo patent flirtations. They interfere and prevent because they arejealous of the repute, perhaps of the beauty, of their womankind; andknowing what men say of such displays, or fearing their effect, theystand between folly and slander to the best of their ability. But thiskind of interference, noble or ignoble as the cause may be, comes intoanother class of motives altogether, and does not belong to the kind ofinterference of which we are speaking. 

Women, then, are the great interferers at home, both with each other andwith men. They do not tell us what we are to do, beyond going to churchand subscribing to their favorite mission, so much as they tell us whatwe are not to do; they do not command so much as they forbid; and, ofall women, wives and daughters are the most given to handling thesecheck-strings and putting on these drag-chains. Sisters, while young, are obliged to be less interfering, under pain of a perpetual round ofbickering; for brothers are not apt to submit to the counsel ofcreatures for the most part as loftily snubbed as sisters are; whilemothers are nine times out of ten laid aside for all but sentimentalpurposes, so soon as the son has ceased to be a boy and has learned tobecome a man. The queenhood, therefore, of personal and domesticinterference lies with wives, and they know how to use the prerogativethey assume. 

Take an unlucky man who smokes under protest, his wife not liking toforbid the pleasure entirely, but always grudging it, and interferingwith its exercise. Each segar represents a battle, deepening inintensity according to the number. The first may have been had with onlya light skirmish perhaps, perhaps a mere threatening of an attack thatpassed away without coming to actual onslaught; the second brings up theartillery; while the third or fourth lets all the forces loose, and setsthe biggest guns thundering. She could understand a man smoking onesegar in the day, she says, with a gracious condescension to masculineweakness; but when it comes to more she feels that she is called on tointerfere, and to do her best towards checking such a reprehensibleexcess. It does not weaken her position that she knows nothing of whatshe is talking about. She never smoked a segar herself, and thereforedoes not understand the uses or the abuses of tobacco; but she holdsherself pledged to interfere as soon as she gets the chance, and sheredeems the pledge with energy. 

The man too, who has the stomach of an ostrich and an appetite tocorrespond, but about whom the home superstition is that he has a feebledigestion and must take care of his diet, has also to run the gauntletof his wife's interfering forces. He never dines or sups jollily withhis friends without being plucked at and reminded that salmon alwaysdisagrees with him; that champagne is sure to give him a headacheto-morrow; and "My dear! when you know how bad salad is for you!" or, "How can you eat that horrid pastry! You will be so ill in the night!""What! more wine? another glass of whisky? how foolish you are! howwrong!" The wife has a nervous organization which cannot bearstimulants; the husband is a strong large-framed man who can drink deepwithout feeling it; but to the excitable woman her feeble limit is herhusband's measure, and as soon as he has gone beyond the range of herown short tether, she trots after him remonstrating, and thinks herselfjustified in interfering with his progress. For women cannot be broughtto understand the capacities of a man's life; they cannot be made tounderstand that what is bad for themselves may not be bad for others, and that their weakness ought not to be the gauge of a man's strength. 

A pale chilly woman afflicted with chronic bronchitis, who wears fursand velvets in May and fears the east wind as much as an East-Indianfears a tiger, does her best to coddle her husband, father, and sons inabout the same ratio as she coddles herself. They must not go outwithout an overcoat; they must be sure to take an umbrella if the day isat all cloudy; they must not walk too far, nor ride too hard, and theymust be sure to be at home by a certain hour. When such women as thesehave to do with men just on the boundary-line between the last days ofvigor and the first of old age, they put forward the time of old age bymany years. One sees their men rapidly sink into the softness andincapacity of senility, when a more bracing life would have kept themgood for half-a-dozen years longer. But women do not care for this. Theylike men to be their own companions more than they care for any manlycomradeship among each other; and most women--but not all--would ratherhave their husbands manly in a womanly way than in a manly one, as beingmore within the compass of their own sympathies and understanding. 

The same kind of interference is very common where the husband is a manof broad humor--one who calls a spade a spade, with no circumlocutionabout an agricultural implement. The wife of such a man is generally oneof the ultra-refined kind, according to the odd law of compensationwhich regulates so much of human action, and thinks herself obliged tostand as the enduring censor of her husband's speech. As this is anexample most frequently to be found in middle life, and where there arechildren belonging to the establishment, the word of warning isgenerally "papa!"--said with reproach or resentment, according tocircumstances--which has, of course, the effect of drawing the attentionof the young people to the paternal breadth of speech, and of fixingthat special breach of decorum on their memory. Sometimes the wife hassufficient self-restraint not to give the word of warning in public, butcan nurse her displeasure for a more convenient season; but as soon asthey are alone, the miserable man has to pass under the harrow, as onlyhusbands with wives of a chastising spirit can pass under it, and hislife is made a burden to him because of that unlucky anecdote told withsuch verve a few hours ago, and received with such shouts of pleasantlaughter. Perhaps the anecdote was just a trifle doubtful; granted; butwhat does the wife take by her remonstrance? Most probably a quarrel;possibly a good-natured _peccavi_ for the sake of being let off thecontinuance of the sermon; perhaps a yawn; most certainly not reform. Ifthe man is a man of free speech and broad humor by nature and liking, hewill remain so to the end; and what the censorship of society leavesuntouched, the interference of a wife will not control. 

Children come in for an enormous share of interference, which is notdirection, not discipline, but simple interference for its own sake. There are mothers who meddle with every expression of individuality intheir young people, quite irrespective of moral tendency, or whether theoccasion is trivial or important. In the fancies, the pleasures, theminor details of dress in their children, there is always that intrudingmaternal finger upsetting the arrangements of the poor little pie asvigorously as if thrones and altars depended on the result. Not a gameof croquet can be begun, nor a blue ribbon worn instead of a pink one, without maternal interference; so that the bloom is rubbed off everyenjoyment, and life becomes reduced to a kind of goose-step, with mammafor the drill-sergeant prescribing the inches to be marked. Sisters, too, do a great deal of this kind of thing among each other; as allthose who are intimate where there are large families of unmarried girlsmust have seen. The nudges, the warning looks, the deprecating "Amies!"and "Oh Lucies!" and "Hush Roses!" by which some seek to act ashousehold police over the others, are patent to all who use theirsenses. 

In some houses the younger sisters seem to have been born chiefly astraining grounds for the elders, whereon they may exercise their powersof interference; and a hard time they have of it. If Emma goes to herembroidery, Ellen tells her she ought to practice her singing; if Janeis reading, Mary recommends sewing as a more profitable use of precioustime; if Amy is at her easel, Ada wants to turn her round to the piano. It is quite the exception where four or five sisters leave each otherfree to do as each likes, and do not take to drilling and interferenceas part of the daily programme. Something of the reluctance to domesticservice so painfully apparent among the better class of working women isdue to this spirit of interference with women. The lady who wrote aboutthe caps and gowns of servant-girls, and drew out a plan of dress, downto the very material of their gloves, was an instance of this spirit. For, when we come to analyse it, what does it really signify to us howour servants dress, so long as they are clean and decent, and do not lettheir garments damage our goods? Fashion is almost always ridiculous, and women as a rule care more for dress than they care for anythingelse; and if the kitchen apes the parlor, and Phyllis gives as muchthought to her new linsey as my lady gives to her new velvet, we cannotwonder at it, nor need we hold up our hands in horror at the depravityof the smaller person. Does one flight of stairs transpose morality? Ifit does not, there is no real ethical reason why my lady shouldinterfere with poor Phyllis's enjoyment in her ugly vanities, when sheherself will not be interfered with, though press and pulpit both try toturn her out of her present path into one that all ages have thought thebest for her, and the one divinely appointed. It is a thing that willnot bear reasoning on, being simply a form of the old "who will guardthe guardian?" Who will direct the directress? and to whose interferencewill the interferer submit?

There are two causes for this excessive love of interference amongwomen. The one is the narrowness of their lives and objects, by whichinsignificant things gain a disproportionate value in their eyes; theother, their belief that they are the only saviors of society, and thatwithout them man would become hopelessly corrupt. And to a certainextent this belief is true, but surely with restrictions. Because theclearer moral sense and greater physical weakness of women restrainmen's fiercer passions, and force them to be gentle and considerate, women are not, therefore, the sole arbiters of masculine life, intowhose hands is given the paying out of just so much rope as they thinkfit for the occasion. They would do better to look to their own tacklebefore settling so exactly the run of others'; and if ever their desiredtime of equality is to come, it must come through mutual independence, not through womanly interference, and as much liberality and breadthmust be given as is demanded--which, so far as humanity has gonehitherto, has not been the feminine manner of squaring accounts. 

Grant that women are the salt of the earth, and the great antisepticelement in society, still that does not reduce everything else to theverge of corruption which they alone prevent. Yet by their lives theyevidently think that it is so, and that they are each and all thekeepers of keys which give them a special entrance to the temple ofmorality, and by which they are able to exclude or admit the grosserbody of men. Hence they interfere and restrict and pay out just so muchrope, and measure off just so much gambolling ground, as they think fit;they think vile man a horribly wicked invention when he takes thingsinto his own hand, and goes beyond their boundary-lines. It is all donein good if in a very narrow faith--that we admit willingly; but we wouldcall their attention to the difference there is between influence andinterference, which is just the difference between their ideal duty andtheir daily practice--between being the salt of the earth and theblister of the home. We think it only justice to put in a word for thosepoor henpecked fellows of husbands at a time when the whole cry is forWoman's Rights, which seems to mean chiefly her right of making manknuckle under on all occasions, and of making one will serve for twolives. We assure her that she would get her own way in large mattersmuch more easily if she would leave men more liberty in small ones, andnot teaze them by interfering in things which do not concern her, andhave only reference to themselves. 

PLAIN GIRLS. 

It is beyond all question the tendency of modern society to regardmarriage as the great end and justification of a woman's life. This isperhaps the single point on which practical and romantic people, whodiffer in so many things, invariably agree. Poets, novelists, naturalphilosophers, fashionable and unfashionable mothers, meet one another onthe broad common ground of approving universal matrimony; and women fromtheir earliest years are dedicated to the cultivation of those feminineaccomplishments which are supposed either to be most seductive beforemarriage in a drawing-room, or most valuable after marriage in thekitchen and housekeeper's-room. 

It is admitted to be a sort of half necessity in any interesting work offiction that its plots, its adventures, and its catastrophes should alllead up to the marriage of the principal young lady. Sometimes, as inthe case of the celebrated Lilly Dale, the public tolerates a boldexception to the ordinary rule, on account of the extreme piquancy ofthe thing; but no wise novelist ventures habitually to disregard theprevalent opinion that the heroine's mission is to become a wife beforethe end of the third volume. The one ideal, accordingly, which romancehas to offer woman is marriage; and most novels thus make life end withwhat really is only its threshold and beginning. The Bible no doubt saysthat it is not good for man to live alone. What the Bible says of man, public opinion as unhesitatingly asserts of woman; and a text that it isnot good for woman to live alone either, though not canonical, issilently added by all domestic commentators to the Scriptural original. 

Those who pretend to be best acquainted with the order of nature and themysterious designs of Providence assure us with confidence that all thisis as it should be; that woman is not meant to grow and flourish singly, but to hang on man, and to depend on him, like the vine upon the elm. Ifwe remember right, M. Comte entertains opinions which really come topretty much the same thing. Woman is to be maintained in ease and luxuryby the rougher male animal, it being her duty in return to keep hisspiritual nature up to the mark, to quicken and to purify hisaffections, to be a sort of drawing-room religion in the middle ofevery-day life, to serve as an object of devotion to the religiousComtist, and to lead him through love of herself up to the love ofhumanity in the abstract. 

One difficulty presented by this matrimonial view of woman's destiny isto know what, under the present conditions in which society finds itselfplaced, is to become of plain girls. Their mission is a subject which nophilosopher as yet has adequately handled. If marriage is the object ofall feminine endeavors and ambitions, it certainly seems rather hardthat Providence should have condemned plain girls to start in the raceat such an obvious disadvantage. Even under M. Comte's system, whichprovides for almost everything, and which, in its far-sightedness andthoughtfulness for our good, appears almost more benevolent thanProvidence, it would seem as if hardly sufficient provision had beenmade for them. 

It must be difficult for any one except a really advanced Comtist togive himself up to the worship of a thoroughly plain girl. Filialinstinct might enable us to worship her as a mother, but even thenoblest desire to serve humanity would scarcely be enough to keep ahusband or a lover up to his daily devotions in the case of a plain girlwith sandy hair and a freckled complexion. The boldest effort to rectifythe inequalities of the position of plain girls has been made of lateyears by a courageous school of female writers of fiction. Everythinghas been done that could be done to persuade mankind that plain girlsare in reality by far the most attractive of the lot. The cleverauthoress of "Jane Eyre" nearly succeeded in the forlorn attempt for afew years; and plain girls, with volumes of intellect speaking throughtheir deep eyes and from their massive foreheads, seemed for a while, onpaper at least, to be carrying everything before them. 

The only difficulty was to get the male sex to follow out in practicewhat they so completely admired in Miss Bronté's three-volume novels. Unhappily, the male sex, being very imperfect and frail, could not bebrought to do it. They recognized the beauty of the conception aboutplain girls, they were very glad to see them married off in scores toheroic village doctors, and they quite admitted that occasional youngnoblemen might be represented in fiction as becoming violently attachedto young creatures with inky fingers and remarkable minds. 

But no real change was brought about in ordinary life. Man, sinful man, read with pleasure about the triumphs of the sandy-haired girls, butstill kept on dancing with and proposing to the pretty ones. And at lastauthoresses were driven back on the old standard of beauty. At present, in the productions both of masculine and feminine workmanship, theformer view of plain girls has been resumed. They are allowed, ifthoroughly excellent in other ways, to pair off with country curates andwith devoted missionaries; but the prizes of fiction, as well as theprizes of reality, fall to the lot of their fairer and more fortunatesisters. 

Champions of plain girls are not, however, wanting who boldly take thedifficulty by the horns, and deny _in toto_ the fact that in matrimonyand love the race is usually to the beautiful. Look about you, they tellus, in the world, and you will as often as not find beauties fading ontheir stalks, and plain girls marrying on every side of them. And nodoubt plain girls do marry very frequently. Nobody, for instance, withhalf an eye can fail to be familiar with the phenomenon, in his owncircle, of astonishingly ugly married women. It does not, however, follow that plain girls are not terribly weighted in the race. 

There are several reasons why women who rely on their beauty remainunmarried at the last, but the reason that their beauty gives them noadvantage is certainly not one. The first reason perhaps is thatbeauties are inclined to be fastidious and capricious. They have nonotion of following the advice of Mrs. Hannah More, and being contentedwith the first good, sensible, Christian lover who falls in their way;and they run, in consequence, no slight risk of overstaying theirmarket. They go in for a more splendid sort of matrimonial success, andthink they can afford to play the more daring game. 

Plain girls are providentially preserved from these temptations. At theclose of a well-spent life they can conscientiously look back on acareer in which no reasonable opportunity was neglected, and say thatthey have not broken many hearts, or been sinfully and distractinglyparticular. And there is the further consideration to be remembered inthe case of plain girls, that fortune and rank are nearly as valuablearticles as beauty, and lead to a fair number of matrimonial alliances. The system of Providence is full of kindly compensations, and it is aproof of the universal benevolence we see about us that so manyheiresses should be plain. Plain girls have a right to be cheered andcomforted by the thought. It teaches them the happy lesson that beauty, as compared with a settled income, is skin-deep and valueless; and thatwhat man looks for in the companion of his life is not so much a brightcheek or a blue eye, as a substantial and useful amount of this world'swealth. 

Plain girls again expect less, and are prepared to accept less, in alover. Everybody knows the sort of useful, admirable, practical man whosets himself to marry a plain girl. He is not a man of great rank, greatpromise, or great expectations. Had it been otherwise, he might possiblyhave flown at higher game, and set his heart on marrying femaleloveliness rather than homely excellence. His choice, if it is nothingelse, is an index of a contented and modest disposition. He is not vainenough to compete in the great race for beauties. What he looks for issome one who will be the mother of his children, who will order hisservants duly, and keep his household bills; and whose good sense willteach her to recognise the sterling qualities of her husband, and notobject to his dining daily in his slippers. This is the sort of partnerthat plain girls may rationally hope to secure, and who can say thatthey ought not to be cheerful and happy in their lot? For a character ofthis undeniable sobriety there is indeed a positive advantage in a plaingirl as a wife. It should never be forgotten that the man who marries aplain girl never need be jealous. He is in the Arcadian and fortunatecondition of a lover who has no rivals. A sensible unambitious naturewill recognize in this a solid benefit. Plain girls rarely turn intofrisky matrons, and this fact renders them peculiarly adapted to be thewives of dull and steady mediocrity. 

Lest it should be supposed that the above calculation of what plaingirls may do leaves some of their power and success still unaccountedfor, it is quite right and proper to add that the story of plain girls, if it were carefully written, would contain many instances, not merelyof moderate good fortunes, but of splendid and exceptional triumph. Like_prima donnas_, opera-dancers, and lovely milliners, plain girls havebeen known to make extraordinary hits, and to awaken illustriouspassions. Somebody ought to take up the subject in a book, and tell ushow they did it. 

This is the age of Golden Treasuries. We have Golden Treasuries ofEnglish poets, of French poets, of great lawyers, of famous battles, ofnotable beauties, of English heroes, of successful merchants, and ofalmost every sort of character and celebrity that can be conceived. Whatis wanted is a Golden Treasury containing the narrative of the mostsuccessful plain girls. This book might be called the Book of Ugliness, and we see no reason why, to give reality to the story, the portraits ofsome of the most remarkable might not be appended. Of course, if eversuch a volume is compiled, it will be proved to demonstration that plaingirls have before now arrived at great matrimonial honor and renown. 

There is, for example, the sort of plain girl who nurses her hero(perhaps in the Crimea) through a dangerous attack of illness, andmarries him afterwards. There is the class of those who have beenmarried simply from a sense of duty. There is the class thatdistinguishes itself by profuse kindness to poor cottagers, and byreading the Bible to blind old women; an occupation which as we know, from the most ordinary works of fiction, leads directly to thepromptest and speediest attachments on the part of the young men whohappen to drop in casually at the time. The catalogue of such is perhapslong and famous. Yet, allowing for all these, allowing for everythingelse that can be adduced in their favor, we cannot help returning to theposition that plain girls have an up-hill battle to fight. No doubt itought not to be so. 

Cynics tell us that six months after a man is married it makes verylittle difference to him whether his wife's nose is Roman, aquiline, orretroussé; and this may be so. The unfortunate thing is that most menpersist in marrying for the sake of the illusion of the first sixmonths, and under the influence of the ante-nuptial and not thepost-nuptial sentiments; and as the first six months with a plain girlare confessedly inferior in attraction, the inference is clear that theydo in effect attract less. Plainness or loveliness apart, a very largenumber of womankind have no reason to expect any very happy chance inmarried life; and if marriage is to be set before all women as the oneideal, a number of feminine lives will always turn out to have beenfailures. 

It may be said that it is hopeless to attempt on this point to alter thesentiments of the female sex, or indeed the general verdict of society. We do not quite see the hopelessness. A considerable amount of thematrimonial ideas of young women are purely the result of theireducation, and of the atmosphere in which they have been brought up;and, by giving a new direction to their early training, it might not bealtogether so quixotical to believe that we should alter all that is theresult of the training. At any rate it has become essential for thewelfare of women that they should, as far as possible, be taught thatthey may have a career open to them even if they never marry; and it isthe duty of society to try to open to them as many careers of the sortas are not incompatible with the distinctive peculiarities of a woman'sphysical capacity. 

It may well be that society's present instincts as regards woman are atbottom selfish. The notion of feminine dependence on man, of the want ofrefinement in a woman who undertakes any active business or profession, and of the first importance of woman's domestic position, when carriedto an extreme, are perhaps better suited to the caprice and fancifulfastidiousness of men than to the real requirements, in the present age, of the other sex. The throng of semi-educated authoresses who are nowflocking about the world of letters is a wholesome protest against suchexclusive jealousy. The real objection to literary women is that women, with a few notable exceptions, are not yet properly educated to writewell, or to criticise well what others write. Remove this objection byimproving the curriculum of feminine education, and there is hardly anyother. There is none certainly of sufficient consequence to outweigh thereal need which is felt of giving those women something to live for(apart from and above ordinary domestic and philanthropic duties), whosegood or evil fortune it is not to be marked out by Heaven for a marriedlife. 

A WORD FOR FEMALE VANITY. 

If any human weakness has a right to complain of the ingratitude withwhich the world treats it, it is certainly vanity. It gets through moregood work, and yet comes in for more hearty abuse, than all our otherweaknesses put together. Preachers and moralists are always having hitsat it, and in that philosophical study and scientific vivisection ofcharacter which two friends are always so ready to practice at theexpense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makesthis rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity nevergets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to beon the best possible terms with her. She is never justified of herchildren, and, like Byron's unhappy eagle, "nurses the pinion thatimpels the steel" against her. Yet it is difficult to see how the worldcould get on without the weakness thus universally assailed, and whatpreachers and moralists would do if they had their own way. 

In the more important--or, we should rather say, in the larger--concernsof life vanity could perhaps be dispensed with. Where there is much atstake, other agencies come into play to keep the machinery of the worldin motion, though, even as regards these, it is a question how manygreat poems, great speeches, great actions, which have profoundlyinfluenced the destinies of mankind, would have been lost to the worldif there had been none but great motives at work to produce them. Greatmotives usually get the credit--that is, when we are dealing withhistorical characters, not dissecting a friend, in whose case it isnecessary to guard against our natural proneness to partiality; butlittle motives often do the largest share of the work. It is proper, forinstance, and due to our own dignity and self-respect to say, that theworld owes _Childe Harold_ to a great poet's inspired yearning forimmortality. Still, we fear, there is room for a doubt whether the worldwould ever have seen _Childe Harold_ if the great poet had not happenedto be also a morbidly vain and, in some respects, remarkably small man. But even if we assume that the big affairs of life may be left to bigmotives, and do not require such a little motive as vanity to help them, these are, after all, few and far between. 

For one action that may safely be left to yearnings for immortality, orambition, or love, or something equally lofty and grand, there arethousands which society must get done somehow, and which it gets donepleasantly and comfortably only because, by a charmingly convenientillusion, the vanity of each agent makes him attach a peculiarimportance to them. There is no act so trivial, or to all appearance sounworthy of a rational being, that the magic of vanity cannot throw ahalo of dignity over it, and persuade the agent that it is mainly by hisexertions that society is kept together, as Molière's dancing-masterreasoned that the secret of good government is the secret of gooddancing--namely, how to avoid false steps. And it is this genialpromoter of human happiness, this all-powerful diffuser of socialharmony, this lubricating oil without which the vast and complexmachinery of life could never work, that man, in his ignorantingratitude, dares to denounce. 

We should like to ask one of these thoughtless revilers of vanitywhether it has ever been his misfortune to meet a woman without it. Hewould probably try to escape by declaring that a woman without vanity isa purely imaginary being, if not a contradiction in terms; and we admitthat there is something to be said in favor of this view. Nothing ismore astonishing to the male philosopher than the odd way in which, fromsome stray corner of character where he would have least thought oflooking for it, female vanity now and then suddenly pops out upon him. He fancied that he knew a woman well, that he had studied her characterand mastered all its strong and weak points, when, by some accident orat some unguarded moment, he suddenly strikes a rich, deep, vein ofvanity of the existence of which he never had the remotest suspicion. Hemay perhaps have known that she was not without vanity on certainpoints, but for these he had discovered, or had fancied he haddiscovered, some sort of reason. We do not necessarily mean, by reason, any cause that seemed to justify or, on any consistent principle, toaccount for the fact. As we have already remarked, it is the peculiarityof vanity that it often flourishes most vigorously, and puts forth aplentiful crop, where there does not seem to be even a layer of soil forit. 

Both men and women are occasionally most vain of their weakest points, perhaps by a merciful provision of nature similar to that by which a sowalways takes most kindly to the weakest pig in the litter. LordChesterfield, when paternally admonishing his son as to the propermanagement of women, lays down as a general indisputable axiom that theyare all, as a matter of course, to be flattered to the top of theirbent; but he adds, as a special rule, that a very pretty or a very uglywoman should be flattered, not about her personal charms, but about hermental powers. It is only in the case of a moderately good-looking womanthat the former should be singled out for praise. A very pretty womantakes her beauty as a matter of course, and would rather be flatteredabout the possession of some advantage to which her claim is not soclear, while a very ugly woman distrusts the sincerity of flattery abouther person. 

It is not without the profoundest diffidence that we venture to disputethe opinion of such an authority on such a subject as Lord Chesterfield, but still we think that no woman is so hideous that she may not, if hervanity happens to take this turn, be told with perfect safety that sheis a beauty. Her vanity is, indeed, not so likely to take this turn asit would be if she were really pretty. She will probably plume herselfupon her abilities or accomplishments, and therefore Chesterfield'sexcellent fatherly advice was, on the whole, tolerably safe. But still, if any hereditary bias or unlucky accident--such, for instance, as thatof being brought up among people with whom brains are nothing, andbeauty everything--does give an ugly woman's vanity an impulse in thedirection of good looks, no excess of hideousness makes it unsafe toextol her beauty. On the contrary, she is more likely to be imposed uponthan a moderately good-looking woman, from her greater eagerness toclutch at every straw that may help to keep up the darling delusion. Nophilosopher is, accordingly, surprised at finding that a woman is vainwhere he can discover not the slightest rational foundation even forfemale vanity. 

But it certainly is surprising, now and then, to find how long the mostintense female vanity will lie, in some out-of-the-way corner ofcharacter, hidden from the eye. Perhaps we ought to say, the male eye, for women seem to discover each other's weak points by a power ofintuition that amounts almost to instinct. But a man is amazed to findthat a woman whose vanity he believed himself to have tracked into allits channels has it, after all, most strongly in some channel of whichhe previously knew nothing. He has perhaps considered her a sensiblematter-of-fact woman, vain perhaps, though not unpardonably, of hercapacity for business and knowledge of the world, but singularly freefrom the not uncommon female tendency to believe that every man who seesher is in love with her; and he unexpectedly discovers that she has foryears considered herself the object of a desperate passion on the partof the parish rector, a prosaic middle-aged gentleman of ample waistcoatand large family, and is a little uneasy about being left alone in thesame room with the butler. 

Unexpected discoveries of some such kind as this not unnaturallypopularize the theory already mentioned, that such a being as a womanwithout vanity does not exist--that, no matter how securely the weaknessmay lie hidden from observation, it does somewhere or other exist, andsome day will out. But we are inclined, notwithstanding, to hold that, here and there, but happily very seldom, there are to be found womenreally without vanity; and most unpleasant women they seem to us, as arule, to be. They get on tolerably well with their own sex, for they arerarely pretty or affected, and they have usually certain solid, serviceable qualities which make up for not being attractive by standingwear and tear. But in their relations with men--as soon, that is, asthey have secured a husband, and fascination has therefore ceased to bea matter of business, a practical question of bread-and-butter, to begrappled with in the spirit in which they would, if necessary, go outcharing, or keep a mangle--they are painfully devoid of that eagernessto please and that readiness to be pleased which, in the presentimperfect state of civilization, are among woman's chief charms. 

Even men cannot, as a rule, get on very well without these qualities;but still to please is not man's mission in the sense in which it isgenerally considered to be woman's, and probably will continue to beconsidered, until Dr. Mary Walkers are not the exception, but the rule. One now and then has the misfortune to come upon a specimen ofwomanhood, good and solid enough perhaps, making a most exemplary andrespectable wife and mother, but nevertheless dull, heavy, andunattractive to an extent that fills the wretched man who takes it in todinner with desperation. And then to think that one ounce of vanitymight have leavened this lump, and converted it, as by magic, into apleasant, palatable, convivial compound, good everywhere, but especiallygood at the dinner-table! For, where vanity exists at all, it canscarcely fail to influence the natural desire of one sex to please theother; and a woman must be singularly devoid of all charms, physical andmental, if she fails when she is really anxious to please. That womenshould be fascinating, as they sometimes are, in spite of somepositively painful deformity, is a proof of what such anxiety can aloneaccomplish. 

We must admit that we have to postulate, on behalf of the female vanitywhose cause we are espousing, that it should not derive its inspirationsolely from self-love. However anxious a woman may be to please, if heranxiety is on her own account, and simply to secure admiration, she mustbe a very Helen if her vanity continues attractive. She is lucky if itdoes not take the most odious of all forms, and, from always revolvinground self and dwelling upon selfish considerations, degenerate into ahabit of perpetual postures and stage tricks to gain applause. And thistendency naturally connects itself with the wish to please the oppositesex, its success being in inverse proportion to its strength. Just asone occasionally meets with men who are perfectly unaffected andsensible fellows in men's society, but whose whole demeanor becomesabsurdly changed if any woman, though it be only the housemaid with acoal-scuttle, enters the room, so there are, more commonly, to be foundwomen whose whole character seems to vary, as if by magic, according tothe sex of the person whom they find themselves with. Before their ownsex they are natural enough; before men they are eternallyattitudinizing. We should be sorry to say that this repulsive form ofvanity always takes its root in excessive self-love, but still a tingeof unselfishness seems to us the best antidote against it. 

It is marvellous with how much vanity, and that too of a tolerablyostentatious kind, a woman may be thoroughly agreeable even to her ownsex, if her eagerness to please is accompanied by genuine kindliness, oris free from excessive selfishness. It may be easy enough to see thatall her little courtesies and attentions are at bottom reallyattributable to vanity; that, when she does a kind act, she is thinkingless of its effect upon your comfort and happiness than of its effectupon your estimate of her character. She would perhaps rather you gothalf the advantage with her aid than the whole advantage without it. Hermotive is, primarily, vanity--clearly not kindness--however amicablythey may in general work together. But still it is the kindness thatmakes the vanity flow into pleasant, friendly forms. In a selfish womanthe very same vanity would degenerate into posturing or dressing. And, odd as it may seem, and as much as it may reflect upon the common senseof poor humanity, we believe that kind acts done out of genuine, unadulterated benevolence are less appreciated by the recipient thankind acts done out of benevolence stimulated by vanity. The latter arepleasant because they spring out of the desire to please, and soothe ourself-love, whereas the former appeal to our self-interest. 

There are few things in this world more charming than the kindlycourtesy of a pretty woman, not ungracefully conscious of her power toplease, and showing courtesy because she enjoys the exercise of thispower. Strictly speaking, she is acting less in your interest than inher own. Although she feels at once the pleasure of pleasing and thepleasure of doing a kindly action, the second is quite subordinate tothe first, and is perhaps, more or less, sacrificed to it. Yet who isstrong-minded enough to wish that the kindliness of a pretty womanshould be dictated by simple benevolence, untinged by vanity? If we knewthat her kindliness arose rather from a wish to benefit us than toconciliate our good opinion, it is perhaps possible that we shouldesteem her more, but we fear it is quite certain that we should like herless. 

Before we conclude, we ought perhaps to make one more postulate onbehalf of female vanity, not less important than our postulate that itshould be pleasantly tinged by unselfishness. To be agreeable, it musthave fair foundation. A woman may be forgiven for over-estimating hercharms, but there is no forgiveness on this side of the grave for awoman who recklessly credits herself with charms that do not exist. Allthe lavish cheques she draws upon her male neighbor's admiration aresilently dishonored, and in half an hour after the moment they sit downto table together she is a hopeless bankrupt in his estimation, eventhough he may have courtesy and skill enough to conceal the collapse. 

As there are few, if any, pleasanter objects than a pretty woman, gracefully conscious of her beauty, and radiantly fulfilling itslegitimate end, the power of pleasing, so are there few, if any, moreunpleasant objects than a vain woman, ungracefully conscious ofimaginary charms, and secretly disgusting those she strives to attract. An ugly woman who gives herself the airs of a beauty, or a silly womanwho believes herself a genius, is not a spectacle upon which a man ofhealthy imagination and appetite likes to dwell. It is perhaps only inaccordance with the theory that this life is a state of trial andprobation that the tastes can be explained. Happily, it is not verycommon. Most women know their strong from their weak points, and marshalthem on the whole well in the encounter with their lawful oppressor andgreat enemy, man. And until they have won the victory to which Dr. MaryWalker is now leading them on, may they never lack the female vanitywhich makes it one of their great objects in life to please!

THE ABUSE OF MATCH-MAKING. 

It is a pity that when, by some train of ill-luck, a word of respectableparentage, and well brought up, is led astray, it cannot adoptGoldsmith's recipe and die. It has not even the more prosaic alternativeof being made an honest word by marriage, and escaping the name underwhich it stooped to folly, and was betrayed. It drags on a dishonoredlife, with little or no chance of recovering its character, inflictingcruel disgrace upon the unlucky family of ideas, no matter what theirown innocence and respectability, to which it happens to belong. ThusCasuistry, if not a very useful, was at least a perfectly harmless, member of society, and moved in the best circles, until in an evil hourshe became too intimate with the unpopular Jesuits. 

A few years ago, when high feeding and sermonizing proved too much forthe virtue of garotters, and, waxing fat, they not only kicked society, but danced hornpipes in hobnailed boots upon its head and stomach, evenPhilanthropy, at once the most fashionable and popular word of thiscentury, was all but compromised by Sir Joshua Jebb and Sir George Grey. Baron Bramwell fortunately came to the rescue, and saved it frompermanent loss of character. But still to this day the word is sometimesused in a sense by no means complimentary. If the battue-systemcontinues long enough, "good sport" will become a synonym forcold-blooded clumsy butchery, and thus all sport whatsoever will be moreor less discredited. The _faux pas_ of one member disgraces the wholefamily. A few men may be the lords of language, but the great majorityare its slaves. They can no more disconnect the innocent idea from thesoiled word that accompanies it than they can see a blue landscapethrough green glass. Let us hope that one of the first acts of Mr. Bright's millennial Parliament will be the establishment of a tribunalempowered to take a word when it arrives at this pitiable condition, andeither in mercy knock it on the head altogether, or else formallyreadmit it into good society, and give it all the advantages of a freshstart. 

We take an early opportunity of inviting their special attention to themuch-injured word "Match-making. " The practice which it describes is notonly harmless, but, in the present state of society, highly useful andmeritorious. Yet there can be no doubt, that there is a powerfulprejudice against it. Although all women--or rather, perhaps, asThackeray said, all good women--are at heart match-makers, there arevery few who own the soft impeachment. Many repudiate it withindignation. It is on the whole about as safe to charge a lady withFenianism as facetiously to point out a young couple in herdrawing-room, whose flirtation has a suspicious businesslike look aboutit, and to hint that she has deliberately brought them together with aview to matrimony. It may be true that she has no selfish interestwhatever in the matter. The criminal conspiracy in which she sostrenuously repudiates any concern is, after all, nothing worse than theattempt to make two people whom she likes, and who she thinks will suiteach other, happy for life. By any other name such an action ought, onewould think, to smell sweet in the nostrils of gods and men. 

But, whatever the gods think of it, men cannot forget that the practice, whether harmless or not, goes by the objectionable name of match-making. So the lady replies, not, perhaps, without the energy of consciousguilt, that "things of this sort are best left to themselves, " andpiously begs you to remember that marriages are made in Heaven, not inher drawing-room. The melancholy truth is that the gentle craft ofmatch-making has been so vulgarized by course and clumsy professors, andits very name has in consequence been brought into such disrepute, thatfew respectable women have the courage openly to recognise it. They arehaunted by visions of the typical match-maker who does work forfashionable novels and social satires, and who is a truly awfulpersonage. To her alone of mortals is it given to inspire, like theHarpies, at once contempt and fear. Keen-eyed and hook-nosed, like abird of prey, she glowers from the corner of crowded ball-rooms upon theunconscious heir, hunts him untiringly from house to house, marries himremorselessly to her eldest daughter, and then never loses sight of himtill his spirit is broken, his old friends discarded, and his segar-casethrown away. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that this fearful being exists only infiction. In real life she has not only to marry her daughters, but also, like other human beings, to eat, drink, sleep, and otherwise dispose ofthe twenty-four hours of the day. She cannot therefore very well devoteherself, from morning to night, to the one occupation of heir-hunting, with the precision of a machine, or one of Bunyan's walking vices. Butstill there must be some truth even in a caricature, and a man sometimesfinds a girl "thrown at his head, " as the process is forcibly termed, with a coarse-mindedness quite worthy of the typical match-maker, thoughalso with a clumsiness which she would heartily despise. 

He goes as a stranger to some place, and is astonished to find himselfat once taken to the bosom and innermost confidence of people whose veryname he never heard before, as if he were their oldest and most familiarfriend. He is asked to dinner one day, to breakfast the next, and warmlyassured that a place is always kept for him at lunch. Charmed andflattered to find his many merits so quickly discovered and thoroughlyappreciated by strangers, he votes them the cleverest, most genial, mosthospitable people he ever met; and everything goes on delightfully untilhe begins to think it odd that he should be constantly left alone with, and now and then delicately chaffed about, some _passée_, ill-favoredwoman, whom he no more connects with any thought of marriage than hewould a female rhinoceros. And then slowly dawns upon him the crueltruth that his kind hosts have had their appreciation of his meritsconsiderably sharpened by the fact that there is an ugly daughter orsister-in-law in the house whom they are sick to death of, whom they arealways imploring "to marry or do something, " and who, having for yearsogled and angled for every marriageable pair of whiskers and pantoloonswithin ten miles, has gradually become so well known in the neighborhoodthat her one forlorn hope is to carry off some innocent stranger with arush. 

"_Quere peregrinum, vicinia rauca reclamat;_" and if the _peregrinus_happens to be young and verdant, and, having just been given a goodappointment, feels, with the Vicar of Wakefield, that one of the threegreatest characters on earth is the father of a family, he is possiblyhooked securely before he discovers his danger. He discovers it to findhimself tied for life to a woman with whom he has not a sympathy incommon, and for whom every day increases his disgust. And the people whohave ruined his life have not even the sorry excuse that they wished tobetter hers. Their one thought was to get rid of her as speedily aspossible, no matter to whom; and they would rather have had Bluebeard ata two-months' engagement than any other man at one of six. There issomething so coarse and revolting, so brutal, in the notion of bringingtwo people together into such a relation as that of marriage on purelyselfish grounds, and without the slightest regard to their futurehappiness, that any one who has seen the snare laid for himself or hisfriends may well shudder at the mere sound of match-making. Mezentiuswas more merciful, for of the two bodies which he chained together onlyone had life. 

The clumsy match-maker is a scarcely less dangerous, though a far morerespectable, enemy to the gentle craft than the coarse one. She makes itridiculous, while the latter makes it odious, and it is ridicule thatkills. She is, perhaps, a well-meaning woman, who would be sorry tomarry two people unless she thought them suited to each other; but themoment she has made up her mind that they ought to marry, she sets towork with a vigor which, unless she has a very young man to deal with, is almost sure to spoil her plans. This would not be surprising in asilly woman; but it is odd that the more energetic, and, in somerespects, the more able a woman is, the more likely sometimes she is tofall into this error. 

A woman may be the life and soul of a dozen societies, write admirableletters, get half her male relatives into Government offices, and yet bethe laughing-stock of the neighborhood for the absurd way in which shegoes husband-hunting for her daughters. The very energy and abilitywhich fit her for other pursuits disqualify her for match-making. She istoo impatient and too fond of action to adopt the purely passiveexpectant attitude, the masterly inactivity, which is here the greatsecret of success. She is always feeling that something should be saidor done to help on the business, and prematurely scares the shy orsuspicious bird. Many a promising love-affair has been nipped in the budsimply because the too eager mother has drawn public attention to itbefore it was robust enough to face publicity, by throwing the twolovers conspicuously together, or by some unguarded remark. 

When one thinks of all that a man has to go through in the course of alove-affair--especially in a small society where everybody knowseverybody--of all the chaffing and grinning, and significant interchangeof glances when he picks up the daughter's fan, or hands the mother toher carriage, or laughs convulsively at the old jokes of the father, oneis almost inclined to wonder how a Briton, of the average Britishstiffness and shyness, ever gets married at all. The explanationprobably is, that he falls in love before he exactly knows what he isabout, and, once in love, is of course gloriously blind and deaf to allobstacles between him and the adored one. But to subject a man to thistrying ordeal, as the too eager match-maker does, before he issufficiently in love to be proof against it, is like sending him into asnow-storm without a great-coat. 

The romantic match-maker is, in her way, as mischievous as the coarse orthe clumsy one. She is usually a good sort of woman, but with decidedlymore heart than head. She gets her notions of political economy from Mr. Dickens' novels, and holds that, whenever two nice young people ofopposite sexes like each other, it is their business then and there tomarry. If Providence cannot always, like Mr. Dickens, provide a richaunt or uncle, it at least never sends mouths without hands to feedthem. Let every good citizen help the young people to marry as fast asthey can, and let there be lots of chubby cheeks and lots of Sundayplum-pudding to fill them. There is no arguing with a woman of thiskind, and she is perhaps the most dangerous of all match-makers, inasmuch as she is usually herself a warm-hearted pleasant woman, andthere is a courage and disinterestedness about her views verycaptivating to young heads. There is no safety but in flight. Even abachelor of fair prudence and knowledge of the world is not safe in herhands. We mean on the assumption that he is not in a position to marry. If he is "an eligible, " he cannot, of course, be considered safeanywhere. But otherwise he knows that match-makers of the unromanticworldly type will be only too glad to leave him alone. 

And having, perhaps, been accustomed on this account to feel that he mayflirt in moderation with impunity, as a man with whom marriage isaltogether out of the question, he is quite unprepared for the new andstartling unconventional view which the romantic match-maker takes ofhim. He is horrified to find that, ignoring the usual considerations asto the length of his purse, she has discovered that he and the prettygirl with whom he danced three consecutive dances last night must havebeen made expressly for each other, and that she has somehow contrived, by the exercise of that freemasonry in love-affairs which is peculiar towomen, to put the same ridiculous notion into the young lady's head. Infact, he suddenly finds to his astonishment that he must eitherpropose--which is out of the question--or be considered a cold-bloodedtrifler with female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up hisportmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an uncomfortableconsciousness that his amiable hostess and pretty partner have a verypoor opinion of him. 

It is rather hard, however, that these and other abuses, which we havenot space to enumerate, of the great art of match-making should bringthe art itself into odium and contempt. In all of them there is aviolation of some one or more of what we take to be its three chiefcanons. First, the objects to be experimented upon should be pecuniarilyin a position to marry. Secondly, care should be taken that they seem onthe whole not unlikely to suit each other. Thirdly, the artist should becontent, like a photographer, to bring the objects together, and leavethe rest of the work mainly to nature. We confess that we feel painfullythe unscientific vagueness of this last axiom, since so much turns uponthe way in which the objects are brought together. But, as we onlyundertook to treat of the abuse of match-making, the reader mustconsider these maxims for its proper use to be thrown into the bargain_gratis_, and not therefore to be scrutinized severely. Some other day, if we can muster up courage enough for so delicate and arduous a task, we may perhaps attempt to show that, in the present state of society, the art of match-making deserves and requires cultivation, and how, inour humble opinion, this cultivation should be carried on. 

FEMININE INFLUENCE. 

All English ladies who are warmly devoted to the great cause of feminineauthority have got their eyes just now upon the Empress of the French. It is understood in English domestic circles that the Empress hasdecided to go to Rome, and that the Emperor has decided on her stayingat home, and the interest of the situation is generally thought to beintense. The ocean race between the yachts was nothing to it. Everywoman of spirit has been betting heavily this Christmas upon theEmpress, and praying mentally for the defeat of the Emperor, and everynew telegram that bears upon the subject of the difficult controversy isscanned by hundreds of dovelike eyes every morning with indescribableeagerness. 

M. Reuter, who is a man probably, if he is not a joint-stock company, isbelieved not to be altogether an impartial historian; and it is felt inmany drawing-rooms that what is wanted on this occasion, at thetelegraph offices, is a sound and resolute Madame Reuter, to correct thedeviations of M. Reuter's compass. In default of all trustworthytelegraphic intelligence, Englishwomen are compelled to fall back ontheir vivid imagination, and to construct a picture of what ishappening from the depths of their own moral consciousness. And severalthings their moral consciousness tells them are clear and certain. Thefirst is, that the Empress Eugénie is an injured and interesting victim. She has made a vow, under the very touching circumstances of measles inthe Imperial nursery, to pay a visit to the Pope; and Cabinet Ministerslike M. Lavalette, who throw suspicion on the binding nature of such aholy maternal obligation, are worse than "S. G. O. " In the second place, she has set her heart upon going. Even if a vow were not binding, thisis. It is mere nonsense to say that her pilgrimage would interfere withpolitics. A woman's fine tact is often of considerable use in politics, and the sight of the Prince Imperial in his mother's arms might exercisethe most beneficial influence on the Pope's mind. 

Pio Nono has held out hitherto in the most inexplicable manner againstthe Prince Imperial's photograph, but he never could resist a sight ofthe original. And, thirdly, if a wife and a mother may not have her ownway about going to see the Head of her own Church, when is she ever tohave her way at all, and where is the line to be drawn? The nextdownward step in a husband's declension will be to prevent her fromfrequenting all religious exercises, or, still worse, from selecting herown balls and evening parties. This is what English ladies feel, andfeel keenly. It is some consolation to them to learn that, if theEmpress Eugénie is discomfited, she will not have been discomfitedwithout a struggle. Of course there will be no evening reception on theNew Year at the Tuileries. No lady with a proper sense of what was dueto her own dignity would receive under such circumstances. But till themost authentic news arrive, it will still be possible to hope and tobelieve that victory will eventually, and in spite of all appearances, declare itself upon the side of right and of propriety, and that herMajesty will not be interfered with merely to satisfy the idle capricesof a Foreign Office. 

The question of the proper limits of feminine influence is one whichsuch universal enthusiasm forces naturally on one's notice. Not even themost rigid cynic can deny that women ought to have some influence on themind and judgment of the opposite sex, and the only difficulty is toknow how far that influence ought to go. Every one will be ready toconcede that sound reasoning is worth hearing, whether it comes from awoman or a man; and that, so far as a lady argues well, she has as muchclaim on our attention as Diotima had on the attention of Socrates. This, however, is not precisely the point which is so difficult tosettle. The problem is to know how much influence a woman ought to havewhen she does not argue well; and further, what are the matters on whichher opinion, whether it be based on argument or instinct, is of value. 

One of the most important subjects on which women have some, and alwayswant to have a great deal of power, is religion. This is one part of thesupposed mission of the Empress upon which feminine observers look withespecial sympathy, and on which experienced masculine observers, on theother hand, look with some awe. The correspondents of the daily papers, whose pleasure and privilege it is to be able to instruct us in all thesecrets of high life, have given us recently to understand that, forsome time back, Her Majesty has been hard at work on the Emperor's soul. Every thoughtful woman likes to be at work on her husband's soul. Youngladies enjoy the prospect before they are married, and no novel is sothoroughly popular among them as one in which beauty is the instrumentin the hands of Providence for the conversion of unbelief. And it ispartly because the Empress Eugénie is discharging this high missionaryduty, that she is an object of particular admiration just at thismoment. When Englishwomen hear that she is very active in favor of thePope, and couple this news with the fact that the Emperor's soul isuneasy, they sniff--if we may be forgiven the expression--the battlefrom afar. Their education in respect of theology and religious opinionis very different from that of men. 

They have been brought up to believe strongly and heartily what theyhave been told, and they do not understand the half-sceptical way ofregarding such things which is the result of larger views and moreliberal education. It appears to them a terrible thing that the men theycare for should be hesitating and doubtful about subjects where theythemselves have been trained only to believe one view possible. And theyset to work in the true temper of missionaries, with profound eagernessand energy, and narrowness of grasp. Many genuine prayers and tears areworthily spent in the effort to tether some truant husband or a son to afamily theological peg, and to prevent him from roving. And, up to acertain point, men continually give in. They find it easier and morecomfortable to lower their arms, and not always to be maintaining abarren controversy. They have not the slightest wish to convince theiraffectionate feminine disputant, to take from her the sincere andpositive dogmas on which her happiness is built, and to substitute forthese a phase of doubt and difficulty for which her past intellectuallife has not fitted her. Accordingly, they indulge in a thousand littlehypocrisies of a more or less harmless kind. 

So long as women's education continues to differ from that of men aswidely as it does in England, this flexibility on the part of the latterunder the influence of the former is not always amiss. It is better thatthe husband should be yielding than that he should hold aloof from allthat interests and moves the wife, as is the case in countries where theone sex may be seen professing to believe in nothing, while the other asimplicitly believes in everything. It is, however, easy to conceive ofcases in which this feminine influence that seems so innocent, is inreality injurious. It may perhaps be the business of the husband to takea public part in the affairs of his time. Conscience tells him that heshould be sincere, uncompromising, logical, even to the point ofdisputing conclusions which good and pious people consider essentialand important. Or he may be a religious preacher, or a religiousreformer of his day, bound, in virtue of character, to maintain truth atthe risk of being unpopular; or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries andreforms at the risk of shocking weaker brethren. 

There are many who could tell us from their experience how terribly atsuch a time they have been perplexed and hampered in their duty by theaffectionate ignorance, the tears, and the piety of women. Protestantclergymen in particular are sometimes taunted with their conservativetendencies, their indifference to the new lights of science, or ofhistory, and their disinclination to embark on perilous voyages in questof truth. Part of their conservatism arises from the fact that theirpractical business is generally to teach what they do know, rather thanto inquire into what they do not know. Part of it comes, as we suspect, from the fact that they are married. A wife is a sort of theologicaldrag. It serves no doubt to keep some of us from rolling too rapidlydown hill. It impedes equally the progress of others over ordinarilylevel ground. 

The importance of a social position to women is a thing which affectstheir influence upon men no less materially than does their religioussensibility. As a rule, they have no other means of measuring theconsideration in which they are held by the world, or the success inlife of those to whose fortunes they are linked, than by using a trivialand worthless social standard. Men, whose training is wider, estimateboth their male and their female friends pretty fairly according totheir merits. But the majority of women, from their youth up, seldomthink of anybody without contrasting his or her social status with theirown. Success signifies to them introduction to this or that femininecircle, admission to friendships from which they have been as yetexcluded, and visiting cards of a more distinguished appearance thanthose which at present lie upon their table. They are unable to enjoyeven the ordinary intercourse of society without an _arrière pensée_ asto their chance of landing themselves a step higher on the socialladder. From such absurdities the best and most refined women of courseare free, but the mass of Englishwomen seldom meet without wondering whoon earth each of the others is, and to which county family she belongs. 

Humorous as is the spectacle of a crowd of English ladies, each of whomis employed in eyeing the lady next her and asking who she is, andcomical as the point of view appears to any one who reflects on theshortness of human life and the littleness of human character, theeffect of these feminine weaknesses is one which no one can be sure ofescaping. We are afraid that half of the Englishmen who are snobs aremade so by Englishwomen. It is impossible for the female portion of anydomestic circle to be perpetually dwelling on their own socialaspirations without communicating the infection to, or even forcing itupon the male. Wives and daughters become dissatisfied with theirhusbands' or their fathers' friends. They want to meet and to associatewith people whom it is a social credit to know, and who in turn mayhelp them to know somebody beyond. Every fresh acquaintance ofdistinction, or of fashion, is a sort of milestone, showing the groundthat has been travelled over by the family in the direction of theirhopes. This sort of fever is very catching. But though men often catchit, they generally catch it from the other sex. And even when they arenot impregnated with it themselves, the effect of feminine influenceupon them is that they accept their lot with placidity, and acquiesce inthe social struggle through which they are dragged. 

No man in his senses can wish or hope to order the social life of hisbelongings according to his own sober judgment. He is compelled to allowthem a free rein in the matter, and to abstain from even expressing theastonishment he inwardly feels. Perhaps the world of women is a newworld to him, and he feels incapable of regulating any of its movements;or perhaps, if he is wise, he is content with the reflection that littlefoibles do not altogether spoil real nobility of nature, and takes thebad side of a woman's education with the good. But there are innumerablematters in respect of which he cannot withdraw himself from the feminineinfluence about him. By degrees he comes to sympathize with the littlesocial disappointments of his family group, and to take pleasure intheir little social triumphs, which appear to be so productive ofsatisfaction and enjoyment to those to whom they fall. But the effect onhis character is not usually wholesome. His eye is no longer single. Feminine influence has engrafted on his nature the defects of femininecharacter, without engrafting on it also its many virtues. 

Women usually fail in communicating to men their self-devotion, theirgentleness, their piety; all that they manage to communicate amounts tolittle more than a respect for the observances of religion, and anervous sensibility to social distinctions. 

While the mental development of women continues to be so little studied, it is not surprising that the intellectual influence of the sex shouldbe almost _nil_, or that such a modicum of it as they possess should beexerted within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of oursystems of female education that the mental power of the cleverest womenreally comes in England to very little. In its highest form it amountsto a capacity for conversation on indifferent matters, a genius formusic or some other fine art, a turn for talking about the poets of theday, and perhaps for imitating their style with ease, coupled, inexceptional cases, with a talent for guessing double acrostics. To beable to do all this, and to be charming and religious too, is the wholeduty of young women. 

It would be difficult possibly to fit out an English young lady with thevarious practical accomplishments that are of use in matrimony, and tomake her at the same time an intellectual equal of the other sex. But itwould surely be possible to train her to understand more of the generalcurrent of the world's ideas, even if she could not devote herself tostudying them in detail. What woman has now any notion of the broadoutline of history of human thought? All philosophy is a sealed book toher. It is the same with theology and politics. She has not the wildestconception, as a rule, of the grounds on which people think who thinkdifferently from herself; and all through life she is content to playthe part of a partisan or a devotee with perfect equanimity. 

While, however, feminine influence in intellectual subjects is, as itdeserves to be, infinitesimal, in practice and in action women are proudof being recognized as useful and sound advisers. As outsiders andspectators they see a good deal of the game, have leisure to watchnarrowly all that is going on about them, and a subtle instinct teachesthem to tread delicately over all dangerous ground. It is curious howmany enemies women make amongst themselves, and yet how many enemiesthey prevent men from making. They seem to have less of self-control orprudence as far as their own strong feelings and fortunes are concerned, than they have of tact and temper in managing the fortunes andenterprises of others. 

There can, for example, be no doubt whatever that the parson who aims atbeing a bishop before he dies ought to marry early. The great strokes ofpolicy which bring him preferment or popularity are pretty sure to havebeen devised in moments of happy inspiration, or perhaps during thewatches of the night, by a feminine brain. Good mothers make saints andheroes, says the proverb, and beyond a doubt wise wives make bishops. Their influence is not the less real because, unlike that of Mrs. Proudie, it is exerted chiefly behind the scenes. It is possibly becausethe influence possessed by women is so intangible, depending as it doesless on the reason than on the sentiment, affection, and convenience ofthe other sex, that women are so jealous to assert and to protect it. 

PIGEONS. 

Every now and then, as the fashionable season comes round, in somecorner of its space the daily press records a wholesale slaughter of thepigeon species. The world is informed of a series of sweepstakes, inwhich guardsmen and peers and foreigners of distinction take part. Somany birds are shot at, so many are killed, so many get away. Thequality of the birds and the skill of the shooters is specified. As theminutest details of the sport are interesting, we are even told whosupplies the birds, and whether the day of their massacre was bright orcloudy. This is quite as it should be. The British public can never heartoo much of the doings of its gilded youth. Sweet to it is sportingnews, but "aristocratic sporting news" is sweeter still. 

And apart from this twofold source of interest, an element of deepersatisfaction mingles in the complacency with which it gloats over thesepigeon holocausts. It is something to know that, in the last resort, wehave these high-born and fashionable marksmen to protect our hearths andhomes from the French invader and the irrepressible Beales. The nervoushouseholder sleeps in his bed with a greater sense of security afterreading of the awful havoc which Captain A. And the Earl of B. Aremaking of the feathery tribe. In the accuracy of their aim he sees aguarantee of order, and of the maintenance of his glorious Constitution. Foreign menace and internal discord lose something of their terrors forhim as often as his eyes light upon the significant little paragraph towhich we have referred. Here is an item of intelligence for the haughtyPrussian and the dashing Zouave to ponder. Here is something for themole-like Fenian and the blatant Leaguesman to put in their pipes andsmoke. 

The fate of the pigeons awaits all who would violate our shores, orlight up the flame of sedition in the land. If, as some philosophersaver, the pigeon does not all die, but in some tranquil limbo flutterson in an eternity of innocent cooing, it must console the poor bird toreflect that, however cheap he may be held, he has not perishedaltogether in vain. To serve a useful purpose is the great economy ofthings, to point a warning, at the cost of one's heart's blood, toEngland's foes and traitors--to the plotter in Munster as well as thesafer conspirator of the Parks--might content even a greater ambitionthan that which animates the gentle bosom of a fantail. 

But suppose some vindictive pouter to survive his less lucky comrades, and, escaping among the birds who are duly chronicled as "getting away, "to perch, full of resentment at the probable extinction of his species, in the fashionable quarter of London. He would there witness a grand actof retaliation. He would learn how Belgravia avenges Hornsey andShepherd's Bush. He would see the very men from whom his relatives hadreceived their quietus flying to their clubs for shelter, and calling ontheir goddesses of the _demi-monde_ to cover them. He would perceive, byan unerring instinct, that a contest was afoot in which the conditionsof that suburban sweepstakes at which he had involuntarily assisted wereexactly reversed. He would see those self-same sportsmen converted intothe target, the flutterers of the dovecot themselves in a flutter. Andhe would be more than pigeon if he could repress a thrill of savage gleeat the spectacle of the enemies of his race realizing by experience allthe difference between shooting and being shot at. 

Suppose, further, that curious to watch the operations of "aristocraticsport, " the intelligent bird, following the precedent of Edgar Poe'sRaven, should alight, unseen and uninvited, on some object of art in afashionable ballroom. Here he would find himself at once in the thick ofthe brilliant competition. He would see a row of lovely archers, backedby a second row of older and more experienced markswomen. And in thehuman pigeons now cowering before their combined artillery he wouldrecognise the heroes so lately engaged in dispatching thousands of thefeathered branch of the family to oblivion. At first sight it mightstrike an animal of his well-known gallantry that there was nothing sovery terrible in their impending fate. To fall slain by bright eyes, andwith the strains of Coote and Tinney lingering on the ear, to sigh outone's soul over a draught of seltzer and champagne or the sweet poisonof a strawberry ice, might seem to the winged spectator a blissfulending. 

The doorway of the perfumed saloon might seem but the portal of aMahomedan paradise, in which young and beautiful houris are deportingthemselves under the guardian eye of the older and less beautifulhouris. To the denizen of the air all, save the want of oxygen, mightappear divine. But when he surveyed more closely that sexual row ofsportswomen, he would know at once that he beheld the true avengers ofhis race. In their stony glare, in the cold glitter of their diamonds, in the ample proportions of their well-developed shoulders, in theirsliding scale of manners, now adjusted to a sugary smile and now to astare of annihilation, he would read a deadly purpose. Nor would thediversities of skill which this fringe of amazons exhibited in the useof their weapons escape his notice. He would see some whom success hadmade affable, and others whom failure had made desperate; some whocovered their victim with an aim of pitiless precision, and others whospoilt their chances by bungling audacity. Conspicuous among them hewould observe a giddy sexagenarian, whose random attempts to share inthe sport made her the laughing-stock of the circle. 

And as he surveyed the _battue_ he would gradually discern its tactics. The beautiful beings in tulle he would feel, by instinct, were a lureand a decoy. Once within reach of their victims, these lovelyskirmishers would be seen to inflict on them a sudden wound, leavingthem to be despatched by the heavy reserve in _moire_ and lace. As hewatched the terror which these formidable beings inspired, and thebusiness-like manner in which they addressed themselves to their task, as he noticed the jaunty destroyers of his race succumbing one by one tofate, or ignominiously attempting to "get away, " he would feel that the"irony of the situation" was complete. In a vague way he would grasp thefact--hitherto undreamt of in his dove's philosophy--that, if the pigeonis preyed upon by man, man in his turn is preyed upon by the dowager. 

There is, however, this difference between the fate of the pigeon andhis human analogue, that, whereas the former is slain outright, thelatter is often subjected to the prolonged agony of being pluckedfeather by feather. Not that he thinks it agony; on the contrary, hedecidedly likes it, which is a wonderful proof of his simplicity, andthe difference in people's tastes. But in order to pluck a human pigeonat leisure, you must first catch him. May is a good month for thisoperation. About now he begins to resort to the Opera and the park, andin the purlieus of either a fine specimen may be flashed. A cleversportswoman will get the earliest possible information about hismovements. Much depends on forestalling her competitors. 

A youthful pigeon, just emerging from his minority, or freshly alightedfrom the grand tour, is easily captured. There are two principalcontrivances for catching human pigeons. The first is the matrimonialsnare. This is worked by the dowager, in concert with her daughter, somewhat on the following plan. The daughter throws herself, as if bychance, in the pigeon's way. The brilliancy of her charms naturallyattracts him. Small-talk ensues, in which an extraordinary similaritybetween her tastes and his is casually revealed. The simple pigeon, suspecting nothing, is delighted to find so congenial a soul. Is hemusical? she adores the divine art. A gourmand? she owns to thepossession of a cookery-book. Ritualistic? it was but the other day thatshe was at St. Alban's. Turfy? He must throw his eyes over her book forthe Derby. Even if his pet pastime, like the Emperor Domitian's, werekilling flies, she would profess her readiness to join him in it. Or shetries another dodge, and, putting on the airs of a pretty monitress, asks him with tender interest to confide in her. 

The great point is never to lose sight of him; to follow him to balls, concerts, or races, to cleave to him like his shadow. Then, when he isfairly caught in the toils of her encircling sympathy, the elder andmore experienced ally appears on the scene. Her task is to cut off hisretreat. Upon her firmness and accuracy in calculating the resistingpower of her pigeon, success depends. Seizing an opportunity when he isleast prepared, she sternly informs him that the time for dalliance isover, that he has said and done things of a very marked kind, and thatthere is only one course open to him as a pigeon of honor. And underthis sort of compulsion the simple creature, with his rent-roll, Consols, family diamonds, and all, hops with a fairly good grace intothe matrimonial toils. 

The second contrivance to which he is apt to fall a victim is theinfatuation trap. This is a much more elaborate machine, and is workedby one of those semi-attached couples who might sit to a new Hogarth fora new edition of _Marriage á la Mode_. The husband's part is verysimple. It is to be as little in the way as possible, and to afford hissprightlier half every facility for pursuing her little game. The chiefbusiness devolves on the lady. It is her task to make the pigeon fallmadly in love with her, and to keep him so, without overstepping thebounds of conventional propriety. Happily this can be managed nowadayswithout either elopement or scandal. Among the improvements of thismechanical age, it has been found possible to enlarge the limits ofwedlock so as to include a third person. 

A life-long _tête-á-tête_, which was the old conception of marriage, isquite obsolete. It has given way to the triangular theory, by which anew element, in the shape of a parasitical adorer, has been introducedinto the holy state. Matrimony, as reconstituted by fashionablescholiasts, comprises husband, wife, and, to relieve the tedium of thesituation, a good-looking appendage of the male sex, who is an agreeablecompanion of the one and the devoted slave of the other. Eachcontributes to the harmony of the arrangement--the husband, abackground; the wife, the charms of her presence; the adorer, cash. Whatever other experience it brings, marriage generally sharpens theappreciation of the value of money; sentiment is sweet, but it is anarticle of confectionery, for which its fair dispensers in the marriedranks exact an equivalent. 

In trapping her victim, therefore, a sharp young matron is careful tolet her choice fall on a plump specimen of the pigeon species--a pigeonwith a long purse and little brains. Once reduced to a state ofinfatuation, almost anything may be done with him. The luxury ofplucking him will employ her delicate fingers for a long time to come. He may be sponged upon to any extent. The one thing he can do reallywell is to pay. His yacht, his drag, his brougham, his riding-horses, his shooting-box, all are at her disposal. At his expense she dines atGreenwich; at his expense she views the Derby; at his expense she enjoysan opera-box. And in return for all this she has only to smile andmurmur "_so_ nice, " for the soft simpleton to fancy himself amplyrepaid. Then she exacts a great many costly presents, to say nothing ofgloves, trinkets, and _bouquets_. It is curious to note how the code ofpropriety has altered in this particular. 

In old-fashioned novels the stereotyped dodge for compromising a lady'sreputation is to force a present or a loan of money on her. NowadaysLovelace's anxiety is just the other way--to keep the acquisitivepropensity of his liege lady within tolerable bounds. It would be agreat mistake to suppose that a woman can play this game without specialgifts and aptitudes for it. It requires peculiar talents, and peculiarantecedents. First and foremost, she must have married a man whom sheboth dislikes and despises. And, further, she must be proof against theweakness which some of her sex exhibit, of growing fond of husbands who, without being Admirable Crichtons, treat them kindly and withforbearance. Next, she must have thrown overboard all the twaddle aboutdomestic duties and responsibilities. If her child sickens of themeasles just as she is starting for her bivouac in Norway, or a courseof dinners in the Palais Royal, her duty is to call in the doctor andgo. Weeks afterwards you will find the little darling picking up flesh, in mamma's absence, at some obscure watering-place. Then her temperamentmust be cool, calculating, and passionless in no ordinary degree, andthis character is written in the hard lines of her mouth and the coldlight of her fine eyes. 

Lastly, she must have, not a superstitious, but an intelligent regardfor the world's opinion, or rather for the opinion of the influentialpart of it. No one has a nicer perception of the difference in therelative importance of stupid country gossip and ostracism from certaingreat houses in London. No one takes more pains to study appearances solong as they don't clash with her amusements. Indeed, you will generallyfind that her dear friend is a young lady of great simplicity andirreproachable principles, whom she admits just enough, but not too far, into her confidence, and who finds it worth while to enact the part, nowof a blind, and now of a foil. 

If any one asserts that this treatment of the human pigeon is cruel, wecan only reply, with a correspondent of the _Times_ who writes to rebukethe humanitarians who would rob a poor boa of his squealing rabbit--awaywith such cant! Is a married woman to be stinted of her "smallpleasures" because prudes affect to think the means by which they areobtained unfeminine? As well might they think it unfeline in pussy toplay with her mouse. 

The walking pigeon is as much intended for the prey of a strongerspecies as the pigeon that flies. The plucking which he receives at thehands of his fair manipulator is nothing to what he would get at thehands of his own sex, in the army, on the turf, or in the city. If thepigeon has reason to think himself lucky in faring no worse, thenon-pigeon section of society has no less reason to be grateful for anew illustration of female character. Not that the mercenary developmentin some of our young matrons is altogether new. It is only an olddomestic virtue, carried to an extreme--thrift, running into an engagingrapacity. 

AMBITIOUS WIVES. 

The recent death of Mrs. Proudie, who was so well known and so littleloved by the readers of Mr. Trollope's novels, is one of those occasionswhich ought not to be allowed to pass away without being improved. Tomany men it will suggest many things. She was a type. As a type ought tobe, she was perfect and full-blown. But her characteristics enter intoother women in varying degrees, and with all sorts of minor colors. TheProudie element in wives and women is one of those unrecognised yetpotent conditions of life which master us all, and yet are admitted andtaken into calculation and account by none. It is in the nature ofthings that such an element should exist, and should be powerful in thispeculiar and oblique way. We deny women the direct exercise of theircapacities, and the immediate gratification of an overt ambition. Thenatural result is that they run to artifice, and that a good-naturedhusband is made the conductor between an ambitious wife and the outerworld where the prizes of ambition are scrambled for. He is the wretchedbuffer through which the impetuous forces of his wife impinge upon hisneighbors. That is to say, he leads an uneasy life between two evercolliding bodies, being equally misunderstood and equally reviled byeither. 

This is the evil result of a state of things in which naturaldistinctions and conventional distinctions are a very long way fromcoinciding. The theory is that women are peaceful domestic beings, withno object beyond household cares, no wish nor will outside the objectsof the man and his children, no active opinion or concern in the largeraffairs of the State. Every man, on the other hand, is supposed to haveviews and principles about public topics, and to be anxious to make moreor less of a figure in the enforcement of his views, to exercise in someshape an influence among his fellows, and to win renown of one sort oranother. Of course if this division of the male and female naturescovered the whole ground, society would be in a very well-balancedstate, and things would go on very smoothly in consequence of theperfect equilibrium established by the exceeding contentedness of womenand the constant activity and ambition of men. 

But a very small observation of life is quite enough to disclose how illthe facts correspond with the accepted hypothesis about them. We areconstantly being told of some aspiring man that he is, in truth, no morethan the representative of an aspiring wife. He would fain live his lifein dignified or undignified serenity, and cares not a jot for a seat inthe House of Commons, or for being made a bishop, or for any of thoseother objects which allure men out of a tranquil and independentexistence. But he has a wife who does care for these things. She cannotbe a member of Parliament or a bishop in her own person, but it issomething to be the wife of somebody who can be these things. 

A part of the glory of the man is reflected upon the head of the woman. She receives her reward in a second-hand way, but still it is glory ofits own sort. She becomes a leading lady in a provincial town, andduring the season in town she is asked out to houses which she is veryeager to get into, and of which she can talk with easily assumedfamiliarity when she returns to the provinces again. She is presented atCourt too, and this makes her descend to the provincial plain with anaroma of Celestial dignity like that of Venus when she descended fromOlympus. A bishop's wife is still more amply rewarded. Without being soimperious as the late Mrs. Proudie was, she has still a thousand ofthose opportunities for displaying power which are so dear to people whoare fictitiously supposed to be too weak to care for power. Minorcanons, incumbents, curates, and all their wives, pay her profounddeference; or, if they do not, she can "put the screw on" in a gushingmanner which is exceedingly effective. 

There are women, it is true, with souls above these light socialmatters. They do not particularly value the privilege of figuring aslady-patroness of a ball or bazaar, or the delights of trampling on acurate, or of being distantly adored by the wife of a minor canon. Butthey really have an interest in politics, or in some one or two specialdepartments of that comprehensive subject. They would like to pass anAct of Parliament making it a capital offence for any guardian of thepoor or relieving-officer to refuse to give the paupers as much as theyshould choose to ask for. Drainage is the strong point of some women. Sewage with them is the key to civilization. 

Perhaps most political women are actively interested in public affairssimply because they perceive that this is the most openly recognisedsphere of influence and power; and what they yearn after is to beinfluential, and to stand on something higher than the ordinary level inthe world, for no other reason than that it is higher than the ordinarylevel. Nobody has any right to find fault with this temper, provided theladies who are possessed by it do not mistake mere domineering for theextraordinary elevation after which they aspire. It is through thistemper, whether in one sex or the other, that the world is made better. If a certain number of men and women were not ambitious, what wouldbecome of the rest of us who possess our souls in patience andmoderation?

The only question is whether what we may call vicarious ambition, oraspirations by proxy, are particularly desirable forms of a confessedlyuseful and desirable sentiment. For the peace of mind of the man who isnot ambitious, but is only pretending to be so, we may be pretty surethat the domestic stimulus has some drawbacks. We do not mean drawbacksafter the manner of Mrs. Caudle. These show a coarse and vulgarconception of the goads which a man may have applied to him in his innercircle. There are moral and unheard reproofs. There is a consciousnessin the mind of a man that his wife thinks him (with all possibleaffection and tenderness) rather a poor creature for not taking hisposition in the world. And if he happens to be a man of anything likefine sensibility, this will make him exceedingly uneasy. 

The uneasiness may then become sufficiently decided to make him willingto undergo any amount of labor and outlay, rather than endure thepresence of this æthereal skeleton in the family closet. He is quiteright. He could barely preserve his self-respect otherwise. But he ismistaken if he fancies that a single step or a single series of stepswill demolish the skeleton entirely. One compliance with the ambition ofhis wife will speedily beget the necessity for another. It is notoriousthat a thoroughly aspiring man is never content without the prospect ofscaling new heights. No more is an aspiring woman. Whether you aredirectly ambitious, as a man is, and for yourself, or indirectly and forsomebody else, as a woman is, in either case the law is the same. Newsummits ever glitter in the distance. You have got your husband into theHouse of Commons. That glory suffices for a month. 

At the end of two months it seems a very dim glory indeed, and havinglong been at an end, it by this time sinks into the second place of ameans. The sacrificial calf must next be made to speak. He must acquirea reputation. Here in a good many cases, we suspect, the process finallystops. A man may be got into the House, but the coveted exaltation ofthat atmosphere does not convert a quiet, peaceable, dull man into anorator. It does not give him ideas and the faculty of articulate speech. At this point, if he be wise, he draws the line. He endures the skeletonas best he may, or else his wife, quenching her ambition, resignsherself to incurable destiny, and learns to be content with the limitsset by the fates to her lord's capacities. There are still certainfields open to her own powers, irrespective of what he is able to do. 

For example, she may open a _salon_, and there may exert unspeakableinfluence over all kinds of important people. This is not at presentparticularly congenial to English ground. As yet, the most vigorousintellectual people seem to have felt an active social life as somethingbeneath them, and the highly social people have not been conspicuous forthe activity of their intellectual life. The people who go so greatly toparties do not care for what they sum up, with an admirablycomprehensive vagueness, as "intellect;" while, on the other hand, scholars and thinkers are wont to look on time given to society assomething very like time absolutely wasted. In such a state of feeling, it is difficult for a clever woman to exercise much power. 

But, as other things improve, this unsocial feeling will dissolve. Clever men will see that a couple of hours spent with other clever menare not wasted just because a lady is of the party. Nobody wouldseriously maintain that this is so even now, but people are very oftenstrongly under the influence of vague notions which they would neverdream of seriously maintaining. When women get their rights, the_salon_ will become an institution. It will create a very fine field forthe cultivation of their talents. And in proportion as it allows a womanto make a career for herself, it will bring relief to many excellenthusbands who will then no longer have to make careers for them at theexpense of overstraining their own too slender powers. 

It is possible, however, that even then the husband of an ambitious wifemay not be fully contented. For people with any degree of weakness orincapacity in them are always more prone than their neighbors tolittlenesses and meannesses, and a man who is not able to win muchrenown on his own account may possibly not be too well pleased to seehis Wife surrounded by his intellectual betters. Indeed, he may even, ifhe is of a very mean nature indeed, resent the spectacle of her ownpredominance. It is some comfort to think that in such case the man'sown temper will be his severest punishment. 

As a rule, however, it is pleasant to think that with ambition in women, which is not their peculiarity, is yoked tact, which is theirpeculiarity emphatically. Hence, therefore, wives who are ambitious fortheir lords have often the discretion to conceal their mood. They mayrule with a hand of iron, but the hand is sagely concealed in a glove ofvelvet. A man may be the creature of his wife's lofty projects, and yetdream all the time that he is altogether chalking out his own course. 

George II. Used to be humored in this way by Queen Caroline. BishopProudie, on the other hand, was ruled by his wife, and knew that he wasa mere weapon in her hands; and, what was even worse than all, knew thatthe rest of mankind knew this. This must be uncommonly unpleasant, weshould suppose. The middle position of the husband who only now and thensuspects in a dreamy way that he is being prompted and urged on anddirected by an ambitious wife, and has sense enough not to inflamehimself with chimerical notions about the superiority and grandeur ofthe male sex--this perhaps is not so bad. If the tide of ambition runsrather sluggish in yourself, it is a plain advantage to have somebody atyour side with enthusiasm enough to atone for the deficiency. 

It is impossible to tell how much good the world gets, which otherwiseit would miss, simply out of the fact that women are discontented withtheir position. Now and then, it is understood, the husband who is thusmade a mere conductor for the mental electricity of a wife who is tooclever for him may feel a little bored, and almost wish that he hadmarried a girl instead. But enthusiasm spreads, and in a general way thefervor of the wife who aspires to distinction proves catching to thehusband. Some ladies are found to prefer this position to any other. They are full of power, and have abundance of room for energy, and yetthey have no responsibility. They get their ample share of the spoil, and yet they do not bear the public heat and burden of the day. It isonly the more martial souls among them for whom this is not enough. 

PLATONIC WOMAN. 

In the wearier hours of life, when the season is over, and the boredomof country visits is beginning to tell on the hardy constitutions thathave weathered out crush and ball-room, there is usually a moment whenthe heroine of twenty summers bemoans the hardships of her lot. Herbrother snuffed her out yesterday when she tried politics, and theclerical uncle who comes in with the vacation extinguished a well-meantattempt at theology by a vague but severe reference to the Fathers. Ifthe afternoon is particularly rainy, and Mudie's box is exhausted, thesufferer possibly goes further, and rises into eloquent revolt againstthe decorums of life. 

There is indeed one career left to woman, but a general looseness ofgrammar, and a conscious insecurity in the matter of spelling, stand inthe way of literary expression of the burning thoughts within her. Allshe can do is to moan over her lot and to take refuge in the works ofMiss Hominy. There she learns the great theory of the equality of thesexes, the advancement of woman and the tyranny of man. If her headdoesn't ache, and holds out for a few pages more, she is comforted tofind that her aspirations have a philosophic character. She is able totell the heavy Guardsman who takes her down to dinner and parries herobservations with a joke that they have the sanction of the deepest ofAthenian thinkers. 

It is, we suppose, necessary that woman should have her philosopher, butit must be owned that she has made an odd choice in Plato. No one wouldbe more astonished than the severe dialectician of the Academy at thefeminine conception of a sage of dreamy and poetic temperament, whospends half his time in asserting woman's rights, and half in inventinga peculiar species of flirtation. Platonic attachments, whatever theirreal origin may be, will scarcely be traced in the pages of Plato; andthe rights of woman, as they are advocated in the Republic, are sadlydeficient in the essential points of free love and elective affinity. 

The appearance of a real Platonic woman in the midst of a caucus of suchfemale agitators as those who were lately engaged in stumping withsingular ill success the American States of the West would, we imagine, give a somewhat novel turn to the discussion, and strip of a good dealof adoring admiration the philosopher in whom strong-minded woman has oflate found a patron and friend. Plato is a little too logical and toofond of stating plain facts in plain words to suit the Miss Hominys whowould put the legs of every pianoforte in petticoats, and if thePlatonic woman were to prove as outspoken as her inventor, theconference would, we fear, come abruptly to an end. But if once thedifficulty of decorum could be got over, some instruction and no littleamusement might be derived from the inquiry which the discussion wouldopen, as to how far the modern attitude of woman fulfils the dreams ofher favorite philosopher. 

The institution of Ladies' Colleges is a sufficient proof that woman hasarrived at Plato's conception of an identity of education for the twosexes. Professors, lecturers, class-rooms, note-books, the wholemachinery of University teaching, is at her disposal. Logic and thelong-envied classics are in the curriculum. Governesses are abolished, and the fair girl-graduates may listen to the sterner teachings ofacademical tutors. It is amusing to see how utterly discomfited the newProfessor generally is when he comes in sight of his class. He feelsthat he must be interesting, but he is haunted above all with the sensethat he must be proper. He remembers that when, in reply to thelady-principal's inquiry how he liked his class, he answered, with thestrictest intellectual reference, that they were "charming, " the sternmatron suggested that another adjective would perhaps be moreappropriate. He felt his whole moral sense as a teacher ebbing away. 

In the case of men he would insist on a thorough treatment of hissubject, and would avoid sentiment and personal details as insults totheir intelligence; but what is he to do with rows of pretty faces thatgrow black as he touches upon the dialect of Socrates, but kindle intolife and animation when he depicts the sage's snub nose? Anecdotes, pretty stories, snatches of poetical quotation, slip in more and moreas the students perceive and exercise their power. Men, too, are eitherintelligent or unintelligent, but the unhappy Professor at a Ladies'College soon perceives that he has to deal with a class of minds whichare both at once. A luckless gentleman, after lecturing for fortyminutes, found that the lecture had been most carefully listened to andreproduced in the note-books, but with the trifling substitution inevery instance of the word "Phoenician" for "Venetian. " Above all, heis puzzled with the profuse employment of these note-books. 

To the Platonic girl her note-book takes the place of the old-fashioneddiary. It is scribbled down roughly at the lecture and copied out fairlyat night. It used to be a frightful thought that every evening, beforeretiring to rest, the girl with whom one had been chatting intendedseriously to probe the state of her heart and set down her affections inblack and white; but it is hardly less formidable to imagine herrefusing to lay her head on her pillow before she has finished her faircopy of the battle of Salamis. The universality of female studies, too, astounds the teacher who is fresh from the world of man; he standsaghast before a girl who is learning four languages at once, besidesattending courses on logic, music, and the use of the globes. Thisomnivorous appetite for knowledge he finds to co-exist with a greatweakness in the minor matters of spelling, and a profound indifferenceto the simplest rules of grammar. We do not wonder then at Professorsbeing a little shy of Ladies' Colleges; nor is it less easy to see whythe Platonic theory of education has taken so little with the girlsthemselves. After all, the grievance of which they complain has itsadvantages. 

The worst of bores is restrained by courtesy from boring you if you givehim no cue for further conversation, and the plea of utter ignorancewhich an English girl can commonly advance on any subject is at any ratea defence against the worst pests of society. On the other hand, theingenuous confession that she really knows nothing about it can beturned by a smile into a prelude to the most engaging conversation, andinto an implied flattery of the neatest kind to the favored being whosesuperiority is acknowledged. Ignorance, in fact, of this winsome orderis one of the stock weapons of the feminine armory. 

The man who looks philosophically back after marriage to discover why onearth he is married at all will generally find that the mischief beganin the _naïve_ confession on the part of his future wife of a totalignorance which asked humbly for enlightenment. One of the grandest_coups_ we ever knew made in this way was effected by a desire on thepart of a faded beauty to know the pedigree of a horse. The pride of hernext neighbor at finding himself the possessor of knowledge on anysubject on earth took the form of the most practical gratitude a man canshow. But it is not before marriage only that woman finds her ignoranceact as a charm. Husbands find pleasure in talking politics to theirwives simply because, as they stand on the hearthrug, they aredisplaying their own mental superiority. An Englishman likes to bemaster of his own house, but he dearly loves to be schoolmaster. 

A Platonic woman as well-informed as her husband would deprive him ofthis daily source of domestic enjoyment; his lecture would be reduced todiscussion, and to discussion in which he might be defeated. To rob himof his oracular infallibility might greatly improve the husband, but itwould revolutionize the character of the home. 

It is difficult to see at first sight any analogy between thePuritanical form of flirtation which calls itself a Platonic attachment, and the provisions by which Plato excluded all peculiar love ormatrimonial choice from his commonwealth. The likeness is really to befound in the resolve on which both are based to obtain all theadvantages of social intercourse between the sexes without theinterference of passion. In a well-regulated State, no doubt, passion isa bore, and this is just the aspect which it takes to a highly regulatedwoman. An outburst of affection on the part of her numerous admirerswould break up a very pleasant circle, and put an end to some charmingconversations. On the other hand, the quiet sense of some specialrelationship, the faint odor of a passion carefully sealed up, gives apiquancy and flavor to social friendship which mere association wants. Very frequently such a relation forms an admirable retreat from stormierexperiences in the past, and the tender grace of a day that is deadhangs pleasantly enough over the days that remain. 

But the Platonic woman proper, in this sense, is the spinster offive-and-thirty. She is clever enough to know that the day for inspiringgrand passions is gone by, but that there is still nothing ridiculous inmingling a little sentiment with her friendly relations. She moves inmaiden meditation fancy free, but the vestal flame of her life is nonethe more sullied for a slight tinge of earthly color. It is a connectionthat is at once interesting, undefined, and perfectly safe. It throws alittle poetry over life to know that one being is cherishing a perfectlymoral and carefully toned-down attachment for another, which will lastfor years, but never exceed the bounds of a smile and a squeeze of thehand. 

Animals in the lowest scale of life are notoriously the hardest to kill, and it is just this low vitality, as it were, of Platonic attachmentthat makes it so perfectly indestructible. Its real use is in keeping upa sort of minute irrigation of a good deal of human ground which wouldbe barren without it. These little tricklings of affection, so small asnot to disturb one's sleep or to drive one to compose a single sonnet, keep up a certain consciousness of attraction, and beget a correspondingreturn of kindliness and good temper towards the world around. A womanwho has once given up the hope of being loved is a nuisance toeverybody. But the Platonic woman need never give up her hope of beingloved; she has reduced affection to a minimum, but from its veryminuteness there is little or no motive to snap the bond, and with timehabit makes it indestructible. 

One Christian body, we believe--the Moravians--still carries out theprinciple of Plato's ideal state in giving woman no choice in theselection of a spouse. The elders arrange their matches as the wise menof the Republic were wont to do. A friend of ours once met six youngwomen going out to some Northern settlement of the Moravians with a viewto marriage. "What is your husband's name?" he asked one. "I don't know;I shall find out when I see him, " she answered. But we have heard ofonly one State which realizes Plato's theory as to the equalparticipation of woman in man's responsibilities as well as in hisprivileges, and that is the kingdom of Dahomey. If women were to learnand govern like men, Plato argued, women must fight like men, and theAmazons of Dahomey fight like very terrible men indeed. 

But we have as yet heard of no military grievance on the part of injuredwoman. She has not yet discovered the hardship of being deprived of acommission, or denied the Victoria Cross. No Miss Faithful haschallenged woman's right to glory by the creation of a corps ofriflewomen. Even Dr. Mary Walker, though she could boast of having gonethrough the American war, went through it with a scalpel, and not with asword. We are far from attributing this peaceful attitude of modernwoman, inferior though it be to the Platonic ideal, to any unduephysical sensitiveness to danger, or to inability for deeds of daring;we attribute it simply to a sense that there is a warfare which she isdischarging already, and with the carrying on of which any more publicexertions would interfere. 

Woman alone keeps up the private family warfare which in the earlierstages of society required all the energies of man. It is a field fromwhich man has completely retired, and which would be left wholly vacantwere it not occupied by woman. The stir, the jostling, the squabbling ofsocial life, are all her own. We owe it to her that the family existenceof England does not rot in mere inaction and peace. The guerilla warfareof house with house, the fierce rivalry of social circle with socialcircle, the struggle for precedence, the jealousies and envyings andrancors of every day--these are things which no man will take a properinterest in, and which it is lucky that woman can undertake for him. ThePlatonic woman of to-day may not march to the field or storm the breach, but she is unequalled in outmanoeuvring a rival, in forcing anentrance into society, in massacring an enemy's reputation, in carryingoff matrimonial spoil. In war, then, as in education and the affections, modern woman has developed the spirit without copying the form of thePlatonic ideal. After all superficial contrasts have been exhausted, shemay still claim the patronage of the philosopher of Academe. 

MAN AND HIS MASTER. 

There are, it must be owned, few things on earth of less interest atfirst sight than a girl in her teens. She is a mere bundle of palecolorless virtues, a little shy, slightly studious, passively obedient, tamely religious. Her tastes are "simple"--she has no particularpreference, that is, for anything; her aims incline mildly towards afuture of balls to come; her rule of life is an hourly reference to"mamma. " She is without even the charm of variety; she has beenhot-pressed in the most approved finishing establishments, and is turnedout the exact double of her sister or her cousin or her friend, with thesame stereotyped manner, the same smattering of accomplishments, thesame contribution to society of her little sum of superficialinformation. We wonder how it is that any one can take an interest in acreature of this sort, just as we wonder how any one can take aninterest in the _Court Circular_. And yet there are few sentiments morepardonable, as there are none more national, than our interest in thatmarvellous document. 

A people which chooses to be governed by kings and queens has a right torealize the fact that kings and queens are human beings, that theyshoot, drive, take the air like the subjects whom they govern. And if insome coming day we are to toss up our hats and shout ourselves hoarsefor a sovereign who is still in his cradle, it is wise as well asnatural that we should cultivate an interest in his babyhood, that weshould hang on the vicissitudes of his teeth and his measles, that weshould be curious as to the title of his spelling-book, and the exactscore of his last game at cricket. 

It is precisely the same interest which attaches us to the loosely-tiedbundle of virtues and accomplishments which we call a girl. We recognisein her our future ruler. The shy, modest creature who has no thought buta dance, and no will but mamma's, will in a few years be our master, changing our habits, moulding our tastes, bending our characters to herown. In the midst of our own drawing-room, in our pet easy-chair, weshall see that retiring figure quietly established, with downcast eyes, and hands busy with their crochet-needles, what Knox called, in daysbefore a higher knowledge had dawned, "the Monstrous Regimen of Women. "

We are far from sharing the sentiments of the Scotch Reformer, and if weattempt here to seize a few of the characteristics of the rule againstwhich he revolted, we hope to avoid his bitterness as carefully as hisprolixity. What was a new thing in his day has become old in ours, andman learns perhaps somewhat too easily to acquiesce in "establishedfacts. " It is without a dream of revolt, and simply in a philosophicalspirit, that we approach the subject. Indeed, it is a feeling ofadmiration rather than of rebellion which seizes us when we begin toreflect on the character of woman's sway, and on the simplicity of themeans by which she creates and establishes it. A little love, a littlelistening, a little patience, a little persistence, and the game is won. 

How charmingly natural and unobjectionable, for instance, is the veryfirst move in it--what we may venture to call, since we have to createthe very terminology of our subject, the Isolation of Man. When Brownmeets us in the street and hopes that his approaching marriage will makeno difference in our friendship, and that we shall see as much of oneanother as before, we know that the phrases simply mean that ourintimacy is at an end. There will be no more pleasant lounges in themorning, no more strolls in the park, no more evenings at the club. Woman has succeeded in so completely establishing this cessation offormer friendships as a condition of the new married life that hardlyany one dreams of thinking what an enormous sacrifice it is. There arevery few men, after all, who are not dependent on their little group ofintimates for the general drift of their opinions, the general temper oftheir mind and character of their lives. Their mutual advice, support, praise or dispraise, enthusiasm, abhorrence, likings, dislikings, constitute the atmosphere in which one lives. 

A good deal of real modesty lingers about an unmarried man; he feels farmore confident in his own opinion if he knows it is Smith's opiniontoo, and his conception of life acquires all its definiteness from itsbeing shared with half a dozen fairly reasonable fellows. It is noslight triumph that woman should not only have succeeded in enforcingthe dissolution of this social tie as the first condition of marriedlife, but that she has invested that dissolution with the air of anaxiom which nobody dreams of disputing. The triumph is, as we said, wonby the simplest agency--by nothing, in short, but a dexterous doubleappeal to human conceit. She is so weak, so frail, so helpless, sostrange to this new world into which she has plunged from the realms ofinnocent girlhood, so utterly dependent on her husband, that a man seesat once that he has not a moment left for any one else. 

There is pleasure in the thought of all that delicate weakness appealingto our strength, of that innocent ignorance looking up to us forguidance through the wilderness of the world. Of course it will soon beover, and when the dear dependent has learnt to walk alone a little wecan go back to the old faces and take our segar as before. But somehowthe return never comes, or, if it does come, the old faces have grownfar less enchanting to us. The truth is, we have tasted the secondpleasure of married life--the pleasure of being an authority. All thatshy appeal to us, all that confession of ignorance, has taught us whatwonderfully wise fellows we are. We are far less inclined to wait forSmith's approval, or to take our tone from the group at the club-window. It is, to say the least, far pleasanter to be an authority at home. Gradually we find ourselves becoming oracular, having opinions on everysubject that a leading article can give us one upon, correcting theChancellor of the Exchequer on the Malt-tax and censuring Lord Stanley'spolicy towards the King of Ashantee. Life takes a new interest when wecan put it so volubly into words. At the same time we feel that theinterest is hardly shared by the world. 

Our old associates apparently fail to appreciate the change in us, or tolisten to our disquisitions any more than they did of old; it is acomfort to feel that we have a home to retreat to, and that there is onethere who will. To the subtle flattery, in short, of weakness and ofignorance, woman has now added the flattery of listening. To say little, to contribute hardly more than a cue now and then, but to be attentive, to be interested, to brighten at the proper moment, to laugh at theproper joke, to suggest the exact amount of difficulties which yourequire to make your oratorical triumph complete, and to join with anunreserved assent in its conclusion, that is the simple secret of thepower of ninety-nine wives out of a hundred. It is a power which is farfrom being confined to the home. The most brilliant salons have alwaysbeen created by dexterous listeners. 

A pleasant house is not a house where one is especially talked to, butwhere one discovers that one talks more easily than elsewhere. The tactis certainly invaluable which enables a woman to know the strong pointsof her guests, to lead up to their subjects, to supply points forconversation, and then to leave it quietly alone. But it is only adisplay on the grand scale of that particular faculty of silence whichwins its quiet triumphs on every hearth-rug. 

The faculty, however, has other triumphs to win besides those in whichit figures as a delicate administration of flattery to the vanity ofmen. It is the force which woman holds in reserve for the hour ofrevolt. For it must be owned that, pleasant as the tyranny is, mensometimes wake up to the fact that it is a tyranny, that in the mostseductive way in the world they are being wheedled out of associationsthat are really dear to them, that their life is being cramped andconfined, that their aims are being lowered. Then the newly-foundeloquence exhausts itself in a declaration of revolt. 

Things cannot go on in this way, life cannot be ruined for caprices. Itis needless, perhaps, to repeat the rhetoric of rebellion, and all themore needless because it shares the fate of all rhetoric in producingnot the slightest impression on the mind to which it is addressed. Thewife simply listens as before, though the listening is now far fromencouraging to eloquence. She is perfectly patient, patient in herrefusal to continue an irritating discussion, patient in bearing yourlittle spurts of vexation; she listens quietly to-day, with the air ofone who is perfectly prepared to listen quietly to-morrow. But evenrhetoric has its limits, and now that the cues have ceased, a husbandfinds it a little difficult to keep up a discussion where he has tosupply both arguments and replies. 

Moreover, the tact which managed in former days to place him in a highlypleasant position by the confession of weakness, now, by the very samesilent avowal, places him in a decidedly unpleasant one. If a woman'sair simply says at the end of it all, "I can't answer you, but I know Iam right, " a man has a lurking sense that his copious rhetoric has had asmack of the cowardly as well as of the tyrannical about it. And so, after a vigorous denunciation of some particular thing which his wifehas done, a husband commonly finds himself no further than before; andthe very instant that, from sheer weariness, he ceases, the wife usuallysteals out and does it again. 

There is something feline about this combination of perfect patiencewith quiet persistence--a combination which the Jesuits on a largerscale have turned into the characteristic of their order. It isespecially remarkable when it breaks the bonds of silence, and takes theform of what in vulgar language is called "nagging. " No form of torturewhich has as yet been invented, save, perhaps, the slow dropping ofwater on some highly sensitive part of the frame, can afford a parallelto this ingenious application of the principle of persistence. 

The absolute certainty that, when snub or scolding or refusal have diedinto silence, the word will be said again; the certainty that it will besaid year after year, month after month, week after week; theirritation of expecting it, the irritation of hearing it, the irritationof expecting it again, tell on the firmest will in the world. In thelong run the wife wins. The son goes to Harrow, though reason has proveda dozen times over that we can only afford the expense of Marlborough;the family gets its Alpine tour, though logic and unpaid billsimperatively dictate the choice of a quiet watering place. You yield, and you see that every one in the house knew that you would yield. Therewasn't a servant who didn't know every turn of the domestic screw, orwho took your resistance for more than the usual routine of theoperation. "Time and I, " said Philip of Spain, "against any two. " It isno wonder if, fighting alone for prudence and economy, one is beaten bytime and one's wife. 

We have no wish to dispute the enormous benefits to man of woman'ssupremacy, but we may fairly leave the statement of them to the numeroustroup of poets who dispute with Mr. Tupper the theme of the affections. For ourselves, we may undertake, perhaps, the humbler task of pointingout very briefly some of the disadvantages which, as in all humanthings, counterbalance these benefits. In the first place, feminine ruleis certainly not favorable to anything like largeness of mind or breadthof view. It creates, as we have seen, an excessive self-conceit andopinionativeness, and then it directs these qualities to very small endsindeed. Woman lives from her childhood in a world of petty details, ofminute household and other cares, of bargains where the price of everyyard ends in some fraction of a penny. The habit of mind which is formedby these and similar influences becomes the spirit of the house, aspirit admirable no doubt in many ways, but excessively small. 

The quarrels of a woman's life, her social warfare, her battles aboutprecedence, her upward progress from set to set, have all the same stampof Lilliput on them. But it is to these small details, these littlepleasures and little anxieties and little disappointments and littleambitions, that a wife generally manages to bend the temper of herspouse. He gets gradually to share her indifference to large interests, to broad public questions. He imbibes little by little the most fatal ofall kinds of selfishness, the selfishness of the home. It would bedifficult, perhaps, to say how much of the patriotism of the Old Worldwas owing to the inferior position of woman; but it is certain that theinfluence of woman tells fatally against any self-sacrificing devotionto those larger public virtues of which patriotism is one of the chief. Whether from innate narrowness of mind, or from defective training, orfrom the excessive development of the affections, family interests faroutweigh, in the feminine estimation, any larger national or humanconsiderations. 

If ever the suffrage is given to woman, it will be necessary to punishbribery with the treadmill, for no "person" will regard it as a crime tobarter away her vote for a year's schooling for Johnny or a new frockfor Maud. Nothing tells more plainly the difference between the OldWorld and the New than the constant returns home during war. We canhardly conceive Pericles or even Alcibiades applying for leave ofabsence on the ground of "private affairs. " But then Pericles andAlcibiades had no home that they could set above the interests of theState. 

Lastly, from this narrow view bounded strictly by the limits andinterests of the home comes, it may be feared, a vast deal of social andpolitical bitterness and intolerance. Her very nature, her "deductivespirit, " as Mr. Buckle puts it prettily for her, makes woman essentiallya dogmatist. She has none of the larger intercourse with other minds andadverse circumstances which often creates the form, if not the spirit, of tolerance in the narrowest of men. Her very excellence and faith makeher exactly what they made Queen Mary--a conscientious and thereforemerciless persecutor. 

It is just this feminine narrowness, this feminine conscientiousness, inthe clergy which unfits them for any position where justice ormoderation is requisite. Justice is a quality unknown to woman, andagainst which she wages a fierce battle in the house and in the world. There are few husbands who have been made more just, more tolerant, morelarge-hearted and large-headed, by their wives; for justice lives in adrier light than that of the affections, and dry light is not a verypopular mode of illumination under "the monstrous regimen of women. "

THE GOOSE AND THE GANDER. 

Proverbs, as a rule, are believed to contain amongst them somehow orother a quantity of truth. There is scarcely one proverb which has notgot another proverb that flatly contradicts it, and between the two itwould be very odd if there was not a great deal of sound sensesomewhere. There is, however, one of the number which, as every candidcritic must allow, is based on an egregious falsehood--the proverb, namely, which affirms, against all experience, that whatever is good forthe goose is good for the gander. Viewing the goose as the type ofwoman, and the gander as the type of man, no adage could be morepreposterous or untenable. Such a maxim flies dead in the very face ofsociety, and is calculated to introduce disturbance into the orderlysequence and subordination of the sexes. Who first invented it, it isdifficult to conceive, unless it was some rustic Mrs. Poyser, full ofthe consciousness of domestic power, and anxious to reverse in dailylife the law of priority which obtained--as she must have seen--even inher own poultry-yard. 

There is one way of reading the proverb which perhaps renders it lessmonstrous; and if we confine ourselves to the view that "sauce" for thegoose is also "sauce" for the gander, we escape from any of thephilosophical difficulties in which the other version involves us. Nodoubt, when they are dead, goose and gander are alike, even in the waythey are dressed, and there is no superiority on the part of either. Death makes all genders epicene. Except for one solitary text aboutsilence in heaven for half an hour, which some cynical commentators haveexplained as indicating a temporary banishment from Paradise of one ofthe sexes, distinctions of this sort need not be supposed to continueafter the present life. If we are to take the former reading, and totest it by what we know of life, nothing can be more unfounded, or morecalculated to give a wrong impression as to the facts. Were it not toolate, the proverb ought to be altered; and perhaps it is not absolutelyhopeless to persuade Mr. Tupper to see to it. 

"What is good for the goose is bad for the gander, " or "what is bad forthe goose is good for the gander;" or, perhaps, "what is a sin in thegoose is only the gander's way, " would read quite as well, would not beso diametrically at variance with the ordinary rules of social life, and, accordingly, would be infinitely truer and more moral. Even Mr. Mill, who is the advocate of female emancipation and female suffrage, never has gone so far as to say that all women, as well as all men, arebrothers. The female suffrage, as we know, is merely a question of time. Before very long, no doubt, there will be a feminine Reform Bill, duringthe course of which Mr. Disraeli will explain that the femininefranchise has always been the one idea of the Conservative party, and inwhich the compound housekeeper will occupy as prominent a position asthe compound householder ever could have done. Nobody, however, has asyet absolutely asserted, we do not say the equality, for equality is aninvidious term, but the indifference of the sexes. And this being so, itis strange that a proverb should be retained which is so opposed toevery notion that passes current in the world. 

As the legislation of the world has hitherto been uniformly in the handsof men, it is not astonishing that it has always proceeded on theassumption of the absolute dependence of the weaker upon the strongersex. Several thousand years of intellectual and political supremacy musthave altered the type imperceptibly, and made the difference between theordinary run of men and women far more marked than nature intended itoriginally to be. All theology, whether Christian or pagan, has been inthe habit of representing woman as designed chiefly to be a sort ofornament and appendage to man; and the allegory of the creation of Eve, though Oriental in its tone, does nevertheless correspond to a vaguefeeling among even civilized nations that woman's mission is to fill upa gap in man's daily life. 

Nor are they merely the opinions and laws of the world which havemoulded themselves on this basis. The whole imagination of the race hasbeen fed upon the notion, until the relations between the two sexes havebecome the one thing on which fancy, sentiment, and hope are taught fromchildhood to dwell. It is not an extravagant inference to suppose thatcenturies of this imaginative and sentimental habit have ended byaffecting the brain and the physical nature of humanity. Man has becomea woman-caressing animal. The life of the two sexes is made to centreround the once fictitious, but now universal, idea that they cannotexist without one another. 

Goose and gander have lost their primitive conception of an individualand independent career, and are never happy unless they are permitted togo in pairs. Under less complex social conditions such interdependenceled to no very intolerable results. Men and women formed a sort ofconvenient partnership, each contributing their quota of dailyconveniences to the common fund. The chief protected his squaw--or, ifhe was a patriarch, his squaws--while the squaws ministered to hispleasures, cooked his food, milked--if Mr. Max Müller's idea of theSanscrit is correct--his cows, and carried his babies on their backs. The husband found the venison and the maize, while his wife dressed itand helped to eat it. This mutual arrangement had at any rate theadvantage of being accommodated to the physical differences of strengthbetween the two halves of society. 

A little tyranny is the natural consequence of an unequal distributionof physical strength in all rude and barbarous states, and it wasinevitable that woman should at such times have more than her share oflabor and of patience imposed upon her. But it is evident that, ascivilization has increased with the growth of population and ofindustrial interests, women no longer derive the same benefit from thesocial partnership as formerly. Some social philosophers stillmaintain, with M. Comte, that it is man's business to maintain woman, and to relieve her from the necessity of providing for her naturalwants. But this theory seems Utopian and impracticable when we try tothink of applying it to the world in which we live. Wealth is no longerdistributed with the least reference to industrious and sober habits. 

The principle of accumulation has been admitted, and social bodies haveencouraged and sanctioned it by allowing property to descend from onegeneration to another intact, the result of which is that the industryof the father is able to insure the perpetual idleness of his posterity. Large multitudes of poor producers are occupied in earning their ownnecessary sustenance, and cannot take on themselves without enormousdifficulty the burden of supporting womankind, a burden which the richerclasses scarcely feel. As by far the majority of women belong to theimpoverished and laborious class, it is obvious they must either enterthe labor-market themselves, or purchase support from the rich bysacrifices which are inconsistent with their personal dignity and themorality of the social body. As the imagination of humanity has beenlong since given up to sentiment and passion, it is only too clear thatthe more vicious alternative is the one oftenest embraced. Society, then, has come to this--that woman must still depend on man, while manno longer, except on his own terms, fulfills his part of the tacitbargain by maintaining woman. 

The first thing to be considered is what the public gains by keeping upthe sentimental notion about woman's mission. It is her business, mostof us think, to charm and to attract, partly in order that she may doman real good, and partly that she may add to the luxury, therefinement, and the happiness of life. With this view, society is verysolicitous to keep her at a distance from everything that may spoil ordestroy the bloom of her character and tastes. Few people go so far asto say that she ought not to work for her livelihood, if hercircumstances render the effort necessary and prudent. As a fact, we seeat once that such a proposition cannot be broadly supported, and thatany attempt to enforce it would lead to endless misery and mischief. Poor women, for example, must work hard, or else their children andthemselves will come to utter degradation. 

But though society abstains from committing itself to the doctrine ofthe enforced idleness of women, it takes refuge in a species of halfmeasure, and restricts, as far as it can, by its legislative enactmentsor its own social code, the labors which women are to perform to thenarrowest possible compass. A woman may work, but she must do nothingwhich is called unfeminine. She may get up linen, ply her needle, keepweaving-machines in motion, knit, sew, and in higher spheres in lifeteach music, French, and English grammar. She may be a governess, or asempstress, or even within certain limits may enter the literary marketand write books. This is the extreme boundary of her liberty, andsomewhere about this point society begins to draw a rigid line. 

It earnestly discourages her from commercial occupations, except underthe patronage of a husband who is to benefit by her exertions; she isnot to be a counting-house clerk, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a parson. The great active avocations, all those that lead either to fame orfortune, are monopolized by men. Strong-minded women occasionally borethe public by complaining of and protesting against such restrictions;but, on the whole, the public is satisfied that it is convenient thatthey should be upheld. If we look at the matter from the point of viewof the educated, or even the well-to-do classes, such a conclusion seemsso reasonable that most of us can hardly induce ourselves to doubt itscorrectness. Women do a certain tangible amount of good to the world bybeing kept as a luxury and exotic. The most energetic and rebellious ofthem may feel angry to be told so, but it is the truth that it suits menin general to keep up a kind of hothouse bloom upon the characters ofwomen. The society of soft, affectionate, unselfish creatures isdecidedly good for man. It elevates his nature, it gives him a belief inwhat is pure and genuine, it alleviates the dust and turmoil of a busycareer, and it enables him for so many hours of the day to refreshhimself with the company of a being who is in some things a mediævalsaint, and in some, a child. 

Whenever one contemplates the effect of more coarse experience of theworld, more knowledge, and more rough and hard work on such a nature, one is invariably tempted to acquiesce in the view that it is good forman to have her in the state she is. One feels disposed to object tonotions of female emancipation as profane. Education and science, thought and philosophy, like the winds of heaven, should never visit hercheek too roughly. The great thing is, to preserve in her that sort ofluxurious unworldliness which represents the religious and refinedelement in the household to which she belongs. And a hundred things maybe and have often been said about the advantage of making pure sentimentthe foundation of all the relations that obtain between her and man. 

As Plato thought, man elevates himself by elevating and sentimentalizinghis affections. All poetry and most literature is given up to thissentimentalizing or refining process. Nor can it be denied that theeffect is to increase very much the capacity of happiness in all peoplewho are born to be happy or to enjoy life. What would youth be withoutits imaginative emotions? We all know, and are taught to believe, thatit would be something much poorer than it is. 

There is another side to the picture, and it is as well to contemplateit seriously, before we make up our minds to treat with undisguisedcontempt all the vagaries of those who wish definitely to alter thesocial condition of women. At present women are beautiful and delicateadjuncts of life. As Prometheus said of horses, they are the ornamentsof wealth and luxury. They add perfume and refinement to existence. But, after all, it is an important question whether the conversion of womeninto this sort of drawing-room delicacy is not sacrificing the welfareof the many to the intellectual and social comfort of the few. 

The world pays a heavy price for having its imagination sentimentalized. One of the items in the bill is the disappointment of the thousandswhose sensibilities are never destined to be satisfied. For every womanwho marries happily, a large percentage never marry at all, or marry inhaste and repent at leisure. It remains to be proved that it is wise toteach and train the sex to fix all their views in life and to stake alltheir fortunes on the chance of the one rare thing--a lucky matrimonialchoice. If one could succeed in de-sentimentalizing society, one wouldtake from a few the chief pleasure of living, but it is far from certainthat the material welfare of the majority would not be proportionatelyincreased. Half-measures would of course be of very little use. 

It would be a poor exchange to take from women all their reserve andinnocence and refinement, without giving them free play in the world. They would be only coarse and wicked caricatures of what they are now. The change, to be tolerable, would have to be effectual and thorough. Itwould be necessary to change the whole current of their ideas, and thewhole view of man about them also; to persuade the human race to fix itsmind less on the difference of sexes, and to become less imaginativeupon the subject. If so sweeping an alteration could be completelyeffected, perhaps it might be worth while to consider whether woman'sabsolute independence would not strengthen her character, and addpermanently to the world's natural wealth. 

One thing is certain, that if woman is to continue for ever in herpresent condition, the moral and social condition of large numbers ofhuman beings must remain hopeless. Their future appears dreary in theextreme. It is Utopian to expect that men and women will grow less andless self-indulgent, so long as the education they undergo from theirearliest years renders them prone to every species of temptation. Thereare some things which make social philosophers hopeful and confident, but no social philosopher can ever do anything but despair of realprogress if he is to take for granted that women are always to play thepart in life which they at present play. The emancipation of the gooseis an experiment, but it is not surprising that many enthusiasts shouldbelieve it to be an experiment well deserving of a trial. 

ENGAGEMENTS. 

A great writer has pathetically described the last days of a man undersentence of death. He has found appropriate expression for every phaseof the protracted agony with characteristic richness and variety oflanguage; we are made to taste each drop in the bitter cup--the remorseand the awful expectation, and the desperate clinging to deceitfulstraws of hope. Indeed it scarcely requires the eloquence of afirst-rate writer to impress upon us the fact that it is very unpleasantto expect to be hanged. Every man's imagination is sufficient to realizesome of the unpleasant consequences of such a state of mind; for thoughthe number of persons who have encountered this particular experience isinconsiderable, most of us have gone through something more or lessanalogous--we have been significantly told to wait after school, or havepaid visits to dentists, or have been candidates at competitiveexaminations, or have been engaged to be married. These and many othersituations, though varying in the intrinsic pain or pleasure of theanticipated event, have thus much in common, that they are all states ofabnormal suspense. The nerves are kept in a state of equal tension bythe uncomfortable feeling that we are in for it, whatever the "it" mayturn out to be. 

The first impression is simple; it resembles that felt by a man who hasjust slipped upon the side of a mountain, and knows that he isinevitably going to the bottom. He has not time to think whether he willfall upon snow or rocks, whether he will have merely a pleasant slide orbe dashed into a thousand fragments; he does not make up his mind to beheroic or to be frightened; the one thought that flashes across his mindis that here at last is the situation which he has so often feeblypictured to himself; he will know all about it before he has time toreflect upon its pains or pleasures. People who have escaped drowningsometimes assert that they have remembered their whole lives in a fewinstants, though it does not quite appear how they can remember thatthey remembered the series of incidents without remembering theincidents themselves. But, so far as we have been able to collectevidence, the general rule in any sudden catastrophe is that which wehave described. There is nothing but a dazzling flash of surprise, whichalmost excludes any decided judgment as to the painfulness or otherwiseof the situation. 

If, then, we may venture to conjecture the frame of mind in which a ladyor gentleman first enters upon an engagement, we should say that it wasthis sense of startled suspense. They feel as Guy Faux would have feltafter lighting the train of gunpowder--that they have done somethingwhich they may probably never repeat in their lifetime, and every otheremotion will be for the moment absorbed. But as engagements aregenerally more protracted than most of the critical situations we havementioned, the surprise dies away, and the victims have time to lookabout them, and analyze more closely the emotions produced by theirposition. To do any justice to the complicated and varying frame of mindinto which even an average lover may be thrown in the course of a fewweeks would of course require the pen, not of men, but of angels. Itwould involve a condensation of a large fraction of all the poetry thathas been written in the world, and no small part of the cynicalcriticism by which it has been opposed. But, taking for granted the massof commonplaces which has been accumulated in the course of centuries, there are a few special modifications of the position under our presentsocial arrangements which are more fitted for remark. The state of mindknown as being in love is confined to no particular race or period, butthe position of the engaged persons may vary indefinitely. In a goodsimple state of society, the gentleman pays down his money or his sheepor his oxen, and takes away the lady without any superfluous sentiment. Even in more civilized states, a marriage may be substantially a bargaincarried out in a business-like spirit. However unsatisfactory such amode of proceeding may be from certain points of view, it is at any rateintelligible; all parties to the contract understand their relativepositions, and have a plain line of conduct traced for them. 

But in a modern English engagement the form is necessarily different, even when the substance of the arrangement is identical. For once inhis experience a man feels called upon to accept that view of life forwhich novelists are unjustly condemned. We say unjustly, for it isinevitable that a novelist should frequently represent marriage as beingthe one great crisis of a man's history. It is not his function to givea complete theory of life, but to describe such scenes as are mostinteresting and most dramatic. He is quite justified in often writing asthough two lovers should really think about nothing under heaven excepttheir chances of union, and should be dismissed, when the happy eventhas once taken place, in a certainty of living very happily everafterwards. He has no concern with the lover's briefs or sermons oroperations on the Stock Exchange, which may really take up by far thegreater part of the man's waking thoughts; and it would spoil the unityof his work if he were to dwell upon them proportionately. It would beas absurd to mistake the novelist's views for a complete one as tocondemn it because it is incomplete. In novels which depend, asninety-nine out of a hundred must depend, upon a love story, theimportance of marriage, or at least the degree in which it occupies thethoughts of the characters, will necessarily be overstated. The engagedpersons, however, find that, in the eyes of their friends, if not intheir own, they are temporarily accepting the novelist's ideal. For thetime they are considered exclusively as persons about to marry, and alltheir other relations in life retire into the background. 

The difficulty of the position depends upon the extent to which thisconventional assumption diverges from the true facts of the case. Thelady, for example, suffers less than the gentleman, because, in spite ofDr. Mary Walker and other martyrs to the cause of woman's rights, it isstill true that marriage fills a larger space in her life than in thatof the other sex. She can take up the character with a certain triumph, as of one who has more or less fulfilled her mission and passed from theranks of the aspirants to those of the successful candidates formatrimony. At any rate, even if she takes a loftier view of feminineduties, there is nothing ridiculous about her position. She may busyherself about trousseaux or wedding-dresses or marriage-presents, withperfect satisfaction to herself and to the envy of her female friends. But her unfortunate accomplice, especially if he is of mature age, is ina far more uncomfortable position. 

Few men who have become immersed in any profession or business can actthe character without an unpleasantly strong sense of being in a falseposition. There is nothing indeed intrinsically ludicrous about it; thechances are that the lover is doing a very sensible thing, and that hiswisest friends approve of his conduct. Still it is undeniable that hemoves about, to his own apprehension at least, in a universal atmosphereof ridicule. He feels that he is really a quiet hard-working young man, full of law it may be, or of plans for improving his parish, or ofParliamentary notices of motion. He can talk about his own topics withinterest and intelligence, and may possibly be an authority in a smallway. He is quite conscious, too, that there are many sides to hischaracter which do not come out in his ordinary every-day business. Unluckily that is just the fact which his friends are apt to ignore. 

We soon learn to associate our acquaintance with the positions in whichwe have been accustomed to see them, and forget that they may havesentiments and faculties of which we know nothing. Consequently anengagement seems to imply an entire metamorphosis. Our friend, or hisimage in our minds, was a comparatively simple compound of two or threecharacters at most; whereas men generally have a far more complexorganization. In business hours, perhaps, he was simply a machine forgrinding out law, and at other times a lively talker and a goodwhist-player. No process of transmutation will convert either of thoseinto the conventional lover, who can think of nothing but the object ofhis affections; the apparent incongruity is too violent not to produce asense of the ludicrous; and our friend is bound in decency to make it asviolent as possible. From which it follows that we laugh, and that heknows that we are laughing, at him. Intensely awkward congratulationsare exchanged, according to two or three formulas which have been handeddown from distant generations. If the congratulator is a married man, hehopes that his friend may enjoy as much happiness as he has foundhimself in the married state; if a bachelor, he assures him that, although unable hitherto to act up to his principles, he has alwaysthought marriage the right thing. There are persons who can repeat oneof these common forms with all the air of making an originalobservation, as there are men who can begin an oration by asserting thatthey are unaccustomed to public speaking; but, as a rule, it is said insuch a way as to imply that the speaker, whilst admitting the absurdityof connecting the ideas of his friend and marriage, is willing to paythe necessary compliments, if he may do it as cheaply as possible. 

In short, until a man is engaged to be married, he scarcely knows hownarrow a view his friends take of his character, and how easily they areamused at what is after all rather a commonplace proceeding. When hisown friends look upon him so distinctly in the light of a joke, he ofcourse cannot expect much quarter from the friends of the lady. He has apainful impression that he is coming out in a part for which he has hadno practice, under the eyes of hostile critics. Every man thinks it onlydue to himself to criticise a friend's new purchases of horses orpictures or wines; if he did not find fault with them he would miss anopportunity of establishing his superior acumen. And of course theprinciple extends to lovers. There is probably a narrow circle who arebound officially to approve; but the unfortunate victim feels that, outside of it, every acquaintance of the lady will take pleasure in akeen observation of his defects, and he trembles accordingly. It is said(rather unfairly, perhaps) that shyness is a form of conceit; but theleast self-conscious of mankind can hardly fail to feel uncomfortablewhen he is called upon to perform such a highflown part under so severea scrutiny. 

Of course the torment is far greater in the case of a middle-agedprofessional gentleman, who is habitually employed upon some incongruouswork, than to a youth in whom any sort of folly is graceful; but therecan be few persons to whom the position is not to a certain extentirksome. When a man is married, or when he is a bachelor, he is allowedto be a rational being, taking rational views of life. He feels itrather hard that in the interval society insists upon his being in astate of temporary insanity, and then laughs at him because it doesn'tlook natural. He begins to long even for that climax of misery when, ifthe custom be not already dead, he will have to commit one of the mostabsurd actions of which a human being can be guilty--namely, making aspeech in the morning, at an anomalous and dreary meal, exactly when hisshamefacedness is at its highest pitch. That so many people surviveengagements without any perceptible sourness of temper is some proof ofthe goodness of human nature, or of the fact that there arecompensations in the state of being in love which go to neutralize thediscomfort of being engaged. 

WOMAN IN ORDERS. 

There is, no doubt, something extremely flattering to our insularconceit in the mystery which hangs about the institutions which we prizeas specially national. We feel that a Briton is still equal to threeFrenchmen, so long as the three Frenchmen confess with a shrug that theBriton is wholly unintelligible. The blunders of Dr. Döllinger, thebaffled wonderment with which every foreigner retires from the study ofit, only endear to us the more the Church of England. This was perhapsthe reason, besides the inherent marvel of the matter, why we passed solightly over M. Esquiroz and his late ecclesiastical researches. It washumiliating to English pride to have to confess that a Frenchman hadunveiled to the world of Paris the hitherto sacred mysteries of theperpetual curate and of the tithe rent-charge. 

The enemy was clearly at the gates of the central fortress of Britishinsularism; even an American bishop was tempted to strive to understandWestminster Abbey; and a dismal rumor prevailed that nothing hinderedthe Ecclesiastical Commissioners from revealing the nature and purposeof their existence but the fact that, after prolonged inquiry, theyfound it impossible to understand them themselves. It was time, we felt, to abandon these mere outposts of the unintelligible to the aggressionsof an impertinent curiosity, and to retire to the citadel. There, happily, we are safe. Even the unhallowed inquisitiveness of M. Esquirozrecoils baffled from the parson's wife. Disdainful of all artificialadjuncts of mystery, to all appearance a woman like other women, packingher little sick-baskets, balancing the coal-club accounts, teaching inher Sunday-school, the centre of religion, of charity, and oftittle-tattle, woman in orders fronts calmly the inquirer, a beingfearfully and wonderfully English, unknowable and unknown. 

No one who saw for the first time the calm, colorless serenity of theparson's wife would discover in her existence the result of a life-longdisappointment. But the parson on whose arm she leans commonlyrepresents to his spouse simply the descent from the ideal to the real, the step from the sublime to the prosaic, if not the ridiculous. Therewas a moment in her life when the vestry-door closed upon a world ofhallowed wonder, when the being who appeared in white robes, "mystic, wonderful, " was a being not as other men are, a being whose hours werespent in study, in meditation, in charity, a being of beautiful sermonsand spotless neckties. The flirtation with him, so impatiently longedfor, was not as other men's flirtations; there was a tinge of sacrednessabout his very frivolity, and a soft touch of piety in his sentiment. Toshare such a life, to commune hourly with a spirit so semi-angelic, seemed an almost religious ambition. The spirit of a Crusader, half-heaven, half-earth, fired the gentle breast of the besieger tillJerusalem was won. 

Then came the hour of disenchantment. The mysterious object ofadoration, seen on his own hearth-rug, melted into the mass of men. Thespiritual idealist was cross over an ill-cooked dinner, and ascommonplace at breakfast as his _Times_. The discourses, so latelyutterances from heaven, dwindled into copies or compilations from otherheavenly utterers. The life of a Lady Bountiful turned out a dullroutine of mothers' meetings and Sunday-schools. The ideal poor, grateful and resigned, proved cross and greedy old harridans. The worldof peace, of nobleness, of serenity, died into a parish of bustle andscandal and worry. Out of this wreck of hope arises the parson's wife. Disillusionment is her ordination for a clerical position none the lessreal that it is without parallel in the ecclesiastical history of theworld. 

She takes her part with all the decision of genius. Her first step is torestore the Temple she has broken down, to set up again the Dagon wholies across the threshold. If not for herself, at any rate for the worldand for her children, she re-creates the priest she once dreamt of inthe commonplace parson whom she has actually wedded. Conscious as she isof the inner nature of the idling apartment where he lounges through themorning, she impresses on the household the necessity of quiet while itsmaster is in his "study. " By the daily addition of skillful but minutetouches, she paints him to the world as an ideal of piety and oflearning. She takes bills and letters off his hands, that his mind maynot be disturbed from more serious subjects. She enforces a sacredsilence throughout the house during the solemn hours while the sermon isbeing compiled. She sews the sacred sheets together, and listens whilethe discourse is recited for her approval. She listens again with aninterest as fresh as ever when it is preached. She marks the text in herBible, and sees that the children mark it too. 

As the first subject of his theological realm, she sets an example whichother subjects are to follow. They, like her, mingle their contempt forthe parson's business abilities and voluble talk with a hushed reverencefor his esoteric knowledge of subjects inaccessible to common men. They, like her, manage to combine a perfect readiness to snub him and hisopinions on all earthly topics, with an equal readiness to listen tohim, as to a divine oracle, on the topics of grace and free-will. Insensibly the subtle distinction tells on the parson himself. He isconscious, perhaps pleasantly conscious, that he is seen through theglass of his wife, and seen therefore darkly. He retires within thedomestic veil. He learns to avoid common subjects--subjects, that is, where the world holds itself at liberty to criticise him. He retires tofields where he is above criticism. He believes at last in the vamped-upsermons in which his wife persists in believing. He accepts the positionof an oracle on sacred topics which his wife has made for him. In aword, the parson's wife has created the British parson. 

It is hard to say how far the creator believes in her own creation. Inpersuading others, she probably succeeds to a great extent in persuadingherself. At any rate she accepts willingly enough the consequences of aposition which leaves her the master of the parish. In the bulk of casesthe parson is simply the Mikado, the nominal ruler, lapped in soft ease, and exempt from the worry of the world about him. Woman is the parochialTycoon, the constitutional premier who does not rule, but governs. Sheis the hidden centre and force of the whole parochial machinery--theorganist, the chief tract distributor, the president of the Dorcassociety, the despot of the penny bank and the coal-club, the head of thesewing-class, the supervisor of district-visitors, the universal refereeas to the character of mendicant Joneses and Browns. In other words, theparson's wife has revived an Apostolic Order which but for her wouldhave died away; she has restored the primitive Diaconate. 

Woman is the true parochial deacon, and not the bashful young gentlemanfresh from Oxford, who wears his stole over one shoulder rather thanover two. It is the parson's wife who "serves tables" nowadays; and theresults on parochial activity are in some ways remarkable enough. In thefirst place, men are fairly driven from the field. If a layman wishes tohelp in a parish he finds himself lost in a world of women. It is onlythose semi-clerical beings who seem to unite with a singular grace allthe weaknesses of both the sexes who persist in the attempt. Then, too, all the ideas of the parochial world become feminine; the parish buzzeswith woman's hatred of the Poor-laws, and contempt for economicprinciples and hard-hearted statisticians. 

Mendicancy flies from the workhouse and the stone-yard to entrenchitself against Guardians and relieving-officers among the soup-kitchensand the coal-tickets of feminine almsgiving. The parson, after a faintprotest of common sense, surrenders at discretion, and flings allexperience to the winds. One wife turns her husband into a fount ofbegging letters. Another forces him to set up manufactories for all thelucifer-match girls of the parish. Woman's imaginativeness, woman'sfancy, woman's indifference to fact exhausts itself in "sensationalcases, " and revels in starvation and death. But we must turn to abrighter side of her activity. Ritualism is the great modern result ofthe parson's wife, though, with a base ingratitude to the rock fromwhich they were hewn, Ritualists hoist the standard of clericalcelibacy. Woman has long since made her parson; now (as of old with herdoll) her pleasure is to dress him. A new religious atmosphere surroundsher life when the very work of her hands becomes hallowed in itspurpose. The old crotchet and insertion--we use words to us moremysterious than intelligible--become flat, stale, and unprofitable bythe side of the book-marker and the colored stole; and a flutter ofexcitement stirs even the stillness of a life which is sometimesoffensively still at the sight of the new chasuble with "aunt's reallace, you know, dear, " sewn about it. 

However gray an existence may be, and the tones of a life like this arenaturally subdued, it still cherishes within a warmth and poetry of itsown; and the poetry of the parson's wife breaks out in vestments anddecorations. Nothing brings out more vividly the fact that Mrs. Proudie_is_ the Church of England than that her reaction against the prose ofexistence is shaking--so the Protestant Alliance tells us--the Church ofEngland to its foundations. The real disturber of the Church peace, thereal assertor of Catholic principles, or (for those who prefer a middlephrase to either of these contending statements) the real defendant inthe Court of Arches, is not Mr. Mackonochie, but the parson's wife. 

Mrs. Proudie, we repeat, is the Church of England; but if it isdifficult to estimate the results of her position upon the spouse of herbosom and the parish which she rules, it is still harder to estimate itsresults upon herself. Her outer manner seems, indeed, to reflect what wehave ventured to call the gray tones of her life, and a certainweariness of routine breaks out even in the mechanical precision of herexistence. Power, in the parochial as in the domestic circle, is boughtby her at the cost of a perpetual self-abnegation, and it is a littlehard to be always hiding the hand that pulls the strings. We may excusea little forgetfulness in a wife when her daily sacrifice is whollyforgotten in the silver teapot and the emblazoned memorial whichproclaim the borrowed glories of her spouse. 

Sometimes there may be a little justification for the complaint of theBritish priestess that the priest alone should be crowned with laurel. But, if she is ecclesiastically forgotten, it must be remembered thather position receives a shy and timid recognition from society. She iscredited with a quasi-clerical character, and regarded as havingreceived a sort of semi-ordination. The Church, indeed, assigns her noparochial precedence; but public opinion, if it sets her beneath herhusband, places her above all other ecclesiastical agencies. Tacitly sheis allowed to have the right to speak of "_our_ curates. " Then, again, society assigns her a sort of mediatorial position between the Churchand the world; she is the point of transition between the clergy andtheir flocks. It is through her that the incense of congregationalflattery is suffered to mount up to the idol who may not personallyinhale it; and it is through her that the parson can intimate hisopinion, and scatter his hints on a number of social subjects tootrivial for his personal intervention. 

It is impossible, indeed, to express in words the delicate shades of hersocial position, or, what is yet more remarkable, the relation to hersister-world of woman. There can be no doubt that, taken all in all, women are a little proud of the parson's wife. She is, as it were, thetithe of their sex, taken and consecrated for the rest. The dignity ofher position in close proximity to the very priesthood itself extends, by the subtle gradation of sisters of mercy, district-visitors, andtract-distributors, to women in the mass. Her influence is a quietprotest against the injustice of the present religions of the world inexcluding woman from those ministerial functions with which Paganisminvested her. It is an odd transition from the quiet parson's wife tothe priestess of Delphi; but while the parson's wife exists there is atany rate a persistence in the claim of woman's right to resume hertripod again. 

It is the quiet consciousness of this, of her spiritual headship of hersex, of her mystic and unexpressed but real ecclesiastical position, quite as much as the weariness of her daily routine, which displaysitself in the bearing of the parson's wife. She is not quite as otherwomen are, any more than he is as other men. Her dress is--at any rate, in theory it ought to be--a shade quieter, her bonnets a little lessmodern, her manner a trifle more reserved, her mirth hardly asunrestrained as those of the rest of her sex. Her talk, without beingclerical, takes a quiet clerical tinge. She has her little scandal aboutthe archdeacon and her womanly abhorrence of that horrid Colenso. Sheknows Early English from Middle Pointed, and interprets Ritualisticphrases into intelligible vocables. Like the curate, she dances only infamily circles, and then dances after a discreet and ecclesiasticalsort. She has no objection to cards, but she plays only for love. Shesings solos from the _Messiah_ and _St. Paul_. 

An existence simple, kindly enough in its way, penetrating society nodoubt with a thousand good influences, but yet, we must own, hardly veryinteresting to the priestess who lives it. Altogether, when we getbeyond the purple and gold of our rulers, we congratulate ourselves onbeing free from the tedium and weariness and perpetual self-restraint oftheir lofty position. And even the curate who has lately raised hisfaint protest against what he calls "feminine domination" may rememberin charity that while croquet and flirtation remain to him, hisexistence, slavery though he deem it, is a slavery far freer, blither, and more lively than that of the curate's wife. 

WOMAN AND HER CRITICS. 

We men boast, as Homer said, to be braver than our fathers; but, as asort of compensation, our women are far more sensitive than theirgrandmothers. Phyllis has ceased to laugh at Mr. Spectator's criticismson her fan and her patches; but then it may be doubted whether Phyllisever did laugh very heartily at Mr. Spectator. Women have run throughall the list of moral and intellectual qualities in their time, but wedo not remember an instance of a really humorous woman. Witty womenthere have been, and no doubt are still in plenty, but the world hasstill to welcome its feminine Addison. 

The higher a man's nature, the keener seems his enjoyment of his ownirony and mockery of his own foibles; but did any woman ever seriouslysit down to write a "Roundabout Paper?" Women, we are generally told, are "especially self-conscious;" in fact, the whole theory of women, philosophically stated, from the shyness of the miss in her 'teens tothe audacious flirtation of a heroine of the season, rests wholly on theassumed basis of "self-consciousness. " But it is self-consciousness of avery peculiar and feminine sort--a consciousness, not of themselves inthemselves, but of the reflection of themselves, in others, of theimpression they make on the world around. Woman, we suspect, livesalways before her glass, and makes a mirror of existence. But fordownright self-analysis, we repeat, she has little or no taste. A femaleMontaigne, a female Thackeray, would be a sheer impossibility. 

We have been led, as the _Spectator_ would have said, into thesereflections by the chorus of shrill indignation with which the world ofwoman encounters the slightest comment of extraneous critics. The censoris at once told flatly that he knows nothing of woman. He is a bachelor, he is blighted in love, he is envious, spiteful; he is blind, deaf, dumb. All this goes without saying, as the French have it, but he iscertainly ignorant. The truth is, it is woman who knows nothing ofherself. It is only self-analysis which reveals to us our inneranomalies, our ridiculous self-contrasts; it is humor which recognisesand amuses itself with their existence. But it is just the absence ofthis sense of anomaly in her nature or her life that is the charm ofwoman. 

Christmas has been bringing us, among its other festivities, a few ofthose delightful amusements called private theatricals; and in privatetheatricals all are agreed with Becky Sharpe, that woman reigns supreme. We were present the other day at an entertaining little comedy of thiskind, where the whole interest of the piece was absorbed by afascinating widow and an intriguing attorney, and where both these partswere sustained with singular ability and success. The amateur who playedthe lawyer seized the general idea of his _rôle_ with perfect accuracy;in four minutes it was admirably rendered to his audience, but in fourminutes it was exhausted. The preliminary cough, the constant angularityof attitude in the midst of perpetual fidget, the indicative finger fromwhich the legal remarks seemed to pop off as from a pocket-pistol, weregrasped at once, and remained unvaried, undeveloped to the close. Thevery ability with which the actor rendered the inner unity of legalexistence, the very fidelity with which he represented the lawyer as aclass, denied to him the subtle charm of the only unity which life as arepresentation exhibits--the charm of a unity of outer impressionarising out of perpetual inner variety. 

His feminine rival won her laurels just because she made no attempt tograsp any general idea at all, but abandoned herself freely to thephases of the character as it encountered the various other charactersof the piece. Whether as the frivolous widow or the daring coquette, asthe practical woman of business or the unprotected female, as the flirtin her wildest extravagance or the wife in her most melting moods, sheaimed at no artistic unity beyond the general unity of sex. She remainedsimply woman, and all this prodigious versatility was, as the audienceobserved, "so charmingly natural, " just because it is woman's life. "Onthe stage, " if we may venture to apply the lines about Garrick:--

 On the stage she is natural, simple, affecting-- It is only that when she is off she is acting. 

In actual fact she is acting whether off the boards or on, but the mereexistence in outer impressions, in the unity of a constant admiration, which critics applaud as natural on the stage, they are unreasonablyhard upon in general society. 

A man on the boards is doing an unusual and exceptional thing, and as arule the very effort he makes to do it only enhances his failure; but awoman on the boards is only doing, under very favorable circumstances, what she does every day with less notice and applause. There can be nowonder if she is "charmingly natural, " but this naturalness depends, aswe have seen, on the entire absence of what in men is calledself-consciousness--that is, the sense of anomaly. When a critic thenventures to open this inner existence, and to give woman a peep atherself, we cannot be astonished at the scream of indignation whichgreets his efforts. But we may be permitted to repeat that the screamproves, not that he knows nothing of woman, but that woman knows nothingof herself. 

We are afraid, however, that all this feminine resentment points to aradical defect in the mind of woman, which she is alternately proud toacknowledge and resolute to deny. Frenchmen of the Thiers sort have atrick to which they give the amusing name of logic; they present theirreader with a couple of alternatives which they assert divide theuniverse, and bid you choose "of these two one. " But any ordinary womanpresents to the observer a hundred distinct alternatives, and defies himto choose any one in particular. There is no special reason, then, forastonishment at the coolness with which she sets herself up one momentas a "deductive creature, " as one who attains the highest flights ofknowledge by intuition rather than by reason, and the next poses herselfas the one specially rational being in her household, and waitspatiently till her husband is reasonable too. 

We are sometimes afraid that neither one nor the other of these theorieswill hold water, and feel inclined to agree with one of the mostbrilliant of her sex that, if woman loves with her head, she thinks withher heart. As a rule, certainly, she judges through her affections. Shedoes not praise nor blame; she loves or hates. The one thing she cannotunderstand is a purely intellectual criticism, the sort of morbidanatomy of the mind which treats its subject as a mere dead thing simplyuseful for demonstration. Very naturally, she attributes the same spiritof affectional intelligence to her critics as to herself; and when theyunravel a few of her inconsistencies, amuse themselves with a fewfollies, or even venture to point out a few faults, she brands them as"hating" or "despising" woman. Point, too, is given to the charge by thefact that these affections through which she lives are from their verynature incapable of dealing with qualities, and naturally transform theminto persons. A woman does not love her lover's courage or truth orhonor; she loves her lover. If she prizes his qualities at all it issimply because they are inherent in him, and so she gives herself verylittle trouble to distinguish between his bad qualities and his goodones. She considers herself bound to defend his characteristics in themass, and if she seem to give up his extravagance or his rakishness, itis only with a secret determination that this concession to the worldshall be balanced by an increase of adoration at home. 

As she deals with mankind, so she expects mankind, and especially themankind of criticism, to deal with her. It is in vain that her censorreplies that he only blamed her bonnet-strings or attacked the color ofher shoe-tie. Woman's answer is that he has attacked woman. This folly, that absurdity, are in woman's mind herself, and their assailant is herown personal antagonist. "Love me all in all or not at all" is a woman'ssong, not in Mr. Tennyson's _Idyl_ only, but all the world over. Thediscriminating admiration, the constitutional obedience which stillclaims to preserve a certain reticence and caution in its loyalty, aremore alien to woman's feelings than the refusal of all worship, allobedience whatever. "Picking her to pieces" is the phrase in which shedescribes the critical process against which she revolts, and it is aphrase which, in a woman's mouth, is the prelude to the bitterestwarfare. 

There is a more amiable, if a hardly more intelligent, trait in woman'scharacter which renders her singularly averse to all criticism. Men canhardly be described as loyal to men. Whether it be their exaggeratedself-esteem, their individuality, or their reason, it is certain thatthey do not imagine the honor of their sex to be concerned in theconduct of each particular member of it. The lawyer laughs over alittle gentle fun when it is poked at his neighbor the vicar, and theparson has his amusement out of the exposure of the foibles of hisfriend the attorney. What they never dream of is the flinging over eachother's defects the general cloak of manhood, and rallying at everysmile of criticism under the general banner of the sex. 

But woman, in front of the enemy, piques herself on her _solidarité_. Flirt or prude, prim or gay, foolish or wise, woman, once criticised, cries to her sisters, and is recognised and defended as woman. Allfeminine comment, all internal censure, is hushed before the foe. Thetittle-tattle of the gossips, the social intrigues of the dowager, areadopted as frankly as the self-devotion of a Miss Nightingale. The doorof refuge is flung open as widely for the foolish virgins as for thewise. All distinctions of age, of conduct, of intelligence, of rank areannihilated or forgotten in the presence of the enemy. Every fault is tobe defended, every weakness to be held stoutly against his attacks. "Nosurrender" is the order of the day. It is only when the criticism of theouter world withdraws that woman's internal criticism recommences. Thisis, indeed, half the offence of outer assailants, that they suspend andinjure the working of that inner discipline which woman exerts overwoman. Mrs. Proudie, it has been said, is the Church. 

Women certainly present the only analogy in the present day to thatclaim of internal jurisdiction for which the Church struggled sogallantly in the middle ages. No one who sees the serried ranks withwhich she encounters all investigation from without would imagine theseverity with which she administers justice within. Like the WestphalianVehm-gericht, the mystery of feminine courts is only equalled by theirterrible sentences. Mrs. Grundy on the seat of justice is a Rhadamanthusto whom criticism may fairly leave an erring sister. But all this innowise weakens the firmness of woman's attitude before an outer foe. Sheclaims absolute right to all hanging, drawing, and quartering on herdomains. Like a feudal baron, she will yield to no man her stocks andher gallows. But to judge from the prim front of her squares, thecordial grasp of hand-in-hand with which they form to resist allmasculine charges, no one would imagine the ruthless severity with whichwoman was breaking some poor drummer-boy inside. 

We are bound, however, to add, that in all our remarks we have only beennibbling at the outer rind of a great difficulty. Woman hascharacteristically fallen back on a grand principle, and has assertedher absolute immunity from all criticism whatever. It is not merely thatthis critic is deaf or that critic malignant, that one censor isignorant and another basely envious of woman. All this special pleadingis totally flung aside, and the defence stands on a basis of the mostuncompromising sort. No man, it is asserted, can judge woman, because noman can understand her. She is the Sphinx of modern investigation, andman is not fated to be her OEdipus. We can conceive of fewannouncements more welcome, if it be only true. 

In an age when everything seems pretty well discovered, when one cannotpreserve even a shred of mystery to cloak the bareness of one's life, when the very surface of the globe is all mapped out, and the mysteriousgriffins of untraversed deserts are vanishing from the map, it is anamazing relief to know that an unsolved, nay more, that an insoluble, mystery is standing on one's very hearth-rug. No wonder greatphilosophers have spent their lives in vain in looking for the riddle ofexistence, when they never dreamt of looking for it at home. Why womanis so peculiarly mysterious, why the laws of her nature are so speciallyunintelligible to a common world, we have not yet been informed. What isasserted is simply the fact of this mystery, and before that great factcriticism retires. 

All that remains for it is to pray and to wait, to hope for a revelationfrom within, since it is forbidden any exploration from without. Someprophetess, no doubt a veiled prophetess herself, will arise to lift theveil of her sex. Woman, let us hope, will at last unriddle woman. Smitby the sunbeams, or rather by the moonbeams, of self-discovery, theSphinx of modern times will reveal in weird and superhuman music themystery of her existence. 

MISTRESS AND MAID ON DRESS AND UNDRESS. 

No one with a soul to appreciate the extra-judicial utterances of Mr. Samuel Warren can have forgotten the memorable lament over the declineand fall of the fine old English maid-servant with which, some yearsago, he introduced some cases of petty larceny to the notice of thegrand-jurors of Hull. The alarm sounded with such touching eloquencefrom the judgment-seat was taken up last autumn, if we remember, by avenerable Countess, who, in an address to an assemblage of Cumbrianlasses, aspirants to the kitchen and the dairy, took occasion to readthem a lecture on the duty of dressing with the simplicity befittingtheir station. Both the learned Recorder and the venerable Countess wereanimated by the best intentions. Their advice was excellent, and wesincerely trust that it may have induced the neat-handed Phyllis of theNorth to curb her immoderate taste for finery. These sporadic warningsseem likely to ripen at last into action. 

From a letter lately inserted in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, we learn thata "Clergyman's Wife" has long been brooding in silent indignation over"the present disgraceful style of dress among female servants. " Herdisgust finds vent in a manifesto to the mistresses of Great Britain, in which, after painting the evil in the darkest possible colors, sheends by suggesting a remedy for it. Dress, we are told, among "the lowerorders of females, " has arrived at a pitch which has wholly changed theaspect and character of our towns and country villages. Neitherpreachers nor good books can avail to stop it. Bad women are fearfullyincreased in number, good wives and mothers are getting rare. Inconsequence of the reckless expenditure of women upon their dress, husbands become drunkards, and murder too commonly follows. The remedyfor this terrible state of things is to be found in the following"proposition:"--The ladies of England are to form an association, pledging themselves to adopt, each family for themselves, a uniform fortheir female servants, and to admit none into their service who refuseto wear it. 

The uniform is not to be old-fashioned or disfiguring, but merely neat, simple, and consequently becoming. The following ornaments are to beabsolutely prohibited--"feathers, flowers, brooches, buckles or clasps, earrings, lockets, neck-ribbons and velvets, kid-gloves, parasols, sashes, jackets, Garibaldis, all trimming on dresses, crinoline, orsteel of any kind. " No dress to touch the ground. No pads, frisettes, nochignons, no hair-ribbons. Having swept away by a stroke of the pen allthis mass of finery, a "Clergyman's Wife" goes on to make some"suggestions, " which we quote for the edification of our lady readers:--

"Morning dress: Lilac print, calico apron, linen collar. Afternoondress: Some lighter print, muslin apron, linen collar and cuffs. Sundays: a neat alpaca dress, linen collar and cuffs, or frill tackedinto the neck of the dress, a black apron, a black shawl, a medium strawbonnet with ribbons and strings of the same color, a bow of the sameinside, and a slight cap across the forehead, thread or cotton gloves, asmall cotton or alpaca umbrella to keep off sun and rain. The winterSunday dress: Linsey dress, shepherd's plaid shawl, black straw bonnet. A plain brown or black turndown straw hat with a rosette of the samecolor, and fastened on with elastic, should be possessed by all servantsfor common use, and is indispensable for nursemaids walking out withchildren. Should servants be in mourning, the same neat style must beobserved--no bugles, or beads, or crape flowers allowed. "

The first thing that strikes us in connection with this glib project isthe enormous difficulty of carrying it into execution. It is easy, weall know, to call spirits from the vasty deep, but exceedingly difficultto induce them to obey the summons. It is easy, and to feminineingenuity rather pleasant than otherwise, to devise sumptuary laws forthe kitchen. But it is quite another thing to try to enforce them. Bywhat coercive machinery is Betsy Jane to be forced into the detesteduniform? We know how deeply the Anglo-Saxon mind resents any social"ticketing. " Does a "Clergyman's Wife" suppose that the Britishhousemaid is exempt from this little weakness common to her race? At anyrate, we are convinced that she would never subside into a "lilacprint" or a "neat alpaca" without a tremendous struggle. Her firstweapon of defence would infallibly be a strike. It is absurd to supposethat she would cling to her flowers and parasol with less tenacity thancabby to his right of running over people in the dark. 

Now, is a "Clergyman's Wife" prepared to face the consequences of such astrike? Is she ready for an indefinite time to cook her own dinner, mendher own dresses, dust her own rooms, manage her own nursery? What if thevengeance of the housemaid menaced by the imposition of a "calico apron"or a "medium straw bonnet" should assume a darker form, and a system ofdomestic "rattening" should spread terror through the tranquilparsonages of England? Is she prepared to brave the system ofintimidation by which a union of vindictive cooks and nursery-maidsmight assert their inherent rights to lockets and earrings? Has she thenerve to crush the secret plots of kitchen Fenianism? Ultimately, nodoubt, her efforts might be crowned with success. When that happy timearrived, when "her suggestions were generally adopted, " and the"requirements of ladies, especially those of fortune, were generallyknown" to comprise a uniform for the maid-servant, she might succeed inclosing the market of domestic service to the flaunting abigail whoseaudacious finery renders her to the outward eye indistinguishable fromher own daughters. 

But as that time would be long in coming, and probably would neverarrive in her lifetime, she would have to face the discomforts of along period of transition, during which she would have to rely onherself and her daughters for the discharge of the various operations ofthe household. Meantime we beg to suggest another way of effecting herpurpose quite as easy, and much more effectual. Why not go in for an Actof Parliament, having for its object the total suppression of theinstinct of vanity in the female bosom? Let it be enacted that, on andafter the 1st of next April (the date would be appropriate), feathers, flowers, and the other abominations which she seeks to proscribe, shallbe for ever abjured and disused by the fair sex. As the prelude to thatfull entry on her social and political rights which is nowadays claimedfor woman, a proposal of this magnitude would commend itself, no doubt, to the philosophic section of the House of Commons. 

There is another feature in the manifesto of a "Clergyman's Wife" whichcalls for observation. She lays particular stress on securing theadhesion to her plan of "families of wealth and distinction, " "ladies ofposition and fortune"--of the leaders of fashion, in short, whereverthose mysterious but potent decoy-ducks are to be found. Its successdepends on "making it fashionable to adopt the uniform, " on makingsimplicity of dress among maid-servants the sole avenue to the "bestsituations. " Now, as it is conceded that the "present disgraceful styleof dress among servant girls" is the result of their ambition to imitatetheir superiors, it is worth while, in order to estimate both the amountof their responsibility for the said disgrace and the chances ofsuccess of the proposed reform, to glance from the style of dress invogue in the kitchen to the style of dress in vogue in the drawing-room. 

Oddly enough, on the very day on which a "Clergyman's Wife" waspermitted to ventilate her project in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, thepublic was favored with the latest intelligence on this point, in thecolumns of a fashionable contemporary. Paris, we all know, is thesovereign arbiter of dress to all "ladies of position and fortune" inthis country, the center of an authority on all matters relating to thetoilette, which radiates, through "families of distinction and wealth, "to those calm retreats where clergymen's wives, in chastely severeattire, exchange hospitalities with their neighbors. What is thefashionable style of dress in Paris at the present moment? Thecorrespondent of our contemporary shall speak for himself. "We areliving, " he says, "in an age which seems to be reviving the classicalperiod in the history of drapery. You see pretty nearly as much of thefemale _torso_ now as the Athenians did when the bas-reliefs of theParthenon copied the modes of the Greeks so many hundred years ago, andwhen the multitude did not worship the drapery of the goddess only. "

After some piquant remarks on the style of dress in the theatres, hegoes on to inform us how "in the more refined and virtuous society" theladies are dressing this winter. "At a _fête_ graced by all that iselegant, refined, and aristocratic in Paris, " he observed the duchess, the countess, and the baroness imitating the costly toilettes of the_demi-monde_, arrayed like one of them precisely, in the very height offashion. We are favored with a minute account of one representativetoilette in the room:--

"The lady is of a noble Hungarian family, fair, with that dark brownreddish hair which is just going to begin to be golden, but never shinesout. Pale oval face, heavy eyebrows, bright bronze eyes. Small festoonsof hair over the brow, imprisoned by a golden metal band. Behind aBismarck chignon. A mass of twisted hair, in a sort of Laocoon agony, was decorated with small insects (of course I don't mean anythingimpossible), glittering gem-like beetles from the Brazils. Three longcurls hang from the imposing mass, and could be worn before or behind, and be made to perform--as I witnessed--all sorts of coquettishtricks. . . . Now for the dress. Well, there is nothing to describe tillyou get very nearly down to the waist. A pretty bit of lace on a bandwanders over the shoulder; the back is bare very low down, and more ofthe bust is seen than even last year's fashions permitted. . . . Youmay, as far as I could observe, dress or half-dress just as you like;caprice has taken the place of uniform fashion. As the panorama of_grandes dames_ floats before my mind's eye, I come to the conclusionthat I have seen more of those ladies than one could have hoped orexpected in so brief a space of time. "

This, then, is, or shortly will be, in a tasteless and exaggerated form, the style of dress among those "ladies of distinction" whoseco-operation a "Clergyman's Wife" fondly hopes to enlist in her schemefor purging the kitchen of its "disgraceful" finery. It is just possiblethat she has not heard of these things. Perhaps in the retirement of theparsonage, with her eyes intently fixed on the moral havoc which dressis causing among "the lower orders of females, " she has assumed that thedress of the higher orders of females is irreproachably modest andcorrect. If so, we are sorry to have to dispel an illusion which wouldgo far to justify the self-complacent tone of her lecture. But unlessshe is blissfully ignorant of contemporary fashions in any sphere moreelevated than the kitchen, we are struck with astonishment at thehardihood of an appeal at the present moment to ladies of fashion. 

Is a being whose avowed object is to imitate as exactly as possible thecosmetic tricks of the _demi-monde_ likely to prove an influential allyin a crusade against cheap finery? Is a mistress whose head-gearresembles the art-trophy of an eccentric hair-dresser, and whoseclothing is described as nothing to speak of "until you get very nearlydown to the waist, " the person to be especially selected to preachpropriety of dress to her maid? Or is it that a "Clergyman's Wife"objects to overdress only, and not to underdress; and that, while shewould repress with severity any attempt on the part of "females of thelower order" to adorn their persons, she looks with a tolerant eye, among "ladies of position and fortune, " upon the nude? We are curious toknow at what point in the social scale she would draw the line abovewhich an unblushing exhibition of the female _torso_ is decent, andbelow which earrings and a parasol are immoral. 

As a matter of fact, so far from discouraging the passion for dressamong their female dependents, ladies of position and fortune are apt toinsist on their dressing smartly. They like to see some of their ownlustre reflected on their attendants. A dowdy in sad-colored print orlinsey is by no means to their taste. This has been well pointed out ina letter in which a "Maid-servant" replied, through the _Pall MallGazette_, to the project of reform proposed by a "Clergyman's Wife. "Looking at the question from her own point of view, she described inplain words how, when she first went into service, she had wished todress simply, but was quickly made to understand that she must eitherspend more of her wages on dress, or seek another situation. We believethat her experience would be endorsed by the great majority of herclass. If a "Clergyman's Wife" would take the pains to inquire into thefacts of the case, she would not be long in ascertaining from whatquarter the signal for unbecoming finery among "females of the lowerorders" really comes. 

The plain truth of the matter is, that a reform in the dress of "lowerclass females, " and maid-servants in particular, can only be broughtabout in one way. The reaction in favor of a neat and simple style mustcome from above, and not from below; in the way of example, not ofprecept. When "ladies of position and fortune" cease to lavish theirthousands on millinery, their copyists in the nursery and kitchen willcease to spend their wages on a similar object. When every one above therank of a governess dresses in a manner suitable to her station, complaints will be no longer heard about "unbecoming" finery belowstairs. The chief incentive to showy dress among the "lower orders offemales" is unquestionably a desire to ape the extravagance of theirbetters. Remove that incentive, and the evil which a "Clergyman's Wife"so forcibly deplores will soon cure itself. 

We hope that she may be induced to turn her reforming zeal into anotherdirection. Instead of indulging in childish projects for putting theSunday-school, and the church singers, and maid-servants, and the lowerorders of females generally into uniforms, let her attack the mischiefat its root, and persuade the fine ladies of the earth to curtail theirmonstrous prodigality and immodest vagaries in dress. Let her add herwarning voice to that of the Head of Latin Christianity, who hasrecently denounced this scandal of the age with the same perennial vigorthat characterizes his anathemas on the Subalpine Government. 

ÆSTHETIC WOMAN. 

It is the peculiar triumph of woman in this nineteenth century that shehas made the conquest of Art. Our grandmothers lived in the kitchen, anddebased their finer faculties to the creation of puddings and pies. Theyspun, they knitted, they mended, they darned, they kept the accounts ofthe household, and scolded the maids. From this underground existence ofbarbaric ages woman has at last come forth into the full sunshine ofartistic day; she has mounted from the kitchen to the studio, thesketching-desk has superseded the pudding-board, sonatas have banishedthe knitting-needle, poetry has exterminated weekly accounts. Woman, ina word, has realized her mission; it is her characteristic, she tells usthrough a chorus of musical voices, to represent the artistic element ofthe world, to be pre-eminently the æsthetic creature. 

Nature educates her, as Wordsworth sang long ago, into a being of herown, sensitive above all to beauty of thought and color, and sound andform. Delicate perceptions of evanescent shades and tones, lost to thecoarser eye and ear of man, exquisite refinements of spiritualappreciation, subtle powers of detecting latent harmonics between theouter and the inner world of nature and the soul, blend themselves likethe colors of the prism in the pure white light of woman's organization. And so the host of Woman, as it marches to the conquest of this world, flaunts over its legions the banner of art. 

In one of the occasional passages of real poetic power with which WaltWhitman now and then condescends to break the full tide of rhapsody overthe eternities and the last patent drill, he describes himself as seeingtwo armies in succession go forth to the civil war. First passed thelegions of Grant and M'Clellan, flushed with patriotic enthusiasm andhope of victory, and cheered onward by the shouts of adoring multitudes. Behind, silent and innumerable, march the army of the dead. Something, we must own, of the same contrast strikes us as we stand humbly aside towatch the æsthetic progress of woman. 

It is impossible not to feel a certain glow of enthusiastic sympathy asthe vanguard passes by--women earnest in aim and effort, artists, nursing-sisters, poetesses, doctors, wives, musicians, novelists, mathematicians, political economists, in somewhat motley uniform andill-dressed ranks, but full of resolve, independence, andself-sacrifice. If we were fighting folk we confess we should be halfinclined to shout for the rights of woman, and to fall manfully into therank. As it is, we wait patiently for the army behind, for the mainbody--woman herself. Woman fronts us as noisy, demonstrative, exactingin her æsthetic claims. Nothing can surpass the adroitness with whichshe uses her bluer sisters on ahead to clear the way for her gayerlegions; nothing, at any rate, but the contempt with which she dismissesthem when their work is done. Their office is to level the stubbornincredulity, to set straight the crooked criticisms, of sceptical man, and then to disappear. Woman herself takes their place. Art iseverywhere throughout her host--for music, the highest of arts, is theart of all. 

The singers go before, the minstrels follow after, in the midst are thedamsels playing on the timbrels. The sister Arts have their ownrepresentatives within the mass. Sketching boasts its thousands, andpoetry its tens of thousands. A demure band of maidens blend piety withart around the standard of Church decoration. Perhaps it is his veryregard for the first host--for its earnestness, for its realwomanhood--that makes the critic so cynical over the second; perhaps itis his very love for art that turns to quiet bitterness as he sees artdragged at the heels of foolish virgins. For art _is_ dragged at theirheels. Woman will have man love her for her own sake; but she loves artfor the sake of man. Very truly, if with an almost sublime effrontery, she re-christens for her own special purposes the great studies thatfired Raffaelle or Beethoven. She pursues them, she pays for them, notas arts, but as accomplishments. Their cultivation is the last touchadded at her finishing school ere she makes her bow to the world. Sheorders her new duet as she orders her new bonnet, and the two purchaseshave precisely the same significance. She drops her piano and herpaint-brush as she drops her coquetries and flirtations, when the fishis landed and she can throw the bait away. Or, what is worse, she keepsthem alive as little social enjoyments, as reliefs to the tedium ofdomestic life, as something which fills up the weary hours when she isfated to the boredom of rural existence. 

A woman of business is counted a strange and remarkable being, we hardlyknow why. Looking coolly at the matter, it seems to us that all womenare women of business; that their life is spent over the counter; thatthere is nothing in earth or heaven too sacred for their traffic andtheir barter. Love, youth, beauty, a British mother reckons them up onher fingers, and tells you to a fraction their value in the market. Andthe pale sentimental being at her side, after flooring one big fellowwith a bit of Chopin, and another with a highly unintelligible verse ofRobert Browning, poses herself shyly and asks through appealing eyes, "Am I not an æsthetic creature?"

The answer to this question is best read, perhaps, in the musical aspectof woman. Bold as the assumption sounds, it is quietly assumed thatevery woman is naturally musical. Music is the great accomplishment, andthe logic of her schools proves to demonstration that every girl hasfingers and an ear. In a wonderful number of cases the same logic provesthat girls have a voice. Anyhow, the assumption moulds the very courseof female existence. The morning is spent in practicing, and the eveningin airing the results of the practice. There are country-houses whereone only rushes away from the elaborate Thalberg of midnight to beroused up at dawn by the Battle of Prague on the piano in theschool-room over-head. Still we all reconcile ourselves to thisperpetual rattle, because we know that a musical being has to beeducated into existence, and that a woman is necessarily a musicalbeing. A glance, indeed, at what we may call the life of the pianoexplains the necessity. 

Music is pre-eminently the social art; no art draws people soconveniently together, no art so lends itself to conversation, no art isin a maidenly sense at once so agreeable, so easy to acquire, and soeminently useful. A flirtation is never conducted under greateradvantages than amid the deafening thunders of a grand finale; thevictim doomed to the bondage of turning over is chained to thefascination of fine arms and delicate hands. Talk, too, may be conductedwithout much trouble over music on the small principles of femalecriticism. "Pretty" and "exquisite" go a great way with the Italian andthe Romantic schools; "sublime" does pretty universally for the German. The opera is, of course, the crown and sum of things, the most charmingand social of lounges, the readiest of conversational topics. It must bea very happy Guardsman indeed who cannot kindle over the Flower-song orthe Jewel-scene. And it is at the opera that woman is supreme. Thestrange mingling of eye and ear, the confused appeal to every sensuousfaculty, the littleness as well as the greatness of it all, echo theconclusion within woman herself. 

Moreover there is no boredom--no absolute appeal to thought or deeperfeeling. It is in good taste to drop in after the first act, and toleave before the last. It is true that an opera is supposed to be thegreat creation of a great artist, and an artist's work is presumed tohave a certain order and unity of its own; but woman is the Queen ofArt, and it is hard if she may not display her royalty by docking theFidelio of its head and its tail. But, if woman is obliged to contentherself with mutilating art in the opera or the concert-room, she isable to create art itself over her piano. A host of Claribels andRosalies exist simply because woman is a musical creature. We turn overthe heap of rubbish on the piano with a sense of wonder, and ask, without hope of an answer, why nine-tenths of our modern songs arewritten at all, or why, being written, they can find a publisher. 

But the answer is a simple one, after all; it is merely that æstheticcreatures, that queens of art and of song, cannot play good music andcan play bad. 

There is not a publisher in London who would not tell us that thepatronage of musical women is simply a patronage of trash. The fact isthat woman is a very practical being, and she has learned by experiencethat trash pays better than good music for her own special purposes; andwhen these purposes are attained she throws good music and bad musicaside with a perfect impartiality. It is with a certain feeling ofequity, as well as of content, that the betrothed one resigns her swayover the keys. She has played and won, and now she holds it hardly fairthat she should interfere with other people's game. So she lounges intoa corner, and leaves her Broadwood to those who have practical work todo. Her _rôle_ in life has no need of accomplishments, and as for theserious study of music as an art, as to any real love of it or loyaltyto it, that is the business of "professional people, " and not of Britishmothers. Only she would have her girls remember that nothing is inbetter taste than for young people to show themselves artistic. 

Music only displays on the grand scale the laws which in less obtrusiveform govern the whole æsthetic life of woman. Painting, for instance, dwindles in her hands into the "sketch;" the brown sands in theforeground, the blue wash of the sea, and the dab of rock behind. Not avery lofty or amusing thing, one would say at first sight; but, if onethinks of it, an eminently practical thing, rapid and easy of execution, not mewing the artist up in solitary studio, but lending itselfgracefully to picnics and groups of a picturesque sort on cliff andboulder, and whispered criticism from faces peeping over one's shoulder. Serious painting woman can leave comfortably to Academicians andrough-bearded creatures of the Philip Firmin type, though even here shefeels, as she glances round the walls of the Academy, that she iscreating art as she is creating music. She dwells complacently on thehome tendencies of modern painting, on the wonderful succession ofsquares of domestic canvas, on the nursemaid carrying children upstairs in one picture, on the nursemaid carrying children down stairs inthe next. She has her little crow of triumph over the great artist whostarted with a lofty ideal, and has come down to painting the redstockings of little girls in green-baize pews, or the wonderfulcounterpanes and marvellous bed-curtains of sleeping innocents. Sheknows that the men who are forced to paint these things growl contemptover their own creations, but the very growl is a tribute to woman'ssupremacy. It is a great thing when woman can wring from an artist ahundred "pot-boilers, " while man can only give him an order for a single"Light of the World. "

One field of art, indeed, woman claims for her own. Man may buildchurches as long as he leaves woman to decorate them. A crowningdemonstration of her æsthetic faculties meet us on every festival inwreath and text and monogram, in exquisitely moulded pillars turned intogrotesque corkscrews, in tracery broken by strips of greenery, in paperflowers and every variety of gilt gingerbread. But it may be questionedwhether art is the sole aim of the ecclesiastical picnic out of whichdecorations spring. The chatty groups dotted over the aisle, theconstant appeals to the curate, the dainty little screams and giggles asthe ladder shakes beneath those artistic feet, the criticism of cousinswho have looked in quite accidentally for a peep, the half-consecratedflirtations in the vestry, ally art even here to those practicalpurposes which æsthetic woman never forgets. Were she, indeed, once toforget them, she might become a Dr. Mary Walker; she might even become aGeorge Sand. In other words, she might find herself an artist, lovingand studying art for its own sake, solitary, despised, eccentric, andblue. From such a destiny æsthetic woman turns scornfully away. 

WHAT IS WOMAN'S WORK?

This is a question which one half the world is asking the other half, with very wild answers as the result. Woman's work seems to be in thesedays everything that it was not in times past, and nothing that it was. Professions are undertaken and careers invaded which were formerly heldsacred to men, while things are left undone which, for all thegenerations that the world has lasted, have been naturally andinstinctively assigned to women to do. From the savage squaw gatheringfuel or drawing water for the wigwam, to the lady giving up the keys toher housekeeper, housekeeping has been considered one of the primaryfunctions of women. The man to provide, the woman to dispense; the manto do the rough initial work of bread-winning, whether as a half-nakedbarbarian hunting live meat, or as a city clerk painfully scoring linesof rugged figures, the woman to cook the meat when got, and to lay outto the best advantage for the family the quarter's salary gained bycasting up ledgers, and writing advices and bills of lading. 

Take human society in any phase we like, we must come down to theseradical conditions; and any system which ignores this division of labor, and confounds these separate functions, is of necessity imperfect andwrong. We have nothing whatever to say against the professionalself-support of women who have no men to work for them, and who musttherefore work for themselves in order to live. In what direction soeverthey can best make their way, let them take it. Brains and intellectualgifts are of no sex and no condition, and it is far more important thatgood work should be done than that it should be done by this or thatparticular set of workers. 

But we are speaking of the home duties of married women, and of thosegirls who have no need to earn their daily bread, and who are not sospecially gifted as to be driven afield by the irrepressible power ofgenius. We are speaking of women who cannot help in the family income, but who can both save and improve in the home; women whose lives now areone long day of idleness, _ennui_, and vagrant imagination, because theydespise the activities into which they were born, while seeking outletsfor their energies impossible to them both by nature and socialrestrictions. 

It is strange to see into what unreasonable disrepute activehousekeeping--woman's first natural duty--has fallen in England. Take afamily with four or five hundred a year--and we know how small a sumthat is for "genteel humanity" in these days--the wife who will be anactive housekeeper, even with such an income, will be an exception tothe rule; and the daughters who will be anything more than drawing-roomdolls waiting for husbands to transfer them to a home of their own, where they may be as useless as they are now, will be rarer still. Forthings are getting worse, not better, and our young women are lessuseful even than their mothers; while these last do not, as a rule, comenear the good housekeeping ladies of olden times, who knew every secretof domestic economy, and made a point of honor of a wise and pleasant"distribution of bread. "

The usual method of London housekeeping, even in the second ranks of themiddle-classes, is for the mistress to give her orders in the kitchen inthe morning, leaving the cook to pass them on to the tradespeople whenthey call. If she is not very indolent, and if she has a due regard forneatness and cleanliness, she may supplement her kitchen commands bygoing up stairs through some of the bedrooms; but after a kind word ofadvice to the housemaid if she is sweet-tempered, or a harsh word ofcensure if she is of the cross-grained type, her work in that departmentwill be done, and her duties for the day are at an end. There is none ofthe clever marketing by which fifty per cent. Is saved in the outlay ifa woman knows what she is about, and how to buy; none of the personalsuperintendence so encouraging to servants when genially performed, andrendering slighted work impossible; none of that "seeing to things"herself, or doing the finer parts of the work with her own hands, whichused to form part of a woman's unquestioned duty. She gives her orders, weighs out her supplies, then leaves the maids to do the best they knowor the worst they will, according to the degree in which they aresupplied with faculty or conscience. Many women boast that theirhousekeeping takes them perhaps an hour, perhaps half an hour, in themorning, and no more; and they think themselves clever and commendablein proportion to the small amount of time given to their largest familyduty. This is all very well where the income is such as to securefirst-class servants--professors of certain specialities of knowledge, and far in advance of the mistress; but how about the comfort of thehouse with this hasty generalship, when the maids are mere scrubs whowould have to go through years of training before they were worth theirsalt? It may be very well too in large households governed by generalsystem, and not by individual ruling; but where the service is scant andpoor, it is a stupidly uncomfortable as well as a wasteful way ofhousekeeping. It is analogous to English cookery--a revolting poverty ofresult with flaring prodigality of means; all the pompous paraphernaliaof tradespeople, and their carts, and their red-books for orders, withnothing worth the trouble of booking, and everything of less quantityand lower quality than might be if personal pains were taken, which isalways the best economy practicable. 

What is there in practical housekeeping less honorable than the ordinarywork of middle-class gentlewomen? and why should women shrink from doingfor utility, and for the general comfort of the family, what they woulddo at any time for vanity or idleness? No one need go into extremes, andwish our middle-class gentlewomen to become Cinderellas sitting amongthe kitchen ashes, Nausicaäs washing linen, or Penelopes spending theirlives in needlework only. But, without undertaking anything unpleasantto her senses or degrading to her condition, a lady might do hundreds ofthings that are now left undone in a house altogether, or are given upto the coarse handling of servants, and domestic life would gaininfinitely in consequence. 

What degradation, for instance, is there in cookery? and how much morehome happiness would there not be if wives would take in hand that greatcold-mutton question! But women are both selfish and small on thispoint. Born for the most part with very feebly developed gustativeness, they affect to despise the stronger instinct in men, and think it lowand sensual if they are expected to give any special attention to themeals of the man who provides the meat. This contempt for good living isone cause of the ignorance there is among them of how to secure goodliving. Those horrible traditions of "plain roast and boiled" clingabout them as articles of culinary faith; and because they have reachedno higher knowledge for themselves, they decide that no one else shallgo beyond them. 

For one middle-class gentlewoman who understands anything about cookery, or who really cares for it as a scientific art or domestic necessity, there are ten thousand who do not; yet our mothers and grandmothers werenot ashamed to be known as deft professors, and homes were happier inproportion to the respect paid to the stewpan and the stockpot. Andcookery is more interesting now than it was then, because more advanced, more scientific, and with improved appliances; and, at the same time, itis of confessedly more importance. It may seem humiliating, to those whogo in for spirit pure and simple, to speak of the condition of the soulas in any way determined by beef and cabbage; but it is so, nevertheless, the connection between food and virtue, food and thought, being a very close one; and the sooner wives recognise this connectionthe better for them and for their husbands. 

The clumsy savagery of a plain cook, or the vile messes of a fourth-rateconfectioner, are absolute sins in a house where a woman has all hersenses, and can, if she will, attend personally to the cooking. Manythings pass for crimes which are really not so bad as this. But howseldom now do we find a house where the lady does look after thecooking, where clean hands and educated brains are put to active servicefor the good of others! The trouble would be too great in our fine-ladydays, even if there was the requisite ability; but there is as littleability as there is energy, and the plain cook with her savagery, or thefourth-rate confectioner with his rancid pastry, have it all their ownway, according to the election of economy or ostentation. 

If by chance one stumbles on a household where the woman does notdisdain housewifely work, and specially the practical superintendence ofthe kitchen, there we may be sure we shall find cheerfulness andcontent. There seems to be something in the life of a practicalhousekeeper that answers to the needs of a woman's best nature, and thatmakes her pleasant and good-tempered. Perhaps it is the consciousnessthat she is doing her duty--of itself a wonderful sweetener of thenature; perhaps the greater amount of bodily exercise keeps the liver ingood tone; whatever the cause, sure it is that the homes of the activehousekeepers are more harmonious than those of the feckless anddo-nothing sort. Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holdshousewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery pretentiousness of"giving orders. "

A woman may sit in a dirty drawing-room which the slipshod maid has nothad time to clean, but she must not take a duster in her hands andpolish the legs of the chairs; there is no disgrace in the dirt, only inthe duster. She may do fancy work of no earthly use, but she must not becaught making a gown. Indeed very few women could make one, and as fewwill do plain needlework. They will braid and embroider, "cut holes, andsew them up again, " and spend any amount of time and money on beads andwools for messy draperies which no one wants; the end, being finery, sanctions the toil and refines it; but they will not do things of anypractical use, or if they are compelled by the exigencies ofcircumstances, they think themselves petty martyrs, and badly used bythe fates. 

The whole scheme of woman's life at this present time is untenable andunfair. She wants to have all the pleasures and none of thedisagreeables. Her husband goes to the city, and does monotonous andunpleasant work there; but his wife thinks herself in very evil case ifasked to do monotonous housework at home. Yet she does nothing moreelevating or more advantageous. Novel-reading, fancy-work, visiting, letter-writing, sum up her ordinary occupations; and she considers thesemore to the point than practical housekeeping. In fact it becomes aserious question what women think themselves sent into the world for, what they hold themselves designed by God to be or to do. They grumbleat having children, and at the toil and anxiety which a family entails;they think themselves degraded to the level of servants if they have todo any practical housework whatever; they assert their equality withman, and express their envy of his life, yet show themselves incapableof learning the first lesson set to men, that of doing what they do notlike to do. What, then, do they want? What do they hold themselves madefor?

Certainly some of the more benevolent sort carry their energies out ofdoors, and leave such prosaic matters as savory dinners and fastshirt-buttons for committees and charities, where they get excitementand _kudos_ together. Others give themselves up to what they callkeeping up society, which means being more at home in every person'shouse than their own; and some do a little weak art, and others a littlefeeble literature; but there are very few indeed who honestly buckle tothe natural duties of their position, and who bear with the tedium ofhome work as men bear with the tedium of office work. The littleroyalty of home is the last place where a woman cares to shine, and themost uninteresting of all the domains she seeks to govern. Fancy ahigh-souled creature, capable of æsthetics, giving her mind to soup orthe right proportion of chutnee for the curry! Fancy, too, a brilliantcreature foregoing an evening's conversational glory abroad for the sakeof a prosaic husband's more prosaic dinner! He comes home tired fromwork, and desperately in need of a good dinner as a restorative; but theplain cook gives him cold meat and pickles, or an abomination which shecalls hash, and the brilliant creature, full of mind, thinks the desirefor anything else rank sensuality. 

It seems a little hard, certainly, on the unhappy fellow who works atthe mill for such a return; but women believe that men are made only towork at the mill that they may receive the grist accruing, and be keptin idleness and uselessness all their lives. They have no idea oflightening the labor of that mill-round by doing their own natural workcheerfully and diligently. They will do everything but what they oughtto do; they will make themselves doctors, committee-women, printers, what not, but they won't learn cooking, and they won't keep their ownhouses. There never was a time when women were less the helpmates of menthan they are at present; when there was such a wide division betweenthe interests and the sympathies of the sexes in the endeavor, on theone side, to approximate their pursuits. 

There is a great demand made now for more work for woman, and widerfields for her labor. We confess we should feel a deeper interest in thequestion if we saw more energy and conscience put into the work lying toher hand at home, and we hold that she ought to perform perfectly theduties instinctive to her sex before claiming those hitherto held remotefrom her natural condition. Much of this demand, too, springs fromrestlessness and dissatisfaction; little, if any, from higheraspirations or nobler unused energies. Indeed, the nobler the woman themore thoroughly she will do her own proper work, in the spirit of oldGeorge Herbert's well-worn line, and the less she will feel herselfabove her work. It is only the weak who cannot raise their circumstancesto the level of their thoughts; only the poor who cannot enrich theirdeeds by their thoughts. 

That very much of this demand for more power of work comes fromnecessity and the absolute need of bread, we know; and that the demandwill grow louder as marriage becomes scarcer, and there are more womenleft adrift in the world without the protection and help of men, we alsoknow. But this belongs to another part of the subject. What we want toinsist on now is the pitiable ignorance and shiftless indolence of mostmiddle-class housekeepers; and we would urge on woman the value of abetter system of life at home, before laying claim to the discharge ofextra-domestic duties abroad. 

PAPAL WOMAN. 

The wonderful instinct which has always guided the Papacy indistinguishing between forces that it may safely oppose and forcesbefore which it must surrender, has just received a startlingillustration in a scene reported to have taken place at the Vatican afew days ago. Rome may refuse all compromise with Italy, but even Romeshrinks from encountering the hostility of woman. The Brief of Octoberlast sounded, indeed, marvellously like a declaration of war; even in aPope it argued no little resolution to denounce the "license of thefemale toilet, " the "fantastic character of woman's head-dress, " and the"scandalous indecency" of woman's attire. More worldly critics wouldhardly have ventured to describe a piquant chignon or a suggestiveboddice as "a propaganda of the devil;" it will be long, at any rate, before censors of this class will meet with the reward of a deputationand a testimonial from the fair objects of their criticism. 

St. Peter, however, we are adroitly reminded, after his miraculousdelivery from prison by an angel, found an asylum among women; and, fresh from his troubles with the red-shirts of Monte Rotondo, thesuccessor of St. Peter seems to have found himself wonderfully at homeamong the flounces that thronged the other day to his public audience atthe Vatican. A hundred ladies--the presence amongst whom of a number ofEnglish Catholics gives us a national interest in the scene--cameforward to express their gratitude for the censures of the Papal Briefs, and the adhesion of their sex to the orthodox doctrines of the toilet. The speech in which one of the fair deputation expressed the sentimentsof her fellows has been unfortunately suppressed, but the letter of PopePius to the Bishop of Orleans explains the secret of this dramaticreconciliation, and the terms of the Concordat which has been arrangedbetween Woman and the Papacy. 

A common danger has driven the two Powers to this fresh alliance. IfGarabaldi threatens the supremacy of the Holy See, the educationalreforms of M. Duruy menace the domestic tyranny of woman. Woman seesherself in peril of deposition at home by the same spirit of democraticand intellectual equality which would drive the Pope from the Vatican. In presence of such a peril, mutual concession becomes easy, and thefair votaries pardon all references to their "propaganda of the devil"in consideration of a Papal assault on the "cynical writers who aredesirous of attacking woman. "

The motive of the Papacy, in opposing a system of education whichemancipates woman from the intellectual control of the priesthood andplunges her into the midst of the doubts and questionings of scepticalman, is of course plain enough. We feel no particular surprise when theattendance of girls at the public classes of a Professor is denounced astending to "despoil woman of her native modesty, to drag her before thepublic, to turn her from domestic life and duties, to puff her up withvain and false science. " It is the adhesion of woman to this view of thecase which puzzles us a little at first. We recall her aspirations aftera higher training, and her bitter contempt for the unhappy censors whoventure to remind her of certain primary truths respecting puddings andpies. 

But the same problem meets us in other halls than those of the Vatican. Everywhere woman poses herself as a social martyr, as the victim ofconventional bonds, as reduced to intellectual torpor by the refusal ofintellectual facilities and intellectual distinctions, as excluded bysheer masculine tyranny from the larger sphere of thought and actionwhich the world presents, as chained, like Prometheus, to the rock ofhome by necessity and force. It is only when some amiable enthusiast istaken in by all this admirable acting, and ventures to propose a planfor her deliverance, that one finds how wonderfully contented, afterall, woman is with her bonds and her prison-house. 

The philosopher who comes forward with his pet theory of theenfranchisement of woman, who recognizes the necessity for loosening thematrimonial tie, for securing to woman her property and itsresponsibilities, for levelling all educational differences andabolishing all social distinctions between the sexes, only finds himselfsnubbed for his pains. He is calmly assured that home is the sphere ofwoman, and the care of a family the first of woman's duties; thedomestic martyr of yesterday proves from Proverbs and the _Princess_that marriage is the completion of woman, and that her office is but towed the "noble music" of her feminine nature to the "noble words" of thenature of her spouse. 

In a word, woman knows her own business a great deal better than herfriends. She does not believe in the intellectual equality which she isalways preaching about, and when M. Duruy offers it, a shriek of horrorgoes up from half the mothers of France. What she does believe is that, in seeking the educational Will-o'-the-Wisp, she may lose the solidpudding of domestic supremacy, and domestic supremacy is worth all thesciences in the world. Her position, as the Vatican suggests, is areligious, not an intellectual one, and her policy lies in an alliancewith the priesthood, whose position is one with her own. So woman makesher submission to the Papacy, and the Pope snubs M. Duruy. 

It is amusing to see how limited, after all, a man's power, the powereven of the stoutest of men, is in his own house, and to watch thesimple process by which woman establishes the limitation. It consistssimply in asserting a specially religious character for her sex. She isnever tired of telling us that the sentiments and sympathies of thefeminine breast have a greater affinity for divine things than therougher masculine nature; that her instincts are purer, more poetic, more refined; that her moral nature has a certain bloom upon it whichcontact with the world has brushed off from ours; that while we coarsercreatures are driven to reason out our spiritual conclusions, shearrives at them by an intuitive process reserved for the angelic natureand her own. 

And on the whole man accepts the claim. He is bribed perhaps intoallowing it by his own desire to have something at home better and purerthan himself. It is a startling thing perhaps to say, but in ninety-ninehomes out of a hundred real humility of heart is to be found in thehusband, not in the wife. The husband has very little belief in his ownreligion, in his unworldliness and spirituality; but he has an immensebelief in the spirituality and the devotion of the being who fronts himover the breakfast-table. He does not profess to understand thecharacter of her piety, her lore of sermons, the severity with which shevisits the household after family prayers, or the extreme interest withwhich she peruses the geographical chapters of the Book of Joshua. Buthis incapacity to understand it is mixed with a certain awe. He neverventures to disturb, by "shadowed hint" of his own thoughts about thematter, the "simple views" of his spouse. He adroitly diverts theconversation of his dinner-table when it drifts near to the fatalpigeons of Colenso. 

Sometimes he bends to a little gentle deceit, and wins a smile ofapproval by turning up at an early Litany, or by bringing home thenewest photograph of a colonial metropolitan. In one way or another hepractically acknowledges, like King Cnut, that there is a bound to hisempire. Over bonnet bills and butchers' bills he may exercise a certainnominal control. It is possible that years of struggle might enable himto alter by half an inch the length of his wife's skirt, if fashion hadnot shortened it in the interval. But over the whole domain of moral andreligious thought and action he is absolutely powerless. Woman meetshim, if he attempts any interference, as Christian martyrs have alwaysmet their persecutors, with outstretched neck and on her knees. Sheprays for his return to better thoughts, and the whole household knowsshe is praying for him. She listens to all his remonstrances, professesobedience on every point but the one he wants, and keeps her finger allthe time on the particular page of Thomas à Kempis at which theremonstrance found her. Before such an adversary, there is no shame in adefeat. 

It is not that on all points of moral or religious life woman professesherself above criticism; to the criticisms of her religious teachers, for instance, we have seen her singularly obsequious. Woman and thepriesthood in fact understand one another perfectly, and a tacitconvention forces woman to submit to censures so long as those censuresare reserved for one topic alone. To religion woman makes the sacrificeof her dress. It is not that she seriously intends to make the slightestamendments, or to withdraw before the exhortations of her spiritualguide into poke bonnets and print muslins. It is a sufficient mark ofself-sacrifice if she listens patiently to a diatribe against butterflybonnets, trains, or crinolines, or even thanks her pastor fordescribing evening costume as a "propaganda of the devil. " The veryminuteness, in fact, of censures such as these, is a flattering proof ofthe spiritual importance of even the most trivial details in the life ofwoman. 

When Father Ignatius informed mankind that the angels bent down fromheaven to weep over the flirtations of Rotten Row, the smallest child onher pony felt her ride, and her chatter over her palings, invested withcertain celestial importance. Criticisms, too, so strictly reserved forthe outside of the platter, are an immense compliment to the inside, andit is something to listen to half an hour of spiritual reproof, and tobe able to pass oneself triumphantly as a "Fair Soul" after all. Thereis nothing revolutionary in a mere border-skirmish, which leaves thefield of woman's sway not an inch the narrower. It is another matterwhen M. Duruy calls on Hermione to come down from her pedestal ofworship, and in the long run to abdicate. For equality of educationwould, of course, even if it did nothing else, make mince-meat of thespiritual pretensions of woman. It would be impossible to preserve adomestic Papacy with a more than papal weakness for dogmatism andinfallibility, if woman is to come down into school and share the commontraining of men. 

If women are to be educated precisely as men are educated, they willshare the reasonings, the scepticisms, the critical doubts of men. Therewill be no refuge for praying sisters in that world of "simple views"from which they come forth at present furnished with a social anddomestic decalogue whose sacredness it is impious to doubt or todispute. In other words, the power which woman now exercises will simplycrumble to dust. Whether she might gain a power higher and morebeneficial to the world and to herself, is a matter which we are not nowdiscussing. What is perfectly certain is that such a power would not bethe power she exercises now. The moral censorship of woman over woman, for example, would at once pass away. It rests on the belief that womenhave higher moral faculties than other beings, and that their treason tothis higher form of moral humanity which is exhibited in womanhood is atreason of deeper dye than an offence against morality itself. 

An erring sister sins against something greater than goodness--she sinsagainst the theory of woman, against the faith that woman is a creaturewho soars high above the weaknesses of man and the common nature of man. Long ages of self-assertion have penetrated woman with the conviction ofher worth; she is the object of her own especial worship, and the sharpstinging justice she deals out to social offenders is not merely a proofof the spiritual nature of her rule, but the vindication of herself-idolatry. Again, she would forfeit the peculiar influence which sheis every day exerting in a greater degree on the course of religion andthe Church. The hypothesis of a superior spiritual nature in woman liesat the root, for instance, of the great modern institution ofsisterhoods, and of the peculiar relation which is slowly attaching hisPaula and his Eustochium to every Jerome of our day. 

But the main loss of power would lie in the family itself. It would beno longer possible to front the political dogmatist of the hearth-rugwith a social and religious dogmatism as brusque and unreasonable as hisown. The balance of power which woman has slowly built up in home wouldbe roughly disturbed, and new forms of social and domestic life wouldemerge from the chaos of such a revolution. From sweeping changes ofthis sort the very temper of woman, her innate conservatism, her want oforiginative power, turns her away. It is more comfortable to bask in theglow of Papal sunshine, to figure in Allocutions from the Vatican as"the pure and shining light of the house, the glory of her husband, theeducation of her family, a bond of peace, an emblem of piety;" and tolet Monsieur Duruy and his insidious Professors alone. 

MODERN MOTHERS. 

No human affection has been so passionately praised as maternal love, and none is supposed to be so holy or so strong. Even the poetic aspectof the instinct which inspires the young with their dearest dreams doesnot rank so high as this, and neither lover's love nor conjugal love, neither filial affection nor fraternal, comes near the sanctity orgrandeur of the maternal instinct. But all women are not equally rich inthis great gift; and, to judge by appearances, English women are at thismoment particularly poor. It may seem a harsh thing to say, but it isnone the less true--society has put maternity out of fashion, and thenursery is nine times out of ten a place of punishment, not of pleasure, to the modern mother. 

Two points connected with this subject are of growing importance at thispresent time--the one is the increasing disinclination of married womento be mothers at all; the other, the large number of those who, beingmothers, will not, or cannot, nurse their own children. In the mad raceafter pleasure and excitement now going on all through English societythe tender duties of motherhood have become simply disagreeablerestraints, and the old feeling of the blessing attending the quiverfull is exchanged for one expressive of the very reverse. With some ofthe more intellectual and less instinctive sort, maternity is looked onas a kind of degradation; and women of this stamp, sensible enough ineverything else, talk impatiently among themselves of the basenecessities laid on them by men and nature, and how hateful to them iseverything connected with their characteristic duties. 

This wild revolt against nature, and specially this abhorrence ofmaternity, is carried to a still greater extent by American women, withgrave national consequences resulting; but though we have not yetreached the Transatlantic limit, the state of the feminine feeling andphysical condition among ourselves will disastrously affect the futureunless something can be done to bring our women back to a healthier toneof mind and body. No one can object to women declining marriagealtogether in favor of a voluntary self-devotion to some project oridea; but, when married, it is a monstrous doctrine to hold that theyare in any way degraded by the consequences, and that natural functionsare less honorable than social excitements. The world can get on withoutballs and morning calls, it can get on too without amateur art andincorrect music, but not without wives and mothers; and those times in anation's history when women have been social ornaments rather thanfamily home-stays have ever been times of national decadence and ofmoral failure. 

Part of this growing disinclination is due to the enormous expenseincurred now by having children. As women have ceased to take anyactive share in their own housekeeping, whether in the kitchen or thenursery, the consequence is an additional cost for service, which is aserious item in the yearly accounts. Women who, if they lived a rationallife, could and would nurse their children, now require a wet-nurse, orthe services of an experienced woman who can "bring up by hand, " as thephrase is; women who once would have had one nursemaid now have two; andwomen who, had they lived a generation ago, would have had none at all, must in their turn have a wretched young creature without thought orknowledge, into whose questionable care they deliver what should be themost sacred obligation and the most jealously-guarded charge theypossess. 

It is rare if, in any section of society where hired service can be had, mothers give more than a superficial personal superintendence to nurseryor school-room--a superintendence about as thorough as theirhousekeeping, and as efficient. The one set of duties is quite asunfashionable as the other, and money is held to relieve from theservice of love as entirely as it relieves from the need of labor. Andyet, side by side with this personal relinquishment of natural duties, has grown up, perhaps as an instinctive compensation, an amount ofattention and expensive management specially remarkable. There never wasa time when children were made of so much individual importance in thefamily, yet in so little direct relation with the mother--never a timewhen maternity did so little and social organization so much. 

Juvenile parties; the kind of moral obligation apparently felt by allparents to provide heated and unhealthy amusements for their boys andgirls during the holidays; extravagance in dress, following the sameextravagance among their mothers; the increasing cost of education; thefuss and turmoil generally made over them--all render them real burdensin a house where money is not too plentiful, and where every child thatcomes is not only an additional mouth to feed and an additional body toclothe, but a subtractor by just so much from the family fund ofpleasure. 

Even where there is no lack of money, the unavoidable restraints of thecondition, for at least some months in the year, more thancounterbalance any sentimental delight to be found in maternity. For, before all other things in life, maternity demands unselfishness inwomen; and this is just the one virtue of which women have least at thispresent time--just the one reason why motherhood is at a discount, andchildren are regarded as inflictions instead of blessings. 

Few middle-class women are content to bring up their children with theold-fashioned simplicity of former times, and to let them share andshare alike in the family, with only so much difference in theirtreatment as is required by their difference of state; fewer still arewilling to share in the labor and care that must come with children inthe easiest-going household, and so to save in the expenses by their ownwork. The shabbiest little wife, with her two financial ends alwaysgaping and never meeting, must have her still shabbier little drudge towheel her perambulator, so as to give her an air of fine-ladyhood andbeing too good for work; and the most indolent housekeeper, whose workis done in half an hour, cannot find time to go into the gardens or thesquare with nurse and the children, so that she may watch over themherself and see that they are properly cared for. 

In France, where it is the fashion for mother and _bonne_ to be togetherboth out of doors and at home, at least the children are not neglectednor ill-treated, as is too often the case with us; and if they areimproperly managed, according to our ideas, the fault is in the system, not in the want of maternal supervision. Here it is a very rare caseindeed when the mother accompanies the nurse and children; and thosedays when she does are nursery gala-days, to be talked of and rememberedfor weeks after. As they grow older, she may take them occasionally whenshe visits her more intimate friends; but this is for her own pleasure, not their good, and is quite beside the question of going with them tosee that they are properly cared for. 

It is to be supposed that each mother has a profound belief in her ownnurse, and that when she condemns the neglect and harshness shown toother children by the servants in charge, she makes a mental reservationin favor of her own, and is very sure that nothing improper or crueltakes place in _her_ nursery. Her children do not complain, and shealways tells them to come to her when anything is amiss; on whichnegative evidence she satisfies her soul, and makes sure that all isright, because she is too neglectful to see if anything is wrong. Shedoes not remember that her children do not complain because they darenot. 

Dear and beautiful as all mammas are to the small fry in the nursery, they are always in a certain sense Junos sitting on the top of MountOlympus, making occasional gracious and benign descents, but practicallytoo far removed for useful interference; while nurse is an ever-presentpower, capable of sly pinches and secret raids, as well as of more openoppression--a power, therefore, to be propitiated, if only with thesubservience of a Yezidi, too much afraid of the Evil One to oppose him. Wherefore nurse is propitiated, failing the protection of the glorifiedcreature just gone to her grand dinner in a cloud of lace and a blaze ofjewels; and the first lesson taught the youthful Christian in shortfrocks or knickerbockers is not to carry tales down stairs, and by nomeans to let mamma know what nurse desires should be kept secret. 

A great deal of other evil, beside these sly beginnings of deceit, istaught in the nursery; a great deal of vulgar thought, of superstitiousfear, of class coarseness. As, indeed, how must it not be when we thinkof the early habits and education of the women taken into the nursery togive the first strong indelible impressions to the young souls undertheir care. Many a man with a ruined constitution, and many a womanwith shattered nerves, can trace back the beginning of their sorrow tothose neglected childish days of theirs when nurses had it all their ownway because mamma never looked below the surface, and was satisfied withwhat was said instead of seeing for herself what was done. It is an oddstate of society which tolerates this transfer of a mother's holiest andmost important duty into the hands of a mere stranger, hired by themonth, and never thoroughly known. 

Where the organization of the family is of the patriarchal kind--oldretainers marrying and multiplying about the central home, and carryingon a warm personal attachment from generation to generation--thistransfer of maternal care has not such bad effects; but in our presentway of life, without love or real relationship between masters andservants, and where service is rendered for just so much money down, andfor nothing more noble, it is a hideous system, and one that makes themodern mother utterly inexplicable. We wonder where her mere instinctscan be, not to speak of her reason, her love, her conscience, her pride. Pleasure and self-indulgence have indeed gained tremendous power, inthese later days, when they can thus break down the force of thestrongest law of nature, a law stronger even than that ofself-preservation. 

Folly is the true capillary attraction of the moral world, andpenetrates every stratum of society; and the folly of extravagant attirein the drawing-room is reproduced in the nursery. Not content withbewildering men's minds, and emptying their husband's purses for theenhancement of their own charms, women do the same by their children, and the mother who leaves the health, and mind, and temper, and purityof her offspring in the keeping of a hired nurse takes especial care ofthe color and cut of the frocks and petticoats; and always with the samestrain after show, and the same endeavor to make a little look a mickle. The children of five hundred a year must look like those of a thousand;and those of a thousand must rival the _tenue_ of little lords andladies born in the purple; while the amount of money spent in thetradesman-class is a matter of real amazement to those let into thesecret. 

Simplicity of diet, too, is going out with simplicity of dress, withsimplicity of habits generally; and stimulants and concentrated food arenow the rule in the nursery, where they mar as many constitutions asthey make. More than one child of which we have had personal knowledgehas yielded to disease induced by too stimulating and too heating adiet; but artificial habits demand corresponding artificiality of food, and so the candle burns at both ends instead of one. Again, as for theincreasing inability of educated women to nurse their children, even ifdesirous of doing so, that also is a bodily condition brought about byan unwholesome and unnatural state of life. Late hours, high living, heated blood, and vitiated atmosphere are the causes of this alarmingphysical defect. But it would be too much to expect that women shouldforego their pleasurable indulgences, or do anything disagreeable totheir senses, for the sake of their offspring. They are not famous forlooking far ahead on any matter, but to expect them to look beyondthemselves, and their own present generation, is to expect the greatmiracle that never comes. 

THE PRIESTHOOD OF WOMAN. 

If the female philosophers who plead for the emancipation of their sexwould stoop from the sublimer heights of Woman's Rights to arguments ofmere human expediency, we fancy they might find some of their criticsdisposed to listen in a more compliant mood. We can imagine a very goodpoint being made out of the simple fact of waste, by some feminineadvocate who would point out in a businesslike way how much more workthe world might get through if only woman had fair play. Waste is alwaysa pitiful and disagreeable thing, and the waste of whatever reservedpower may lie at present unused in the breasts of half a million of oldmaids, for instance, is a thought which, with so much to be done aroundus, it is somewhat uncomfortable to dwell much upon. The argument, too, might be neatly enforced, just at present, by illustrations from asomewhat unexpected quarter. 

The Papacy seems determined to carry out its concordat with Woman. If weare to credit the latest rumors from the Vatican, Rome has grownimpatient of the class who now present themselves at her doors ascandidates for canonization, and has fallen back from the obscureItalian beggars and Cochin Chinese martyrs whom she has recentlydelighted to honor on the more illustrious names of Christopher Columbusand Joan of Arc. A little courage must have been needed for this retreatupon the past, for neither the great navigator nor the heroine foundmuch support or appreciation in the prelates of their day; and thesomewhat uncomfortable fact might be urged by the devil's advocate, inthe case of the latter, that if Joan was sent to the martyr's stake, itwas by a spiritual tribunal. 

On the other hand, there is the obvious desirableness of showing howperfectly at one the Papacy is with the spirit of the age in this doublecompliment to the two primary forces of modern civilization--thedemocratic force of the New World, and the feminine force of the Old. The beatification of the Maid of Orleans in its most simple aspect isthe official recognition, by the Papacy, of the claims of her sex to afar larger sphere of human action than has as yet been accorded to them. Woman may fairly meet the domestic admonitions of Papal briefs by thisnewly discovered instance of extra-domestic holiness, and may front thetaunts of cynical objectors with a saintly patron who was the first tobreak through the outer conventionalities of womanhood. 

But the figure of Joan of Arc is far more than a convenient answer toobjections such as these; it is, as we have said, in itself a cogentargument for a better use of feminine energies. No life gives one such anotion as hers of the vast forces which lie hidden, and as it would seemwasted, in the present mass of women. It is impossible to be contentwith little projects of utilization such as those which throw open toher the telegraph-office or the printing-press, or even with the moreambitious claims for her admission to the Bench or the dissecting-room, when one gets a glimpse such as this of energies latent within thefemale breast which are strong enough to change the face of the world. 

It is difficult to suppose that the woman of our day is less energeticthan the woman of the fifteenth century, or that her piano and herworkbag sum up the whole of her possibilities any more than herspinning-wheel or her sheep-tending exhausted those of the Maid ofDomremy. The ordinary occupations of woman strike us in this light asmere jets of vapor, useful indeed as a relief to the volcanic pressurewithin, but insufficient to remove the peril of an eruption. There mustbe some truth in the spasmodic utterances of the fevered sibyls whooccasionally bare the female heart to us in three-volume novels, and thegaiety and frivolity of the life of woman is a mere mask for the wild, tossing emotions within. It is a standing danger, we own; and besidesthe danger there is, as we have said, the waste and the pity of it. 

A little closer examination, however, may suggest some doubt whetherthis waste of power is not more apparent than real. In the physicalworld, Mr. Grove has told us that the apparent destruction of a force isonly its transformation into a force which is correlative to it; thatmotion, for instance, when lost is again detected in the new form ofheat, and heat in that of light. But the theory is far from being trueof the physical world only, and, had we space here, nothing would beeasier than to trace the same correlation of forces through the moralnature of man. For waste, then, in the particular instance which isbefore us, we may perhaps substitute transformation. 

Professing herself the most rigid of conservatives, woman gives vent tothis heroic energy for which the times offer no natural outlet in theradical modifications which she is continually introducing into modernsociety. We overlook the manifold ways in which she is acting on andchanging the state of things around us, just because we are deceived bythe apparent unity with which the whole sex advances toward marriage. Weforget the large margin of those who fail in attaining their end, and weact as if the great mass of unmarried women simply represented a wasteand lost force. And yet it is just this waste force which tells onsociety more powerfully than all. 

The energies which fail in finding a human object of domestic adorationbecome the devotional energies of the world. The force which would havemade the home makes the Church. It is really amazing to watch, if welook back through the ages, the silent steady working of this feminineimpulse, and to see how bit by bit it has recovered the ground of whichChristianity robbed Woman. We wonder that no woman poet has ever turned, like Schiller, to the gods of old. 

In every heathen religion of the Western world woman occupied aprominent place. Priestess or prophetess, she stood in all ministerialoffices on an equality with man. It was only the irruption of religionsfrom the East, the faiths of Isis or Mithras, which swept woman from thetemple. Christianity shared the Oriental antipathy to the ministerialservice of woman; it banished her from altar and from choir; in darkertimes it drove her to the very porch of its shrines. The Church of afterages dealt with woman as the Empire dealt with its Cæsars; it was readyto grant her apotheosis, but only when she was safely out of the world. It gave her canonization, and it gives it to her still, but not thepriesthood. No rout could seem more complete, but woman is never greaterthan when she is routed. 

The newly-instituted parson of to-day, brimming over with apostolictexts which forbid woman to speak in church, no sooner arrives at hisparish than he finds himself in a spiritual world whose impulse andguidance is wholly in the hands of woman. Expel woman as you will, _tamen usque recurrit_. Woman is, in fact, the parish. Within, in herlowest spiritual form, as the parson's wife, she inspires and sometimeswrites his sermons. Without, as the bulk of his congregation, shewatches over his orthodoxy, verifies his texts, visits his schools, andharasses his sick. "Ah, Betsy!" said a sick woman to a wealthier sisterthe other day, "it's of some use being well off; you won't be obligedwhen you die to have a district-lady worriting you with a chapter. " Butthe district-lady has others to "worrit" in life besides the sick. 

Mrs. Hannah More tells us exultantly in her journal how successful wereher raids upon the parsons, and in what dread all unspiritual ministersstood of her visitations. And the same rigid censorship prevails in manyquarters still. The preacher who thunders so defiantly against spiritualfoes is trembling all the time beneath the critical eye that is watchinghim from the dim recesses of an unworldly bonnet, and the criticalfinger which follows him with so merciless an accuracy in his texts. Impelled, guided, censured by woman, we can hardly wonder if in ninecases out of ten the parson turns woman himself, and if the usurpationof woman's rights in the services of religion has been deftly avenged bythe subjugation of the usurpers. Expelled from the Temple, woman hassimply put her priesthood into commission, and discharges herministerial duties by deputy. 

It was impossible for woman to remain permanently content with aposition like this; but it is only of late that a favorable conjunctureof affairs has enabled her to quit it for a more obtrusive one. Thegreat Church movement which the _Apologia_ has made so familiar to us inits earlier progress came some ten years ago to a stand. Some of itsmost eminent leaders had seceded to another communion, it had beenweakened by the Gorham decision, and by its own internal dissensions. Whether on the side of dogma or ritual, it seemed to have lost for themoment its old impulse--to have lost heart and life. 

It was in this emergency that woman came to the front. She claimed torevive the old religious position which had been assigned to her by themonasticism of the middle ages, but to revive it under differentconditions and with a different end. The mediæval Church had, indeed, glorified, as much as words could glorify, the devotion of woman; butonce become a devotee, it had locked her in the cloister. As far asaction on the world without was concerned, the veil served simply as aspecies of suicide, and the impulses of woman, after all the crowns andpretty speeches of her religious counsellors, found themselves bottledup within stout stone walls and as inactive as before. From this strait, woman, at the time we speak of, delivered herself by the organization ofcharity. 

In lines of a certain beauty, though somewhat difficult in theirgrammatical construction, she has been described as a ministering angelwhen pain and anguish wring the brow; and it was in her capacity ofministering angel that she now placed herself at the Church movement andadvanced upon the world. It was impossible to lock these beneficentbeings up, for the whole scope of their existence lay in the outerworld; but every day, as it developed their ecclesiastical position, made even their admirers recognise the wise discretion of the middleages. Long before the Ritualists themselves, they, with a feminineinstinct, had discerned the value of costume. The district visitor, whomnobody had paid the smallest attention to in the common vestments of theworld, became a sacred being as she donned the crape and hideous bonnetof the "Sister. "

Within the new establishment there was all the excitement of a perfectlynovel existence, of time broken up as women like it to be broken up inperpetual services and minute obligation of rules, the dramatic changeof name, and the romantic self-abnegation of obedience. The "MotherSuperior" took the place of the tyrant of another sex who had hithertoclaimed the submission of woman, but she was something more to her"children" than the husband or father whom they had left in the worldwithout. In all matters, ecclesiastical as well as civil, she claimedwithin her dominions to be supreme. The quasi-sacerdotal dignity, thepure religious ministration which ages have stolen from her, was quietlyreassumed. She received confessions, she imposed penances, she drew upoffices of devotion. Wherever the community settled, it settled as a newspiritual power. 

If the clergyman of the parish ventured on advice or suggestion, he wastold that the Sisterhood must preserve its own independence of action, and was snubbed home again for his pains. The Mother Superior, in fact, soon towered into a greatness far beyond the reach of ordinary parsons. She kept her own tame chaplain, and she kept him in very edifyingsubjection. From a realm completely her own, the influence of womanbegan now to tell upon the world without. Little colonies of Sistersplanted here and there annexed parish after parish. Sometimes theparson was worried into submission by incessant calls of the mostjustifiable nature on his time and patience. Sometimes he was bribedinto submission by the removal from his shoulders of the burden of alms. It was only when he was thoroughly tamed that he was rewarded by prettystoles and gorgeous vestments. 

Astonished congregations saw their church blossom in purple and red, andfrontal and hanging told of the silent energy of the group of Sisters. The parson found himself nowhere in his own parish; every detail managedfor him, every care removed, and all independence gone. If it suited theministering angels to make a legal splash, he found himself landed inthe Law Courts. If they took it into their heads to seek another fold, every one assumed, as a matter of course, that their pastor would gotoo. At such a rate of progress the great object of woman's ambitionmust soon come in view, and the silent control over the priest willmerge in the open claim to the priesthood. 

It may be in silent preparation for such a claim that the ecclesiasticalhierarchy are taking, year by year, a more feminine position. The Housesof Convocation, for instance, present us with a lively image of what thebitterest censor of woman would be delighted to predict as the result ofher admission to senatorial honors. There is the same interminable flowof mellifluous talk, the same utter inability to devise or to understandan argument, the same bitterness and hard words, the same skill inlittle tricks and diplomacies, the same practical incompetence, whichhave been denounced as characteristics of woman. The caution, thefinesse, the sly decorum, the inability to take a large view of anyquestion, the patience, the masterly inaction, the vicious outbreaks oftemper which now and then break the inaction of a Bishop, may sometimeslead us to ask whether the Episcopal office is not one admirably suitedfor the genius of woman. 

But she must stoop to conquer heights like these, and it is probablewith a view to a slow ascent towards them through the ages to come thatshe is now moulding the mind of the curate at her will. He, we have beentold, is commonly the first lady of the parish; and what he now is intheory, a century hence may find him in fact. It would be difficult evennow to detect any difference of sex in the triviality of purpose, thelove of gossip, the petty interests, the feeble talk, the ignorance, thevanity, the love of personal display, the white hand dangled over thepulpit, the becoming vestment and the embroidered stole, which we arelearning gradually to look upon as attributes of the British curate. Soperfect, indeed, is the imitation that the excellence of her work mayperhaps defeat its own purpose; and the lacquered imitation of woman, "dilettante, delicate-handed, " as Tennyson saw and sang of him, maysatisfy the world, and for long ages prevent any anxious inquiry afterthe real feminine Brummagem. 

THE FUTURE OF WOMAN. 

Woman is a thing of accident and spoilt in the making says the greatestof the schoolmen, but we are far from denying her right to vindicatesomething more than an accidental place in the world. After all that canbe urged as to the glory of self-sacrifice, the greatness of silentdevotion, or the compensations for her want of outer influence in theinner power which she exerts through the medium of the family and thehome, there remains an odd sort of sympathy with the woman who assertsthat she is every bit as good as her master, and that there is no reasonwhy she should retire behind the domestic veil. Partly, of course, thisarises from our natural sympathy with pluck of any sort; partly, too, there is the pleasure we feel in a situation which may be absurd, butwhich, at any rate, is novel and piquant; partly, there is an impatiencewith woman as she is, and a sort of lingering hope that something betteris in store for her. 

The most sceptical, in fact, of woman's censors cannot help feeling asuspicion that, after all, strong-minded women may be in the right. Asone walks home in the cool night-air it seems impossible to believethat girls are to go on for ever chattering the frivolous nonsense theydo chatter, or living the absolutely frivolous lives they do live. And, of course, the impression that a good time is coming for them isimmensely strengthened if one happens to have fallen in love. One's eyeshave got a little sharpened to see the real human soul that stirsbeneath all that sham life of idleness and vanity, but the vanity andthe idleness vexes more than ever. If we come across Miss Hominy at suchmoments, we are extremely likely to find her a great deal lessridiculous than we fancied her, and to listen with a certain gravity toher plea for the enfranchisement of women. 

It is not that we go all lengths with her; we stare a little perhaps atthe logical consequences on which she piques herself, and at thepanorama of woman as she is to be which she spreads before us, at theconsulting barrister waiting in her chambers and the lady advocateflourishing her maiden brief; our pulse throbs a little awkwardly at thethought of being tested by medical fingers and thumbs of such a delicateorder, and we hum a few lines of the _Princess_ as Miss Hominy posesherself for a Lady Professor. Still we cannot help a half convictionthat even this would be better than the present style of thing, thepretty face that kindles over the news of a fresh opera and gives youthe latest odds on the Derby, the creature of head-achy mornings, ofafternoons frittered on lounges, and bonnet-strings, of nights whirledaway in hot rooms and chatter on stairs. There are moments, we repeat, when, looking at woman as she is, we could almost wish to wake the nextmorning into a world where all women were Miss Hominys. 

But when we do wake we find the world much what it was before, andpretty faces just as indolent and as provoking as they were, and a sortof ugly after-question cropping up in our minds whether we had exactlyrealized the meaning of our wish, or conceived the nature of a world inwhich all women were Miss Hominys. There is always a little difficultyin fancying the world other than we find it; but it is really worth alittle trouble, before we enfranchise woman, to try to imagine theresults of her enfranchisement, the Future of Woman. In the first place, it would amazingly reduce the variety of the world. As it is, we live ina double world, and enjoy the advantages of a couple of hemispheres. Itis an immense luxury for men, when they are tired out with the worry andseriousness of life, to be able to walk into a totally differentatmosphere, where nothing is looked at or thought about or spoken of inexactly the same way as in their own. 

When Mr. Gladstone, for instance, unbends (if he ever does unbend), and, weary of the Irish question, asks his pretty neighbor what she thinks ofit, he gets into a new world at once. Her vague idea of the Irishquestion, founded on a passing acquaintance with Moore's Melodies and awild regret after Donnybrook fair, may not be exactly adequate to themagnitude of the interests involved, but it is at any rate novel andamusing. It is not a House of Commons view of the subject, but then thegreat statesman is only too glad to be rid of the House of Commons. Thoughtful politicians may deplore that the sentimental beauty ofCharles I. And the pencil of Vandyke have made every English girl aMalignant; but after one has got bored with Rushworth and Clarendon, there is a certain pleasure at finding a great constitutional questionsummarily settled by the height of a sovereign's brow. 

It is a relief too, now and then, to get out of the world of morals intothe world of woman; out of the hard sphere of right and wrong into aworld like Mr. Swinburne's, where judgment goes by the beautiful, andwhere red hair makes all the difference between Elizabeth and Mary ofScotland. Above all, there is the delightful consciousness ofsuperiority. The happiness of the blessed in the next world consists, according to Sir John Mandeville, in their being able to behold theagonies of the lost; and half the satisfaction men have in their ownsense and vigor and success would be lost if they could not enjoy thedelicious view of the world where sense and energy go for nothing. 

Whether all this would be worth sacrificing simply to acquire a womanwho could sympathize with, and support, a man in the stress and battleof life, is a question we do not pretend to decide; but it is certainthat the enfranchisement of woman would be the passing of a social Actof Uniformity, and the loss of half the grace and variety of life. Here, as elsewhere, "the low sun makes the color, " and the very excellences ofMiss Hominy carry her aloft into regions of white light, where oureyes, even if dazzled, get a little tired with the monotony of theintellectual Haze. 

The result of such a change on woman herself would be something fargreater and more revolutionary. It is not merely that, as in the case ofmen, she would lose the sense and comfort of another world of thoughtand action, and of its contrast with the world in which she lives; it isthat she would lose her own world altogether. Conceive, for instance, woman obliged to take life in earnest, to study as men study, to work asmen work. The change would be no mere modification, but the utterabolition of her whole present existence. The whole theory of woman'slife is framed on the hypothesis of sheer indolence. She is oftencharming, but she is always idle. There is an immense ingenuity and aperfect grace about her idleness; the efforts, in fact, of generationsof cultivated women have been directed, and successfully directed, tothis special object of securing absolute indolence without either theinner tedium or the outer contempt which indolence is supposed to bringin its train. 

Woman can always say with Titus, "I have wasted a day, " but theconfession wears an air of triumph rather than regret. A world oftrivial occupations, a whole system of social life, has been laboriouslyinvented that the day might be wasted gracefully and without boredom. Alittle riding, a little reading, a little dabbling with the paint-brush, a little strumming on the piano, a little visiting, a little shopping, a little dancing, and a general trivial chat scattered over the whole, make up the day of an English girl in town. Transplant her into thecountry, and the task of frittering away existence, though it becomesmore difficult, is faced just as gallantly as before. Mudie comes to therescue with the back novels which she was too busy to get through in theseason; there is the scamper from one country house to another, thereare the flirtations to keep her hand in, the pets to be fed, the cousinsto extemporize a mimic theatre, the curate--if worst comes to worst--totry a little ritualism upon. With these helps a country day, what withgoing to bed early and getting up late, may be frittered away asaimlessly as a day in town. 

Woman may fairly object, we think, to abolish at one fell swoop such aningenious fabric of idleness as this. A revolution in the whole systemof social life, in the whole conception and drift of feminine existence, is a little too much to ask. As it is, woman wraps herself in herindolence, and is perfectly satisfied with her lot. She assumes, and theworld has at least granted the assumption, that her little hands werenever made to do anything which any rougher hands can do for them. Manhas got accustomed to serve as her hewer of wood and drawer of water, and to expect nothing from her but poetry and refinement. It is a littletoo much to ask her to go back to the position of the squaw, and to doany work for herself. But it is worse to ask her to remodel the worldaround her, on the understanding that henceforth duty and toil andself-respect are to take the place of frivolity and indolence andadoration. 

The great passion which knits the two sexes together presents a yetstronger difficulty. To men, busy with the work of the world, there isno doubt that, however delightful, love takes the form of a mereinterruption of their real life. They allow themselves the interval ofits indulgence, as they allow themselves any other holiday, simply assomething in itself temporary and accidental; as life, indeed, growsmore complex, there is an increasing tendency to reduce the amount oftime and attention which men devote to their affections. Already thegreat philosopher of the age has pronounced that the passion of loveplays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is aterrible obstacle to human progress. 

The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mr. Mill. Theenthusiastic votary who has been pouring his vows at the feet of hismistress consoles himself, as he leaves her, with the thought thatengagements cannot last for ever, and that he shall soon be able to getback to the real world of business and of life. He presses his belovedone, with all the eloquence of passion, to fix an early day for theirunion, but the eloquence has a very practical bearing. While Corydon ispiping to Phyllis, he is anxious about the engagements he is missing, and the distance he is losing in the race for life. But Phyllis remainsthe nymph of passion and poetry and romance. 

Time has no meaning for her; she is not neglecting any work; she isonly idle, as she always is idle. But love throws a new glory and a newinterest around her indolence. The endless little notes with which sheworries the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred andmysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers. Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of twohearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours. Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it newearnestness or a fresh direction; but it makes it infinitely moreinteresting, and it heightens the enjoyment of wasting a day by a newsense of power. For that brief space of triumph Phyllis is able to makeCorydon waste his day too. The more he writhes and wriggles under thecompulsion, the more lingering looks he casts back on the work he hasquitted, the greater her victory. 

He cannot decently confess that he is tired of the little comedy inwhich he takes so romantic a part, and certainly his fellow actress willnot help him to the confession. By dint of acting it, indeed, she comesat last to a certain belief in her _rôle_. She really imagines herselfto be very busy, to have sacrificed her leisure as well as her heart tothe object of her devotion. She scolds him for his backwardness in notmore thoroughly sacrificing his leisure to her. Work may be veryimportant to him, but it is of less importance to the self-sacrificingbeing who hasn't had one moment to finish the third volume of the lastsensational novel since she plighted her troth to this monster ofingratitude! Of course a man likes to be flattered, and does as much ashe can in the way of believing in the little comedy too; in fact, it isall amazingly graceful and entertaining on the one side and on theother. Our only doubt is whether this graceful and entertaining mode ofinterrupting all the serious business of life will not be treated rathermercilessly by enfranchised woman. How will the enchantment of passionsurvive when the object of our adoration can only spare us an hour fromher medical cases, or defers an interview because she is choked withfresh briefs? One of two results must clearly follow. Either the greatWestminster philosopher is right, and love will play a far lessimportant part than it has done in human affairs, or else it willconcentrate itself, and take a far more intense and passionate characterthan it exhibits now. 

We can quite conceive that the very difficulty of the new relations maygive them a new fire and vigor, and that the women of the future, looking back on the old months of indolent coquetry, may feel a certaincontempt for souls which can fritter away the grandeur of passion asthey fritter away the grandeur of life. But even the gain of passionwill hardly compensate us for the loss of variety. All this playing withlove has a certain pretty independence about it, and leaves woman'sindividuality where it found it. Passion must of necessity whirl bothbeings, in the unity of a common desire, into one. And so we get back tothe old problem of the monotony of life. But it is just this monotonousidentity to which civilization, politics, and society are all visiblytending. Railways will tunnel Alps for us, democracy will extinguishheroes, and raise mankind to a general level of commonplacerespectability; woman's enfranchisement will level the social world, andleave between sex and sex the difference--even if it leaves that--of abonnet. 

COSTUME AND ITS MORALS. 

Nothing is more decisively indicative of the real value or necessity ofa thing than the fact that, while its presence is hardly noticeable, itis immediately missed and asked for when it disappears; and it is thusthat the paramount importance of clothing asserts itself by theconspicuousness of its absence. Of course the first purpose of dress is, or should be, decency, and for this, quantity rather than quality islooked for. But, as with the little cloud no larger than a man's hand, so from the primary fig-leaf or first element of dress, how great thingshave arisen! In respect of amplification, dress may be said to haveattained its maximum when men wore ruffs which nearly concealed theirheads, and shoes a quarter of a yard longer than their feet; but"fashion" has its day, and now dress threatens to dwindle into somethingnot far from its original or fig-leaf dimensions. 

Another perfectly legitimate object of dress is attractiveness, so thatby its aid our persons may be set off to the best advantage; dressshould also be individual and symbolic, so as to indicate clearly theposition and character which we desire to obtain and hold. It is not ofmen's attire that we have now to speak; that has been settled for themby the tailors' strike, which practically ordained that he that wasshabby should be shabby, or even shabbier still, and he that had allowedhimself to be thrust into the straitened trousers and scanty coatee oflast year should continue to exhibit his proportions long after thegrotesqueness of his figure had been recognised even by himself. 

But it is of the dress of our women that we are compelled to testify, and it can hardly be denied that at the present moment it offendsgrievously in three particulars. It is inadequate for decency; it lacksthat truthfulness which is, and should be, the base of all that isattractive and beautiful; and in its symbolism it is in the highestdegree objectionable, for it not only aims at what is unreal and false, but it simulates that which is positively hateful and meretricious, sothat it is difficult now for even a practised eye to distinguish thehigh-born maiden or matron of Belgravia from the Anonymas who haunt thedrive and fill our streets. 

This indictment is, it may be said, a severe one; but if we examine, sofar as male critics may venture to do, the costume of a fashionablewoman of the day, it can hardly be said to be unjust. The apparentobject of modern female dress is to assimilate its wearers as nearly aspossible in appearance to women of a certain class--the class to whichit was formerly hardly practicable to allude, and yet be intelligible toyoung ladies; but all that is changed, and the habits and customs of thewomen of the _demi-monde_ are now studied as if they were indeedcurious, but exceptionally admirable also, and thus a study unseemly andunprofitable has begotten a spirit of imitation which has achieved adegrading success. 

"Our modest matrons meet, " not "to stare the strumpet down, " but tocompare notes, to get hints, and to engage in a kind of friendlyrivalry--in short, to pay that homage to Vice, and in a very direct waytoo, which Vice is said formerly to have paid to Virtue. Paint andpowder are of course the first requisites for the end in view, and theseadjuncts have to be laid on with such skill as the _débutante_ or hertoilette-maid possesses, which is sometimes so small as to leave theirhandiwork disgustingly coarse and apparent. 

There are pearl-powder, violet-powder, rouge, bistre for the eyelids, belladonna for the eyes, whitelead and blacklead, yellow dye and mineralacids for the hair--all tending to the utter destruction of both hairand skin. The effect of this "diaphanous" complexion and "aurified" hair(we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark, or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used sounsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the facelooks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil fortheatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may beinteresting to know, and we have the information from high, because_soi-disant_ fashionable authority, that the reign of golden locks andblue-white visages is drawing to a close, and that it is to be followedby bronze complexions and blue-black hair--_à l'Africaine_ we presume. 

When fashionable Madame has, to her own satisfaction, painted andvarnished her face, she then proceeds, like Jezebel, to tire her head, and, whether she has much hair or little, she fixes on to the back of ita huge nest of coarse hair generally well baked in order to free it fromthe parasites with which it abounded when it first adorned the person ofsome Russian or North-German peasant girl. Of course this gives anunnaturally large and heavy appearance to the cerebellar region; butnature is not exactly what is aimed at, still less refinement. 

If this style be not approved of, there is yet another fashion--namely, to cut the hair short in a crop, _créper_ it, curl it, frizzle it, bleach it, burn it, and otherwise torture it until it has about as muchlife in it as last year's hay; and then to shampoo it, rumple it, andtousle it, until the effect is to produce the aspect of a madwoman inone of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than theother, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largelyadopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. Asis well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear asses' ears;nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long, or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing, inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easilypurchased, admirably moulded in gutta-percha or some other plasticmaterial; they are delicately colored, fitted up with earrings and aspring apparatus, and they are then adjusted on to the head, thedespised natural ears being of course carefully hidden from view. 

It is long enough since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protectionto the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents thehead-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head andnape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds, portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnetcomposed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or threebutterflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third representedby five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white or spotted veil isthrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belongto the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight;and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, andstereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she hadstepped out of the green room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon, than from an English home. 

But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum ofdress and the maximum of brass. We remember a venerable old lady whoseideas of decorum were such that in her speech all above the foot wasankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom isless the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, andcharms that were once reserved are now made the common property of everylooker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock, a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honestliberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais, "nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same. " Not verylong ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. "Did youever see anything like that?" inquired one, with a significant glance, directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a ladyimmediately below. "Not since I was weaned, " was the suggestive reply. We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciouslyreproducing a well-known archiepiscopal _mot_. 

Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume isconcerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in thishighly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the Frenchpapers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the roombecause a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder, was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on herbosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress shouldhave consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental, would have been not less admirable and more effective. 

Of course there are women to whom nature has been niggardly in thematter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if theycannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:--"Autreexcentricité. C'est l'invention des _poitrines adhérentes_ à l'usagedes dames trop éthérées. Il s'agit d'un système en caoutchouc rose, quis'adapte à la place vide comme une ventouse à, la peau, et qui suit lesmouvements de la respiration avec une précision mathématique etparfaite. "

Of those limbs which it is still forbidden to expose absolutely, theform and contour can at least be put in relief by insisting on theskirts being gored and straightened to the utmost; indeed, some of theriding-habits we have seen worn are in this respect so contrived that, when viewed from behind, especially when the wearer is not of toofairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers ratherthan the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becomingto a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all theseadventitious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullnessthereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuousdevelopment of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be eithernatural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the nextpoint of ambition with which the female mind has become inspired. 

The women who are not as those who love their lords wish to be--indeed, as we have heard, those who have no lords of their own to love--haveconceived the notion that, by simulating an "interesting condition" (weselect the phrase accepted as the most delicate), they will add to theirattractions; and for this purpose an article of toilet--an india-rubberanterior bustle--called the _demi-temps_, has been invented, and is wornbeneath the dress, nominally to make the folds fall properly, but inreality, as the name betrays, to give the appearance of a woman advancedin pregnancy. 

No person will be found to say that the particular condition, when real, is unseemly or ridiculous. What it is when assumed, and for such apurpose--whether it is not all that and something worse--we leave ourreaders to decide for themselves. It is said that one distinguishedpersonage first employed crinoline in order to render more graceful herappearance while in this situation; but these ladies with theirridiculous _demi-temps_, without excuse as without shame, travestynature in their own persons in a way which a low-comedy actress would beashamed to do in a tenth-rate theatre. The name is French, let us hopethe idea is also; and this reminds us of the title of a little piecelately played in Paris by amateurs for some charitable purpose--_Il n'ya plus d'enfants. _ No; in France they may indeed say, "It is true _iln'y a plus d'enfants_, but then have we not invented the _demi-temps_?"

And if each separate point of female attire and decoration is a sham, sothe whole is often a deception and a fraud. It is not true that bytaking thought one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, for ladies, bytaking thought about it, do add, if not a cubit, at least considerably, to their height, which, like almost everything about them, is oftenunreal. With high heels, _toupé_, and hat, we may calculate that aboutfour or five inches are altogether borrowed for the occasion. Thus itcomes to be a grave matter of doubt, when a man marries, how much isreal of the woman who has become his wife, or how much of her is her ownonly in the sense that she has bought, and possibly may have paid forit. To use the words of an old writer, "As with rich furred conies, their cases are far better than their bodies; and, like the bark of acinnamon-tree, which is dearer than the whole bulk, their outwardaccoutrements are far more precious than their inward endowments. "

Of the wife elect, her bones, her debts, and her caprices may be theonly realities which she can bestow on her husband. All the rest--hair, teeth, complexion, ears, bosom, figure, including the _demi-temps_--arealike an imposition and a falsehood. In such case we should recommend, for the sake of both parties, that during at least the wedding-tour, thesame precautions should be observed as when Louis XV. Travelled with"the unblushing Chateauroux with her bandboxes and rougepots at hisside, so that at every new station a wooden gallery had to be run upbetween their lodgings. "

It may be said that in all this we are ungenerous and ungrateful, andthat in discussing the costume of women we are touching on a questionwhich pertains to women more than to men. But is that so? Are we not bythus exposing what is false, filthy, and meretricious, seeking to leadwhat was once dignified by the name of "the fair sex" from a coursealike unbecoming and undignified to one more worthy of the sex and itsattributes? Most men like to please women, and most women like to pleasemen. For, as has been well said, "Pour plaire aux femmes il faut êtreconsidéré des hommes, et pour être considéré des hommes il faut savoirplaire aux femmes. "

We have a right to suppose that women do not adopt a fashion or acostume unless they suppose that it will add to their attractions ingeneral, and possibly also please men in particular. This being so, itmay be well to observe that these fashions do not please or attract men, for we know they are but the inventions of some vulgar, selfish_perruquier_ or _modiste_. We may add that if we want to study the nudewe can do so in the sculpture galleries, or among the Tableaux Vivants, at our ease; and that for well-bred or well-educated and well-bornwomen, or even for only fashionable and fast women, to approximate intheir manners, habits, and dress to the members of the _demi-monde_ is amistake, and a grievous one, if they wish to be really and adequatelyappreciated by men whose good opinion, if not more, they would desire topossess. 

THE FADING FLOWER. 

If there is any part of man's conduct which proves more conclusivelythan another the baseness of his ingratitude, it is his indifference tothe Fading Flower. Woman may well wonder at the charm which prostratesthe heavy Guardsman at the feet of the belle of the season. Even themost ardent of worshippers at such a shrine must, one would think, desire in their deity a little more sweetness and light. But the beautyof eighteen summers is trained to look on worship as simply her due, andto regard amiability as a mere superfluity. She knows she can summon anadorer by one beckon of her fan, and dismiss him by another. A bow willrepay the most finished of pretty speeches, and conversation can beconducted at the least possible expense by the slight trouble ofrecollecting who was at Lady A. 's ball, and the yet slighter trouble ofguessing who is likely to be at Lady C. 's. 

It is utterly needless to bestow any labor on society when society takesit as a crowning favor to be suffered simply to adore. There is acertain grandeur, therefore, of immobility about the English beauty, astatuesque perfection which no doubt has great merits of its own. But itmust be owned that it is not amusing, and that it is only the intensityof our worship which saves us from feeling it to be dull. Beauty is aptto be a little heavy on the stairs. A shade of distress flits over theloveliest of faces if we stray for a moment beyond the happyhunting-grounds of the ball-room or the Opera, the last Academy or thenext Horticultural. Beautiful beings are made, they feel, not to amuse, but to be amused. The one object of their enthusiasm is the "funnyBishop" who turns a great debate into a jest for the entertainment ofhis fair friends in the Ladies' Gallery. The object of their socialpreference is the young wit who lounges up to tell his last littlestory, and then, without boring them for a reply, lounges away again. The debt which they owe to society is simply the morning ride whichkeeps them blooming through the season. The debt which society owes tothem is that eternal succession of gay nothings which keeps London in awhirl till the grouse are ready for the sacrifice. In a word, woman inher earlier stages is simply receptive. 

Light and sweetness come in with the Fading Flower. It is when the shyretreat of the elder sons makes way for the shyer approach of theiryounger brothers that woman becomes fragrant and intelligent. The oldindifference quickens into a subdued vivacity; Hermione descends fromher pedestal and warms into flesh and blood. She turns chatty, and herchat insensibly deepens into conversation. She discovers a new interestin life and in the last novel of the season. She ventures on theconfines of poetry, and if she does not read Mr. Tennyson's _Lucretius_, she keeps his photograph in her album. She flings herself with a fargreater ardor into the mysteries of croquet. She has been known togarden. As petal after petal floats down to earth she becomes artistic. She reads, she talks Mr. Ruskin. She has her own views on Venice and itsDoges, her enthusiasm over Alps and artisans. The slow approach ofautumn brings her to politics. She is deep in Mr. Disraeli's novels, andquotes Mr. Gladstone's Homer. She speculates on Charlie's chances forthe county. She knows why the Home Secretary was absent from the lastdivision. The drop of another petal warns her further afield. She ismanly now; she comes in at breakfast with her hair about her ears, and atale of the gallop she has had across country. She takes you over thefarm, and laughs at your ignorance of pigs. She peeps into theodoriferous sanctum upstairs, and owns to a taste for cigarettes. She isslightly horsey, and knows to a pound the value of her mare. Anotherseason, and she is interested in Church questions, and inquires what isthe next "new thing" at St. Andrew's. She adores Lord Shaftesbury, orworks frontals for St. Gogmagog. She collects for the Irish missions, ormisses an _entrée_ on Eves. It is only as woman fades that we realizethe versatility, the inexhaustible resources, of woman. 

The one scene, however, where the Fading Flower is perhaps seen at herbest is the County Archæological Meeting. Of all rural delusions this isperhaps the pleasantest, and if the name is forbidding, the FadingFlower knows how little there is in a name. About half a dozen oldgentlemen, of course, take the thing in grand earnest. It is beyondmeasure amusing to peep over the learned Secretary's shoulder, to seethe gray heads wagging and the spectacles in full play over the list ofpromised papers, to watch the carefully planned details, the solemnarray of morning meetings, the grave excursions from abbey to castle, from castle to church, the graver soirées where Dryasdust revels amidstarmor and knicknackery. It is even more amusing to see the Fading Flowerstep in at the close of this learned preparation, and with a woman'salchemy turn all this dust to gold. A little happy audacity converts themorning meetings into convenient gatherings for the groups of the day, the excursion resolves itself into a refined picnic, the learned soiréebecomes a buzzing conversazione. 

Those who look forward with interest to woman's entrance into ourUniversities may gather something of the results to be expected fromsuch a step in the fields of rural archæology. Her very presence at themeeting throws an air of gentle absurdity over the whole affair. It isdifficult for the driest of antiquaries to read a paper on Roman roadsin the teeth of a charming being who sleeps to the close, and thenawakes only to assure him it was "very romantic. " But it must beconfessed that the charming being has very little trouble with theantiquaries. Half the fun of the thing lies in the ease and grace of hertaming of Dryasdust; the learned Professor dies at her touch into "adear delightful old thing, " and fetches and carries all day with aperfect obedience. It is a delightful change from town, a sort ofglorified afternoon in a pastoral Zoological, this junketing among thequeer unclubbable animals of science and history. There is a nobledisdain of rheumatism in the ardor with which they plunge into the darkand mysterious vaults where their willful student insists, with Mr. Froude, that those poor monks snatched their damp and difficult slumber;and there is a noble disdain of truth in their suppression of thetreacherous and unsentimental "beer-cellar" which trembles on theirlips. 

Woman, in fact, carries her atmosphere of romantic credulity into thegray and arid scepticism of a groping archæology. She frowns down anysuggestion of the improbability of a pretty story, she believes in thepoison-sucking devotion of Queen Eleanor, she shrugs her shouldersimpatiently at a whisper of Queen Mary's wig. Every kitchen becomes atorture-chamber, every drain a subterranean passage. But resolute as sheis on this point of the poetry of the past, on all other questions sheis the most docile of pupils. Her interest, her listening power, hercuriosity, is inexhaustible. If she has a passion, indeed, it is forEarly English. But she has a proper awe for Romanesque, and a singularinterest in Third Pointed. She is ruthless in insisting on her victim'sspelling out every word of a brass in Latin that she cannot understand, and which he cannot translate. She collects little fragments of Romanbrick, and wraps them up in tissue-paper for preservation at home likebride-cake. She is severe on restoration, and merciless on whitewash. She plunges, in fact, gallantly into the spirit of the thing, but shegracefully denudes it of its bareness and pedantry. Her bugle singstruce at midday for luncheon. She couches in the deep grass of the abbeyruins, and gathers in picturesque groups beneath castle walls. A flutterof silks, a ripple of feminine laughter, distract the audience fromgraver disquisitions. It is difficult to discuss the exact date of amoulding when soda-water bottles are popping beneath one's antiquariannose. 

After all, archæologists are men, and sandwiches are sandwiches. It isat that moment perhaps that the Fading Flower is at her best. Her waningattractions are heightened artistically by the background of old fogies. Her sentiment blends with the poetry of the ruins around. The youngsquire, the young parson, who have been yawning under the prose ofDryasdust, find refreshment in the gay prattle of archæological woman. The sun too is overpowering, and a pretty woman leaning on one's arm inthe leafy recesses of a ruined castle is sometimes more overpoweringthan the sun. There is much in the romance of the occasion. There is alittle perhaps in the champagne. At any rate the Fading Flower bloomsoften into matronly life under the kindly influences of archæologicalmeetings, and antiquarian studies flourish gaily under the patronage ofwoman. 

There is a certain melancholy in tracing further the career of theFading Flower. We long to arrest it at each of these picturesque stages, as we long to arrest the sunset in its lovelier moments of violet andgold. But the sunset dies into the gray of eve, and woman sets with thesame fatal persistency. The evanescent tints fade into the gray. Womanbecomes hard, angular, colorless. Her floating sentiment, so graceful inits mobility, curdles into opinions. Her conversation, so charminglyimpalpable, solidifies into discussion. Her character, like her face, becomes rigid and osseous. She entrenches herself in the 'ologies. Sheworks pinafores for New-Zealanders in the May Meetings, and appears inwondrous bonnets at the Church Congress. She adores Mr. Kingsley becausehe is earnest, and groans over the triviality of the literature of theday. She takes up the grievances of her sex, and badgers the puzzledoverseer who has omitted to place her name on the register. Shepronounces old men fogies, and young men intolerable. She throws outdark hints of her intention to compose a great work which shall settleeverything. Then she bursts into poetry, and pens poems of so fiery apassion that her family are in consternation lest she should elope withthe half-pay officer who meets her by moonlight on the pier. Then sheplunges into science, and cuts her hair short to be in proper trim forProfessor Huxley's lectures. 

For awhile she startles her next neighbor at dinner with speculations onmolluscs, and questions as to the precise names of the twelve hundrednew species of fish that Professor Agassiz has caught in the riverOrinoco. There is a more terrible stage when she becomes heretical, subscribes to the support of Mr. Tonneson and pities the poor Bishop ofNatal. But from this she is commonly saved by the deepening of eve. Little by little all this restless striving against the monotony of herexistence dies down into calm. The gray of life hushes the Fading Flowerinto the kindly aunt, the patient nurse, the gentle friend of the poor. It is hard to recognise the proud beauty, the vivacious flirt, thesentimental poetess of days gone by in the practical little woman whowatches by Harry's sick-bed or hurries off with blankets and broth downthe lane. In some such peace the Fading Flower commonly finds herrest--a peace unromantic, utilitarian, and yet not perhaps unbeautiful. She has found--as she tells us--her work at last; and yet in the lifethat seems so profitless she has been doing a work after all. She has atany rate vindicated her sex against the charge of what Mr. Arnold callsHebraism. She has displayed in Hellenic roundness the completeness ofthe nature of woman. 

Compared with the quick transitions, with the endless variety of herlife, the life of man seems narrow and poor. There is hardly a phase ofhuman thought, of human action, which she has not touched, and she hasnever touched but to adorn. If she has faded, she has revealed a newpower and beauty and fragrance at each stage in her decay. Nothing inher life has proved so becoming as her leaving it. The song ofingenuity, of triumph, of defence, which has run along the course of herdecline, softens at its close into a swan-song of peace and gentlenessand true womanhood. 

LA FEMME PASSÉE. 

Without doubt it is a time of trial to all women, more or less painfulaccording to individual disposition, when they first begin to grow oldand lose their good looks. Youth and beauty make up so much of theirpersonal value, so much of their natural _raison d'être_, that whenthese are gone many feel as if their whole career was at an end, and asif nothing was left to them now that they are no longer young enough tobe loved as girls are loved, or pretty enough to be admired as once theywere admired. For women of a certain position have so little wholesomeoccupation, and so little ambition for anything, save, indeed, thatmiserable thing called "getting on in society, " that they cannot changetheir way of life with advancing years; they do not attempt to findinterest in things outside themselves, and independent of the merepersonal attractiveness which in youth constituted their whole pleasureof existence. This is essentially the case with fashionable women, whohave staked their all on appearance, and to whom good looks are of moreaccount than noble deeds; and, accordingly, the struggle to remain youngis a frantic one with them, and as degrading as it is frantic. 

With the ideal woman of middle age--that pleasant woman, with her happyface and softened manner, who unites the charms of both epochs, retaining the ready responsiveness of youth while adding the widersympathies of experience--with her there has never been any suchstruggle to make herself an anachronism. Consequently she remainsbeautiful to the last, far more beautiful than all the paste and washesin Madame Rachel's shop could make her. Sometimes, if rarely in theselatter days, we meet her in society, where she carries with her anatmosphere of her own--an atmosphere of honest, wholesome truth andlove, which makes every one who enters it better and purer for the time. All children and all young persons love her, because she understands andloves them. For she is essentially a mother--that is, a woman who canforget herself, who can give without asking to receive, and who, withoutlosing any of the individualism which belongs to self-respect, can yetlive for and in the lives of others, and find her best joy in thewell-being of those about her. There is no servility, no exaggeratedsacrifice in this; it is simply the fulfillment of woman's highestduty--the expression of that grand maternal instinct which need notnecessarily include the fact of personal maternity, but which must findutterance in some line of unselfish action with all women worthy of thename. 

The ideal woman of middle age understands the young because she haslived with them. If a mother, she has performed her maternal duties withcheerfulness and love. There has been no giving up her nursery to thecare of a hired servant who is expected to do for twenty pounds a yearwhat the tremendous instinct of a mother's love could not find strengthto do. When she had children, she attended to them in great partherself, and learnt all about their tempers, their maladies, and thebest methods of management; as they grew up she was still the bestfriend they had, the Providence of their young lives who gave them bothcare and justice, both love and guidance. Such a manner of life hasforced her to forget herself. When her child lay ill, perhaps dying, shehad no heart and no time to think of her own appearance, and whetherthis dressing-gown was more becoming than that; and what did the doctorthink of her with her hair pushed back from her face; and what a frightshe must have looked in the morning light after her sleepless night ofwatching. The world and all its petty pleasures and paltry pains fadedaway in the presence of the stern tragedy of the hour; and not thefinest ball of the season seemed to be worth a thought compared to theall-absorbing question whether her child slept after his draught andwhether he ate his food with better appetite. 

And such a life, in spite of all its cares, has kept her young as wellas unselfish; we should rather say, young because unselfish. As shecomes into the room with her daughters, her kindly face unpolluted bypaint, her dress picturesque or fashionable according to her taste, butdecent in form and consistent in tone with her age, it is oftenremarked that she looks more like their sister than their mother. Thisis because she is in harmony with her age, and has not, therefore, putherself in rivalry with them; and harmony is the very keystone ofbeauty. Her hair may be streaked with white, the girlish firmness andtransparency of her skin has gone, the pearly clearness of her eye isclouded, and the slender grace of line is lost, but for all that she isbeautiful, and she is intrinsically young. What she has lost in outsidematerial charm--in that mere _beauté da diable_ of youth--she has gainedin character and expression; and, not attempting to simulate theattractiveness of a girl, she keeps what nature gave her--theattractiveness of middle age. And as every epoch has its own beauty, ifwoman would but learn that truth, she is as beautiful now as a matron offifty, because in harmony with her years, and because her beauty hasbeen carried on from matter to spirit, as she was when a maiden ofsixteen. This is the ideal woman of middle age, met with even yet attimes in society--the woman whom all men respect, whom all women envy, and wonder how she does it, and whom all the young adore, and wish theyhad for an elder sister or an aunt. And the secret of it all lies intruth, in love, in purity, and in unselfishness. 

Standing far in front of this sweet and wholesome idealization is _lafemme passée_ of to-day--the reality as we meet with it at balls andfêtes and afternoon at homes, ever foremost in the mad chase afterpleasure, for which alone she seems to think she has been sent into theworld. Dressed in the extreme of youthful fashion, her thinning hairdyed and crimped and fired till it is more like red-brown tow than hair, her flaccid cheeks ruddled, her throat whitened, her bust displayed withunflinching generosity, as if beauty was to be measured by cubic inches, her lustreless eyes blackened round the lids, to give the semblance oflimpidity to the tarnished whites--perhaps the pupil dilated bybelladonna, or perhaps a false and fatal brilliancy for the moment givenby opium, or by eau de cologne, of which she has a store in hercarriage, and drinks as she passes from ball to ball; no kindly draperyof lace or gauze to conceal the breadth of her robust maturity, or tosoften the dreadful shadows of her leanness--there she stands, thewretched creature who will not consent to grow old, and who will stillaffect to be like a fresh coquettish girl when she is nothing but _lafemme passée, la femme passée et ridicule_ into the bargain. 

There is not a folly for which even the thoughtlessness of youth is buta poor excuse into which she, in all the plenitude of her abundantexperience, does not plunge. Wife and mother as she may be, she flirtsand makes love as if an honorable issue was as open to her as to herdaughter, or as if she did not know to what end flirting and making lovelead in all ages. If we watch the career of such a woman, we see how, byslow but very sure degrees, she is obliged to lower the standard of heradorers, and to take up at last with men of inferior social position, who are content to buy her patronage by their devotion. To the best menof her own class she can give nothing that they value; so she barterswith snobs, who go into the transaction with their eyes open, and takethe whole affair as a matter of exchange, and _quid pro quo_ rigidlyexacted. Or she does really dazzle some very young and low born man whois weak as well as ambitious, and who thinks the fugitive regard of amiddle-aged woman of high rank something to be proud of and boastedabout. That she is as old as his own mother--at this moment sellingtapes behind a village counter, or gathering up the eggs in a countryfarm--tells nothing against the association with him; and the woman whobegan her career of flirtation with the son of a duke ends it with theson of a shopkeeper, having between these two terms spanned all theseveral degrees of degradation which lie between giving and buying. 

She cannot help herself; for it is part of the insignia of herartificial youth to have the reputation of a love affair, or thepretence of one, if even the reality is a mere delusion. When such awoman as this is one of the matrons, and consequently one of the leadersof society, what can we expect from the girls? What worse example couldbe given to the young? When we see her with her own daughters we feelinstinctively that she is the most disastrous adviser they could have;and when in the company of girls or young married women not belonging toher, we doubt whether we ought not to warn their natural guardiansagainst allowing such associations, for all that her standing in societyis undeniable, and not a door is shut against her. We may have noabsolutely tangible reason to give for our distaste beyond theself-evident facts that she paints her face and dyes her hair, dressesin a very _decolleté_ style, and affects a girlish manner that is out ofharmony with her age and condition. But though we cannot formularizereasons, we have instincts; and sometimes instinct sees more clearlythan reason. 

What good in life does this kind of woman do? All her time is taken up, first, in trying to make herself look twenty or thirty years youngerthan she is, and then in trying to make others believe the same; and shehas neither thought nor energy to spare from this, to her, far moreimportant work than is feeding the hungry or nursing the sick, rescuingthe fallen or soothing the sorrowful. The final cause of her existenceseems to be the impetus she has given to a certain branch of trademanufacture--unless we add to this, the corruption of society. For whom, but for her, are the "little secrets" which are continually beingadvertised as woman's social salvation--regardless of grammar! The "eauxnoire, brun, et châtain, which dyes the hair any shade in one minute;"the "kohhl for the eyelids;" the "blanc de perle, " and "rouge deLubin"--which does not wash off; the "bleu pour les veines;" the "rougeof eight shades, " and "the sympathetic blush, " which are cynicallyoffered for the use and adoption of our mothers and daughters, findtheir chief patroness in the _femme passée_ who makes herself up--themiddle-aged matron engaged in her frantic struggle against time, andobstinately refusing to grow old in spite of all that nature may say ordo. 

Bad as the girl of the period often is, this horrible travesty of hervices in the modern matron is even worse. Indeed, were it not for her, the girls would never have gone to such lengths as those to which theyhave gone; for elder women have naturally immense influence over youngerones, and if mothers were to set their faces resolutely against thefollies of the day, daughters would and must give in. As it is, they goeven ahead of the young, and by example on the one hand and rivalry onthe other, sow the curse of corruption broadcast where they were meantto have only a pure influence and to set a wise example. Were it not forthose who still remain faithful, women who regard themselves asappointed by God the trustees for humanity and virtue, the world wouldgo to ruin forthwith; but so long as the five righteous are left we havehope, and a certain amount of security for the future, when the presentdisgraceful madness of society shall have subsided. 

PRETTY PREACHERS. 

To beings of the rougher sex--let us honestly confess it--one of themost charming of those ever-recurrent surprises which the commonestincidents of the holidays never fail to afford is the surprise offinding themselves at church. Whatever the cause may be, whether we oweour new access of devotion to the early breakfast and the boredom of abachelor morning, or to the moral compulsion of the cunning display ofprayer-books and hymnals in the hall, or to the temptation of thatchattiest and gayest of all walks--the walk to church--or to an uneasyconscience that spurs us to set a good example to the coachman, or to asheer impulse of courtesy to the rector, certain it is that a week afterwe have been lounging at the club-window, and wondering how all the goodpeople get through their Sunday morning, we find ourselves safely boxedin the family pew, and chorusing the family "Amen!"

No doubt much of our new temper springs simply from the change of scene, and if the first week in the country were a time for self-analysis wemight amuse ourselves with observing what a sudden simplicity of tastemay be gained simply by a rush from town. There is a pleasant irony inbeing denounced from pulpit and platform as jaded voluptuaries, andthen finding ourselves able to trample through coppices and plunge intocowsheds as if we had never seen a cowshed or a coppice before. Butthere is more than the pleasure of surprise in the peculiar ruraldevelopment of attendance at church. Piety brings its own reward. Wefind ourselves invested with a new domestic interest, and brought intofar closer and warmer domestic relations. Mamma looks a great deal morebenignant than usual, and the girls lean on one's arm with a moretrustful confidence and a deeper sympathy. 

A new bond of family union has been found in that victory of the pewover the club-window. But earthly pleasure is always dashed with alittle disappointment, and one drop of bitterness lingers in the cup ofjoy. If only Charlie and papa would remain awake during the sermon! Theyare so good in the Psalms, so attentive through the Lessons, so sternlyresponsive to each Commandment, that it is sad to see them edgingtowards the comfortable corners with the text, and fast asleep under theapplication. Then, too, there is so little hope of reform, not merelybecause on this point men are utterly obdurate, but because it isimpossible for their reformers even to understand their obduracy. Forwith both the whole question is a pure question of sympathy. Men sleepunder sermons because the whole temper of their minds, as they grow intoa larger culture, drifts further and further from the very notion ofpreaching. Inquiry, quiet play of thought, a somewhat indolentappreciation of the various sides of every subject, an appetite fornovelty, a certain shrinking from the definite, a certain pleasure inthe vague--these characteristics of modern minds are hardlycharacteristics of the pulpit. There are, of course, your drawing-roomspouters, who can reel off an artistic or poetic or critical discourseof any length on the rug. But, as a rule, men neither like to pump upontheir kind nor to be pumped upon. They like a quiet, genial talk whichturns over everything and settles nothing. They like to put their case, to put their objection, but they like both to be brief and tentative. Asa rule they talk with their guard up, and say nothing about their deeperthoughts or feelings. They vote a man who airs his emotions to be asgreat a bore as the man with a dogma, or the man with a hobby. A sermon, therefore, from the very necessities of its structure, is the very typeof the sort of talk that revolts men most. 

On the other hand, women really enjoy preaching. Mamma's reply to thenatural inquiry as to the goodness of the sermon--"My dear, all sermonsare good"--is something more than a matronly snub, it is the innerconviction of woman. She likes, not merely a talk, but a good long talk. She likes being abused. She likes being dogmatized over andintellectually trampled on. In fact, she has very little belief in theintellect. But then she has an immense faith in the heart. She lives ina world of affections and sympathies. She has her little tale of passionin the past that she tells over to herself in the dusk of the autumnevening. She believes that the world at large is moved by those impulsesof love and dislike that play so great a part in her own. And then, too, she has her practical house-keeping side, and likes her religion done upin neat little parcels of "heads" and "considerations" and"applications, " and handed over the counter for immediate use. And sowhile papa quarrels with the rector's forty minutes, his indiscriminatecensure of a world utterly unknown to him, his declamation against Puseyor Colenso, or while Charlie laughs over his rhetoric and his sentiment, woman listens a little sadly and wearily, and longs for a golden agewhen husbands will love sermons and men understand clergymen. 

It is just from this theological deadlock that we are freed by thePretty Preacher. If the world laughs at the Reverend Olympia Brown, itis not because she preaches, but because she prisons herself in apulpit. The sure evidence that woman is to become the preacher of thefuture is that woman is the only preacher men listen to. It is hard toimagine any bribe short of the National Debt that would have induced usto listen through the dog-days of the last few weeks to the pantingrhetoric of Mr. Spurgeon. But it is harder to imagine the bribe thatwould have roused us to flight as we lay beneath the plane-tree, andlistened to the cool ripple of the Pretty Preacher. Of course it is amere phase in the life of woman, a short interval between the dawn andthe night. There is an exquisite piquancy in the raw, shy epigrams ofthe abrupt little dogmatist who is just out of her teens. Her very wantof training and science gives a novelty to her hits that makes herformidable in the ring. No doubt, too, as we have owned before, there isa faint and delicate attraction about the Fading Flower of later yearsthat at certain times and places makes it not impossible to sit underher. 

But the sphere of the Pretty Preacher lies really between theseextremes. She is not at war with mankind, like the nymph of bread andbutter; nor does mankind suspect her of subtle designs in her discourseas it suspects the elder homilist. Her talk is just as easy and gracefuland natural as herself, and, moreover, it is always in season. She neversuffers a serious reflection to interfere with the whirl of town. Shequite sees the absurdity of a sermon at a five o'clock tea. No one isfreer from the boredom of a long talk when there is a chance of a boator a ride. But there are moments when one is too hot, or too tired, ortoo lazy for chat or exertion, and such moments are the moments of thePretty Preacher. The first week of the holidays is especially her own. There is a physical pleasure in doing, thinking, saying nothing. Thehighest reach of human effort consists in disentangling a skein of silkfor her, or turning over Doré's hideous sketches for the Idyls. At sucha moment there is a freshness as of cool waters in the accents of thePretty Preacher. She does not plunge into the deepest themes at once. She leads her listener gently on, up the slopes of art or letters orpolitics, to the higher peaks where her purely dogmatic mission begins. She is artistic, and she labors to wake the idler at her feet to higherviews of beauty and art. She points out the tinting of the distanthills, she quotes Ruskin, she criticizes Millais. She crushes herauditor with a sense of his ignorance, of the base unpoetic view ofthings with which he lounged through the last Academy. What she longsfor in English art is nobleness of purpose, and we smile bitter scorn inthe sunshine at the ignoble artist who suffers a thought of hisbutcher's bills to penetrate into the studio. If we could only stretchthe Royal Academicians beside us on the grass, what a thrill and anemotion would run through those elderly gentlemen as they listened tothe indignation of the Pretty Preacher. 

But art shades off into literature, and literature into poetry. We aredriven into a confession that we enjoy the frivolous articles that thosehorrid papers have devoted to her sex. Is there nothing, the PrettyPreacher asks us solemnly, to be said against our own? And the sun ishot, and we are speechless. It was shameful of us to put down the_Spanish Gipsy_, and let it return unfinished to Mudie's! Never didrebuke so fill us with shame at our want of imagination and of poesy. But already the Preacher has passed to politics, and is deep in Mr. Mill's prophecies of coming events. She is severe on the triviality ofthe House, or the quarrelsome debates of the past Session. She passes byour murmured excuse of the weather, and dwells with a temperateenthusiasm on the fact that the next will be a social Parliament. Do weknow anything about the Poor-laws or Education or Trades'-societies?Have we subscribed to Mr. Mill's election? We plead poverty, but themiserable plea dies away on the contemptuous air. 

What our Pretty Preacher would like above all things would be to meetthat dear Mr. Shaw Lefevre, and thank him for his efforts to protectwoman. But she knows we are utterly heretical on the subject; she doubtsvery much whether we take in the _Victoria Magazine_. We listen as theTory Mayor of Birmingham listened to Mr. Bright at his banquet. Thepolitics are not ours, and the literature is not ours, and the art isnot ours; but it is pleasant to lie in the sunshine and hear it all socharmingly put by the Pretty Preacher. We own that sermons have a littleto say for themselves; above all, that the impossibility of replying tothem has its advantages in a case like this. It would be absurd todiscuss these matters with the Pretty Preacher, but it is delightful tolook up and see the kindling little face and listen to the sermon. 

It is, however, as the theologian proper, as the moralist and divine, that we love her most. She arrives at this peak at last. As a rule, shechooses the tritest topics, but she gives them a novelty and grace ofher own. Even Thackeray's old "Vanity of Vanities" wakes into new lifeas she dexterously couples it with the dances of the last season. We nodour applause from the grass as she denounces the worthlessness andfrivolity of the life we lead. If the weather were cool enough we shouldat once vow, as she exhorts us, to be earnest and great and good. Aboveall, let us be noble. The Pretty Preacher is great on self-sacrifice. She sent two of her spoilt dresses to those poor people in the East-end, after listening to a whole sermon on their sufferings. The congregationat her feet feels a twinge of remorse at the thought of his inhumanity, and swears he will put down his segars and devote the proceeds to theemigration fund. Does he ever read Keble? There is a slight struggle inthe unconverted mind, and a faint whisper that he now and then readsTupper; but it is too hot to be flippant, or to do more than sweareternal allegiance to the _Christian Year_. 

The evening deepens, and the sermon deepens with it. It is one of themost disgusting points about the divine in the pulpit that he is alwaysboasting of himself as a man like as we are, and of the sins hedenounces as sins of his own. It is the special charm of the fair divineabove us that she is eminently a being not as we are, but one serene, angelic, pure. It is the very vagueness of her condemnation that tellson us--the utter ignorance of what is so familiar to us that thevagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the hits, and the puritythat makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends toparticulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher--only when aburning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softensinto the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what _are_ theCider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of theindefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft thunders rollresistlessly overhead. 

But then they are soft thunders. We feel almost encouraged, like Luther, to "sin boldly" when the absolving fingers brush lightly over ourcousinly hair. Our censor, too, has faith in us, in our capacity andwill for better things, and it is amazingly pleasant to have theassurance confirmed by a squeeze from the gentle theologian's hand. Andso night comes down, and preacher and penitent stroll pleasantly hometogether, and mamma wonders where both can have been; and the PrettyPreacher lays her head on her pillow with the sweet satisfaction thather mission is accomplished, and that a reprobate soul--the soul, too, of such a gentlemanly and agreeable reprobate--is won. 

SPOILT WOMEN. 

Like children and all soft things, women are soon spoilt if subjected tounwholesome conditions. Sometimes the spoiling comes fromover-harshness, sometimes from over-indulgence; what we are speaking ofto-day is the latter condition--the spoiling which comes from beingpetted and given way to and indulged, till they think themselves betterthan everybody else, and as if living under laws made specially for themalone. Men get spoilt too in the same manner; but for the most partthere is a tougher fibre in them, which resists the flabby influences offlattery and exaggerated attention better than can the morale of theweaker sex; and, besides, even arbitrary men meet with opposition incertain directions, and the most self-contented social autocrat knowsthat his humblest adherents criticise though they dare not oppose. 

A man who has been spoilt by success and a gratified ambition, so thathe thinks himself a small Alexander in his own way, and able to conquerany obstacles which may present themselves, has a certain high-handedactivity of will about him that does not interfere with his duties inlife; he is not made fretful and impatient and exigeant as a womanis--as if he alone of all mankind is to be exempt from misfortune andannoyances; as if his friends must never die, his youth never fade, hiscircumstances run always smoothly, protected by the care of others fromall untoward hitch; and as if time and tide, which wait for no one else, are to be bound to him as humble servants dutifully observant of hiswishes. 

The useful art of "finding his level, " which he learnt at school and inhis youth generally, keeps him from any very weak manifestation of beingspoilt; save, indeed, when he has been spoilt by women at home, nursedup by an adoring wife, and a large circle of wife's sisters almost asadoring, to all of whom his smallest wishes are religious obligations, and his faintest virtues godly graces, and who vie with each other whichof them shall wait upon him most servilely, flatter him mostoutrageously, pet and coax and coddle him most entirely, and so do himthe largest amount of spiritual damage, and unfit him most thoroughlyfor the worth and work of masculine life. A man subjected to thisinsidious injury is simply ruined so far as any real manliness of naturegoes. He is made into that sickening creature, "a sweet being, " as thewomen call him--a woman's man, with flowing hair and a turn for poetry, full of highflown sentiment, and morbidly excited sympathies; a manalmost as much woman as man, who has no backbone of ambition in him, butwho puts his whole life into love, just as women do, and who becomes atlast emphatically not worth his salt. 

Bad as it is for a man to be _kowtowed_ by men, it is not so bad, because not so weakening, as the domestic idolatry which sometimes goeson when one man is the centre of a large family of women, and the onlyobject upon which the natural feminine instinct can expend itself. Nogreater damage can be done to a man than is done by this kind ofdomestic idolatry. But, in truth, the evil is too pleasant to beresisted; and there is scarcely a man so far master of himself as towithstand the subtle intoxication, the sweet and penetrating poison, ofwoman's tender flattery and loving submission. To at certain extent itis so entirely the right thing, because it is natural and instinctive, that it is difficult to draw the line and map out exactly the divisionbetween right and wrong, pleasantness and harmfulness, and where lovingsubmission ends and debasing slavishness begins. 

Spoilt women are spoilt mainly from a like cause--over-attention frommen. A few certainly are to be found, as pampered daughters, withindulgent mammas and subservient aunts given up wholly to ruining theiryoung charge with the utmost despatch possible; but this iscomparatively a rare form of the disease, and one which a littlewholesome matrimonial discipline would soon cure. For it is seldom thata petted daughter becomes a spoilt wife, human affairs having thatmarvellous power of compensation, that inevitable tendency to readjustthe balance, which prevents the continuance of a like excess underdifferent forms. 

Besides, a spoilt daughter generally makes such a supremely unpleasantwife that the husband has no inducement to continue the mistake, andtherefore either lowers her tone by a judicious exhibition of snubbing, or, if she is aggressive as well as unpleasant, leaves her to fight withher shadows in the best way she can, glad for his own part to escape thestrife she will not forego. One characteristic of the spoilt woman isher impatience of anything like rivalry. She never has a femalefriend--certainly not one of her own degree, and not one at all in thetrue sense of the word. Friendship presupposes equality, and a spoiltwoman knows no equality. She has been so long accustomed to considerherself as the lady-paramount that she cannot understand it if any onesteps in to share her honors and divide her throne. 

To praise the beauty of any other woman, to find her charming, or to payher the attention due to a charming woman, is to insult our spoiltdarling, and to slight her past forgiveness. If there is only one goodthing, it must be given to her--the first seat, the softest cushion, themost protected situation; and she looks for the best of all things as ifnaturally consecrated from her birth into the sunshine of life, and asif the "cold shade" which may do for others were by no means the portionallotted to her. It is almost impossible to make the spoilt womanunderstand the grace or the glory of sacrifice. By rare good fortune shemay sometimes be found to possess an indestructible germ of consciencewhich sorrow and necessity can develop into active good; but onlysometimes. The spoilt woman _par excellence_ understands only her ownvalue, only her own merits and the absolutism of her own requirements;and sacrifice, self-abnegation, and the whole class of virtues belongingto unselfishness are as much unknown to her as is the Decalogue in theoriginal, or the squaring of the circle. 

The spoilt woman as the wife of an unsuccessful husband or the mother ofsickly children is a pitiable spectacle. If it comes to her to beobliged to sacrifice her usual luxuries, to make an old gown serve whena new one is desired, to sit up all night watching by the sick bed, towitness the painful details of illness, perhaps of death, to meethardship face to face, and to bend her back to the burden of sorrow, sheis at the first absolutely lost. Not the thing to be done, but her owndiscomfort in doing it, is the one master idea--not others' needs, buther own pain in supplying them, the great grief of the moment. Many arethe hard lessons set us by life and fate, but the hardest of all is thatgiven to the spoilt woman when she is made to think for others ratherthan for herself, and is forced by the exigencies of circumstances tosacrifice her own ease for the greater necessities of her kind. 

All that large part of the perfect woman's nature which expresses itselfin serving is an unknown function to the spoilt woman. She must bewaited on, but she cannot in her turn serve even the one or two sheloves. She is the woman who calls her husband from one end of the roomto the other to put down her cup, rather than reach out her arm and putit down for herself; who, however weary he may be, will bid him get upand ring the bell, though it is close to her own hand, and her longestwalk during the day has been from the dining-room to the drawing-room. It is not that she cannot do these small offices for herself, but thatshe likes the feeling of being waited on and attended to; and it is notfor love--and the amiable if weak pleasure of attracting the notice ofthe beloved--it is just for the vanity of being a little somebody forthe moment, and of playing off the small regality involved in theprocedure. She would not return the attention. 

Unlike the Eastern women, who wait on their lords, hand and foot, andwho place their highest honor in their lowliest service, the spoiltwoman of Western life knows nothing of the natural grace of womanlyserving for love, for grace, or for gratitude. This kind of thing ispeculiarly strong among the _demi-monde_ of the higher class, and amongwomen who are not of the _demi-monde_ by station, but by nature. Therespect they cannot command by their virtues they demand in thesimulation of manner; and perhaps no women are more tenacious of theoutward forms of deference than those who have lost their claim to thevital reality. 

It is very striking to see the difference between the women of thistype, the _petites maîtresses_ who require the utmost attention andalmost servility from man, and the noble dignity of service which thepure woman can afford to give--which she finds, indeed, that it belongsto the very purity and nobleness of her womanhood to give. It is the oldstory of the ill-assured position which is afraid of its own weakness, and the security which can afford to descend--the rule holding good forother things besides mere social place. 

Another characteristic of the spoilt woman is the changeableness andexcitability of her temper. All suavity and gentleness and delightfulgaiety and perfect manners when everything goes right, she startles youby her outburst of petulance when the first cross comes. If no man is ahero to his valet, neither is a spoilt woman a heroine to her maid; andthe lady who has just been the charm of the drawing-room, upstairs inher boudoir makes her maid go through spiritual exercises to whichwalking on burning ploughshares is the only fit analogy. A length oflace unstarched, a ribbon unsewed, a flower set awry, anything thatcrumples only one of the myriad rose-leaves on which she lies, and thespoilt woman raves as much as if each particular leaf had becomesuddenly beset with thorns. 

If a dove was to be transformed to a hawk the change would not be morecomplete, more startling, than that which occurs when the spoilt womanof well-bred company manners puts off her mask to her maid, and showsher temper over trifles. Whoever else may suffer the grievances of life, she cannot understand that she also must be at times one of thesufferers with the rest; and if by chance the bad moment comes, theperson accompanying it has a hard time of it. There are spoilt womenalso who have their peculiar exercises in thought and opinion, and whocannot suffer that any one should think differently from themselves, orfind those things sacred which to them are accursed. They will hearnothing but what is in harmony with themselves, and they take it as apersonal insult when men or women attempt to reason with them, or evenhold their own without flinching. 

This kind is to be found specially among the more intellectual of afamily or a circle; women who are pronounced "clever" by their friends, and who have been so long accustomed to think themselves clever thatthey have become spoilt mentally as others are personally, and fancythat minds and thoughts must follow in their direction, just as eyes andhands must follow and attend their sisters. The spoilt woman of themental kind is a horrid nuisance generally. She is greatly given tolarge discourse; but discourse of a kind that leans all to one side, andthat denies the right of any one to criticise, doubt, or contradict, isan intellectual Tower of Pisa under the shadow of which it is notpleasant to live. 

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Words in italics in the original are surrounded by _underscores_. 

The following words appear with and without hyphens. They have been leftas in the original. 

 ball-room ballroom business-like businesslike hearth-rug hearthrug house-keeper housekeeper house-keeping housekeeping man-like manlike now-a-days nowadays over-head overhead

Variations in spelling have been left as in the original. Examplesinclude the following:

 center/centre learned/learnt spoiled/spoilt

The following corrections have been made to the text:

 Page xi: INTRODUCTION, 13[original has 5]

 Page 48: slink away from a bantam[original has bantum] hen

 Page 67: you[original has vou] go in for this sort

 Page 129: sheer force of genius[original has genuis]

 Page 161: some out-of-the-way[original has out-of-the way] corner

 Page 220: exhausts itself in a declaration[original has delaration] of revolt

 Page 269: ignorant of contemporary[original is split across lines after con but hyphen is missing] fashions

 Page 303: following the [original has the the] same extravagance

 Page 332: torture it until it[original has is] has about as much life

The following words use an oe ligature in the original:

 manoeuvred outmanoeuvring Oedipus Phoenician

In the phrase, "white-armed, large-limbed Here", the original hasmacrons over both of the vowels in "Here". 

Ellipses match the original.