the women are industrial too they will have no sufficient common interests with the men. He thinks if women thronged the markets and the exchanges, overlooked the mills, navigated the ships, they would have something to talk about to their brothers and husbands, and that men and women would cease to occupy different corners of the room at evening parties. He thinks public spirit would increase; and that there would be fewer bankruptcies if ladies made up their husbands' ledgers. If young people would discuss the price of stocks and the prospects of the iron trade, there would be less idle flirtation, and proposals for marriage would be based upon more solid grounds of preference than "a fascinating manner or a taking look," which he assumes to be their sole foundation as things are now arranged.

Man, we are told, comes in jaded and harassed with the cares of the day, and wearied by incessant occupation in practical affairs. What does he want? Rest. Yes; but rather intellectual relaxation. Strange remedy, to provide him a wife and daughters who shall be able to discuss with him the chances of Great-Westerns recovering, or calculate the price at which it is safe to invest in leasehold houses: these being ladies too who, it is to be remembered, ought to come in equally jaded with himself. Is it not rather to be wished that men should aim at a scope of thought beyond the details of their daily avocations; that they should be familiar with higher interests, and think them worth some sacrifice of small ambitions; and that they should seek their relaxation from the unavoidable labour of earning a livelihood, not in talking over their pursuits, or in a state of mental stupefaction like that of an overgorged boa-constrictor, but in a change of mental pursuits which may give increased width and power to the mind, and may at once refresh and animate? If it be unwise for a lawyer to associate only with lawyers, priests with priests, and women with women,-if college dons grow dull and narrow, and

tradesmen ineffectually muddle their brains in their clubs, then it surely must be unwise to carry into our homes the atmosphere of our shops.

Then the old idea is still true, that it is just in her position, aloof in some degree from the sweat and turmoil of life, from the harassing and exhausting struggles of daily bread-winning, that the woman finds her truest sphere. The deeper the man is drawn into the strife, the more important it is that the woman should stand outside it then, when the day's work is over, she helps him to rise into a higher atmosphere; then it should be his endeavour to draw near to her. But to profit fully by the opportunities which intercourse with women affords for clearing our mental weather and elevating and refining our tone of thought, we must strive on our side to approach them, to gain something of their facility of apprehension, their power of holding the thought lightly in hand, of using the intellect readily and gracefully, and on subjects close at hand and not necessarily either immediately useful or immensely important; we must get rid of the notion that they are always wrong when they move too fast for us, and that they were created to be defeated in argument and to be reproached for not seeing that they are defeated. We must cease to claim a superiority for having once known and since forgotten Greek and Latin, and learn how much food for discussion and intellectual intercourse is to be found in the literature of modern Europe. Women perhaps study accomplishments too much; men Englishmen at least certainly study them too little. It is all very well for Thompson to think he is solid, and above that sort of thing; the wife of his bosom knows and assiduously conceals the real fact that he is stupid and unequal to it. Brown is a reserved Briton; that is, he is totally incapable of conversation. Most Englishmen are disgracefully ignorant of music. It is not because they have no time that married women give up "playing," it is because

their husbands are quite unable to appreciate it, and take no real pleasure in it. The fact is, that in the industrial classes of the middle rank education is quite as defective among the men as among the women; and it is the want of cultivation and width of mind on both sides which narrows their intercourse. The men ought to possess and tenaciously to keep their hold upon intellectual resources and interests apart from the groove of their daily occupations, and perhaps as widely as possible contrasted with these; and it is in the society of women (not necessarily, as it is too apt to be presumed, those of their own family) that they will most naturally seek and most effectually find support and assistance.

Nor is it necessary even for the discussion of business itself, when occasion calls for it, that a sensible woman should ever have been familiar with its details; still less is this necessary to the exchange of thought on questions of social economy or politics, in which, though women will rarely broach wide views of their own, they will often suggest considerations which will very much widen the views of men. It is said that the habitual intervention of women in business would soften its asperities and raise its morality. We don't the least believe this. A priori, we should say that the disposition of women to give too high a place to the personal interests with which matters are interwoven, and to attach an exaggerated importance to the aspects of things immediately before them, would make them less scrupulous in pushing advantages, and less constantly open to the claims of justice and the interests of long-sighted prudence. And does not experience prove the same thing? Do not business-women as a rule exaggerate the defects of business-men? Are not fishwomen worse than fishmen,-female lodging-house keepers worse than male ones? Widows are bad; but if you would not be stripped alive, avoid a female orphan. Is not what is called a clever woman of business usually the most difficult and most disagreeable person to deal

with in the whole world? Is not the whole position of antagonistic relations and contest for advantage with the other sex the most perilous to delicacy and simple-mindedness into which a woman can enter? The scolding of the house is bad, but that of the market is worse; the coquetry of the ballroom is more fashionable than desirable, but what shall we say of the coquetry of a bargain and sale?-Fanny using her fine eyes to sell seaisland cotton to advantage, or Georgy offering you a very white hand to seal terms which, but for the sake of pressing it, you would never dream of accepting! A well-principled upholder of the rights of woman says of course, fie such things are impossible. We grieve to say they are not; and what is proposed is not only that elderly ladies should join in the struggle, but that the world of industry should be equally open to, and frequented by, all women as it is by all men, with one single exception, made by the less thorough-going advocates of the change, -the case of mothers with large families of small children and no nursemaids.

We are strongly of opinion, then, that there are many phases of the life of industry totally unfitted for woman to enter on; and that, so far from its being to be desired that she should mingle in and understand by experience the difficulties with which many men have to contend, it is to be wished that her atmosphere should be as serene and her growth as unwarped as the conditions of humanity will allow. On the other hand, we yet more strongly deprecate any thing in the nature of a cloistral seclusion or an enforced idleness. We believe practical life, employment in affairs of some kind or other, to be essential to the healthy condition and just development of every individual, male or female; and we do believe that the number of unmarried women in modern society requires a wider field of industry than the middle classes at least have hitherto had opened to them. To discuss what this field is to be, would be a long and not very

profitable task. It is a question which will decide itself. The advantages seem to point in the direction of some of the many branches of manufacturing occupation, especially those which can be carried on at home, and with the least exposure and publicity. For we do assert, and most strongly, that there are a multitude of avocations which, in the present condition of the world, are totally unfitted for woman; and that it will require a nice discrimination and cautious judgment to select those in which she is most competent to succeed, and which are most in consonance with her nature as it is, not as it is presumed it may become, and with what, notwithstanding Amazonian sneers, we still with Mr. Tennyson believe to subsist,her "distinctive womanhood."

They are happiest, and will ever remain so, who can find a place for their activity in administering, or helping to administer, a household; and we do not hesitate to say, in spite of the most enlightened remonstrance, not only that this occupation is more healthy and natural to a woman, but that it is in reality a broader field, calls forth more faculties, and exercises and disciplines them more perfectly, than ninety-nine out of a hundred of the industrial avocations out of doors. It is only in the higher branches of superintendence and conduct of business that any thing like it can be obtained. Women are in a position to suffer much less than men by the excessive division of labour and the narrowing influence it tends to exert. The greater part of them have a sphere in their own homes which calls for more varied faculties and higher powers than the unvaried task of the factory or the workshop. Every woman must govern more or less in her own house, or ought to do so; and to govern is not an easy thing, nor are servants and children the easiest things to govern. But the nature of women specially adapts them to govern; not, indeed, by a wise and far-sighted application of general ideas, but by choice of able ministers or immediate contact with the persons