the women of our upper classes learn more and more what work is, and as the moral intelligence of all women is more and more cultivated. And as women in general learn more of what work is they will also learn more and more the value of both time and money, two things of which they have often a very vague appreciation. How, indeed, can they be expected to value time who live only to kill it? But every woman who undertakes work of any kind can do something to clear away the slur of inefficiency, by sparing no pains to thoroughly accomplish her own task, as well as to show that by widening her view beyond the sphere of home, she does not necessarily neglect the inner sanctuary.

Avenues of employment for thoroughly trained women will be sure to open out more and more, as such women present themselves able and willing to do work of the best kind. While all departments of work are, it is true, said to be over-stocked, thorough workers will never be super-abundant in any, and most women can be thorough workers if they will. Never has the

magic power of perseverance and good work been more strikingly shown than in the career of Lavinia Goodell, who, in spite of unusual difficulties, has worked her way to most honourable recognition in her practice of the legal profession, almost the last, indeed, for which a woman might seem adapted. This lady was originally employed in the office of Harper's Weekly, New York, but removing with her parents to Janesville, Wisconsin, felt strongly impelled to the study of law, for which she had a natural aptitude. She did not see her way clear to the goal of her ambition, a regular practice, but she read law steadily under the direction of a legal friend, and finally applied for leave to plead in the Circuit Courts. Her first client was a woman, and she managed the case so ably as to win much prestige. She soon gained a good practice, and eventually applied for leave to plead

before the Supreme Courts of the United States. This the Chief Justice refused, and Miss Goodell ably reviewed his judgment in a law jour nal, having, it was declared, much the best of the argument. She was able finally to procure the passage by the Legislature of a Bill for the recognition of the right of pleading before the Supreme Court, irrespective of sex. It is not the poorest of Miss Goodell's laurels, by any means, that her efforts in this direction were cordially endorsed by her legal brethren in Wisconsin, who thus testified their sincere respect for her perseverance, ability and conscientious fidelity, a most refreshing contrast to the animosity with which many medical men have endeavoured to exclude women from a profession for which they seem far more fitted. Such careers as Miss Goodell's, and those of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwall and Mrs. Garrett Anderson, are enough to show that energy and perseverance, combined with natural fitness, may enable any woman to accomplish even what seems the impossible. It is not at all likely, however, that any but very exceptional women will find their way into the courts of law, and those who do, we may rest assured, will be able to maintain there the credit of their sex. But even without having recourse to professions still almost considered contraband of sex, there are numberless callings, in any one of which a woman willing to work might reasonably hope to maintain herself. The medical profession, though requiring expensive and laborious preparation, is practically open to women, and through it the wide and most interesting field of female medical missions, in which the demand as yet far exceeds the supply. The whole field of female missions opens a wide sphere of usefulness to devoted Christian women, willing to qualify themselves for carrying to their heathen sisters the light which guides their own lives; and the joy of the success which crowned the labours of so many

female workers in this field might well stimulate others to follow in so noble a crusade. To come down to more secular callings, the periodical literature of the day affords openings for female workers, but only for really skilled work. Tyros or dilettantes 'need not apply,' and should well count the cost of a thorough preparation for literary work before they commit themselves to what is at best an ill-paid profession as a means of subsistence. Unless they are prepared to submit to years of apprenticeship, with little or no remuneration, and to persevere in an uphill work in spite of repeated disappointments that sadly clip the wings of young enthusiasm, they had better content themselves with less ambitious aims.

And pre

cisely the same is to be said of success in art, in which there can be no success without years of persevering labour. There are, however, several subordinate departments of artistic work which do not require so long an apprenticeship and would be more speedily remunerative. In wood carving and wood cutting, in porcelain painting, and artistic house decoration, are branches of æsthetic work in which women can and do excel, and which are growing more and more lucrative and more and more in demand. Two sisters of Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson made for themselves a comfortable independence, if not a fortune, by their successful practice of the last named art, the demand for which is certain to grow in Canada with a growing taste.

pected, if prepared, to do their work more neatly, and perhaps more correctly than their masculine competitors. Of course many women do find employment in teaching; but one may venture to ask why more of our young ladies,-using a much abused word not conventionally, but to denote real refinement of mind and manners-do not prepare themselves for teaching at least in the higher departments of our public schools. Teaching is in all cases an honourable work, and the higher classes of our public schools are much more certainly remunerative than private teachings, unless in special cases, or in large cities. And nowhere could a lady, thoroughly trained in mind, and uniting gentleness with dignity, be more usefully employed than in moulding the mind and manners of young Canada whose sad deficiency in the minor morals' may doubtless be attributed to the fact that his teachers are too often incapable of exercising any refining influence over his natural rudeness. Here and there, even in rough country districts gentle and refined lady teachers are doing a good work in civilising him, and indeed in civilising the whole districtbut as yet such teachers are far too rare. May it not be hoped that some of our more highly cultivated young women, looking for a means of independent livelihood, will turn their attention to this patriotic though selfdenying work?

For those who have scientific tastes, and are not obliged to give their time up to any calling more immediately remunerative, the field of scientific investigation lies invitingly open. In microscopic work, especially, which has led and is leading to so many impor tant discoveries-there seems every reason why persevering women might expect to succeed. M. Michelet remarks that feminine qualities are specially needful in microscopic studies, which demand a certain amount of dexterity, patient tact, and full liberty of time. To succeed in them, he says

one must be something of a woman.' Here, then, is an ennobling study, to which many of the best minds of our day give the main share of their time and attention--into which any woman may freely enter, without bar or impediment.

But for those who are less fitted for the more purely intellectual callings, there are many others which afford the means of earning a livelihood without losing an atom of respect from any one whose respect is worth having. Why should not ladies with an aptitude for millinery and dressmaking, leave the impress of their good taste and good sense on the fashions of the day, whose absurdities and monstrosities are mainly due to their being left in the hands of uncultivated women, ignorant of the true rules of good taste, and therefore unable to act upon them? Certain branches of jewellers' work, telegraphy, certain mercantile businesses, and the training schools of nursing and cookery now so numerous, afford numberless avenues of employment to the women who do not desire to live in idle dependence on the labour of others.

But there is little doubt that, in the long run, women will find themselves permitted to do whatever they shall prove themselves able to do well-all a priori prejudices to the contrary notwithstanding. The world wants good work so much more than it wants old prejudices that these must eventually yield to common sense, and the inevitable law of demand and supply. Even the much vexed question of the suffrage, so obstinate before mere agitation, will ultimately, doubtless, be settled by the women who quietly demonstrate their capability of discharging all other duties of life, and of organising and conducting even great undertakings with the calm and judicious judgment, the perseverance and the thorough conscientiousness of highly cultivated women, which, we believe, will not be found inferior to the same qualities in highly cultivated

men.

If the new ideal of womanhood shall advance as much during the next quarter of a century as it has done in the past, the principle of excluding the holder of otherwise unrepresented property from the franchise on the ground of sex will, we venture to believe, be regarded as an antiquated survival of a semi-cultivation. But this result will never come by empty agitation. A member of the Ontario Legislature once objected to the proposal to enfranchise female property-holders, on the singular ground that the women of Ontario were not clamouring' for the privilege. The women of Ontario might very well have replied that to their minds, clamour' was no special gratification for this or any other privilege, and that they were quite content to wait with patience and dignity till a growing common sense should gracefully yield that which they do

not

crave as a personal boon, and would seek and use only for the public good. Charles Kingsley's counsel deserves to be ever borne in mind by all promoters of this movement. By quiet, modest, silent, private influence, we shall win. "Neither strive, nor cry, nor let your voice be heard in the streets," was good advice of old, and is still. I have seen many a movement succeed by it. I have seen many a movement tried by the other method of striving, and crying, and making a noise in the street. But I have never seen one succeed thereby, and never shall. I do not hesitate to say that unless this movement is kept down to that tone of grace and modesty and dignity which would make it acceptable to the mass of cultivated and experienced, and therefore justly powerful Englishmen and English women, it will fail only by the fault of its supporters.' He adds that any sound reformation can come only through the right discharge of 'the relations that now exist, imperfect and unjust as they are,' and that only those who have worked well in harness will be able to work well out of harness;

only those that have been (as tens of thousands of women are every day) rulers over a few things will be fit to be rulers over many things.'

But the question of adequate remuneration for their work is one which women have been suffering from a real and pressing wrong. The principle of paying women less than men for the same work is one so essentially unjust that only a thoughtless and blind conventionality could have so long perpetuated it. Women are often pathetically warned, that if they insist in competing with men they will lose the chivalrous consideration still extended to their physical weakness. Those who look beyond the small formal observances of 'society' may well wonder where this chivalrous consideration, as a rule, existed! It would appear that it is equal to handing a lady from one room to another, or to her carriage (especially if there be a footman in attendance), to picking up her scissors, or maintaining a certain show of deference in conversation, to be too often exchanged for a very different tone in the freedom of the smoking-room; but it cannot stand any tougher strain. To the woman who has her way to make in the world,' how rare a boon is the chivalrous, brotherly consideration of the stronger for the weaker, the kindly help and sympathy along the thorny path of life, which we naturally associate with that chivalry of character which would

'Ride abroad, redressing human wrongs!' On the contrary, the moment that the principle of self interest comes into play, the average man is more ready to grind down, to over-reach, to underpay, to cheat outright a woman than a man, just because he thinks he can do it with more impunity. It is small wonder if women feel that the compensation of a thin veneer of social courtesy for the ability to earn an honest independence, is very like offering a stone for bread!

A feminine writer in the Contem

porary Review, not long ago, expressed her fears lest the fast growing movement for training women to self-support and to cherish interests larger than personal ones, may in time so alter the nature and aspirations natural to woman, as to throw into confusion the whole existing scheme of human affairs and become the 'beginning of the end." Of all the novel theories we have been recently favoured with, this seems one of the wildest, contradicted by all experience, ignoring the Divinity that shapes our ends,' and unsupported by any rational probability even then. So far as we have seen yet, the highest cultivation possible to man or woman has not gone in the direction of asimilating their characteristic differences in the least. Neither Mrs. Browning nor George Eliot,' two of the most highly cultivated women that the world has seen-have been one iota the less womanly for all their cultivation. Working women of the lower classes are not one whit the less devoted wives and mothers because before marriage they worked hard to earn their own living. Love, in some form or other, will almost always be lord of a woman's life, and a truly happy marriage its most perfect fruition. But a woman will be all the better fitted for marriage if her previous life has not been wasted on trivialities, if her mind and faculties have been trained and disciplined, and if her sacred treasure of affection has not been prematurely frittered away on make-believe' affaires du cœur. There will be fewer loveless and unhappy marriages, doubtless, when women feel themselves less dependent on marriage as a means of livelihood or a fancied refuge from insupportable ennui-but will this be loss or gain to humanity? And there will always, in all probability, co-exist the two types of womanhood-the weaker and more clinging, and the stronger but not less loving, whose husband's heart 'doth safely trust in her.' But just in proportion as woman approaches the