the gypsy, the peasant. Women have a way of turning from the insipidities
and proprieties of life to the wooer who has the stronger hand; from the
silken Darnley to the rude Bothwell. This impulse is the natural corrective
to the aristocratic instincts of womanhood; and though men feel it less, it
is still, even among them, one of the supports of republican institutions.
We need to keep always balanced between the two influences of refined
culture and of native force. The patrician class, wherever there is one, is
pretty sure to be the more refined; the plebeian class, the more energetic.
That woman is able to appreciate both elements is proof that she is quite
capable of doing her share in social and political life. This English
clergyman's wife, who devotes her soul to the trimmings and gored skirts of
the lower orders, is no more entitled to represent her sex than are those
ladies who give their whole attention to the "novel and intricate bonnets"
advertised this season on Broadway.




MRS. BLANK'S DAUGHTERS


Mrs. Blank, of Far West--let us not draw her from the "sacred privacy of
woman" by giving the name or place too precisely--has an insurmountable
objection to woman's voting. So the newspapers say; and this objection is
that she does not wish her daughters to encounter disreputable characters
at the polls.

It is a laudable desire, to keep one's daughters from the slightest contact
with such persons. But how does Mrs. Blank precisely mean to accomplish
this? Will she shut up the maidens in a harem? When they go out, will she