also have the latter!) and all of them should wear key-holes at their
ear-rings. Indeed, here is our quarrel with Mr. Reade. The conception of
an artless woman is impossible with him. Plenty of beautiful ideals he
creates, but with the actual woman he is almost unacquainted: Lucy
Fountain, of all his feminine characters, is the only one whose
counterpart we have ever met; Julia, the most perfect type of his fancy,
impetuous, sparkling, and sweet, has this to say for herself, on
occasion of a boat-race:--"'We have won at last,' cried Julia, all on
fire, '_and fairly; only think of that_!'" Through every sentence that
he jots down runs a vein of gentle satire on the sex. Every specimen
that he has drawn from it possesses feline characteristics: if provoked,
they scratch; if happy, they purr; when they move, it is with the bodies
of panthers; when they caress their children, it is like snakes; and in
every single one of his books the women listen, behind the door, behind
the hedge, behind the boat.

"'He would make an intolerable woman,' says the Baroness. 'A fine
life, if one had a parcel of women about one, blurting out their
real minds every moment, and never smoothing matters!'

"'Mamma, what a horrid picture!' cries Laure."

When upon this subject our author leaves innuendo, and fairly shows his
colors, he writes in this wise:--

"For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long, steady struggle. In
matters physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot
stand. In matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is
that beats them dead. Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a
Handella, a Victoria Huga. Some American ladies tell us education