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

governed. Many women, even those whose minds are entirely uncultivated, show a power and a breadth of capacity in administering their households, and controlling into harmony difficult tempers and unruly wills, which few men could rival.

Something we had proposed to have said on the "political rights of women;" but have left ourselves too little either of time or space. Yet we will not conceal our conviction, that if there be two functions for which women are less specially fitted than any others, they are those of the judge and the legislator. If women are indeed only men a little weaker in the body, then we can understand their entering into direct competition with us, and that the right to vote and legislate is one they may justly claim. If, however, they be really different, and adapted to a sphere of life and action mingling indeed with ours but essentially differing from it, then the question is a more difficult one. It depends upon whether the exercise of such functions would aid the woman's more complete development, and be consistent with the best interests of the whole society. The argument on these questions cannot be compressed into very short space. All we can say is, that women seem to us to have more to lose than to gain by entering in their own right into the political arena; and that, constituted as they now are, and before they have passed through the great transformation they promise us, a large admission of the female element into legislation would probably carry further than any society has yet experienced the special evils of democratic government, its hasty impulsiveness, its rash action, its discords, its unscrupulousness, and its instability. And yet who shall be bold enough to say that the English constitution shall not, with its slow all-assimilating power, find some safe practical method of including by degrees a portion of direct feminine action? As far as representation goes, it is certain that women possess, from their personal relations

permeating all classes, an absolute security that their ideas and wishes shall be taken into account. If in some respects they continue in a position of social disadvantage, it is because they have themselves chosen to acquiesce in it and fostered the conventional tone of thought and feeling in which it is based. The sincere desires of any large number of the real women in the country necessarily secure immediate attention, and certainly exercise at least their full share of influence over the action

of the men. For women to say they are unrepresented, is as if the sugar in the tea should complain that it was not tasted.

Our observations have been directed not to any attempt to discuss the particular claims made for extension of the sphere of women's action; but to draw attention to the false ideas on which such claims are based by what may be called the more neuter members of the sex and their adherents. Two of these ideas may be selected as most commonly put forward, most evil in their results, and most intrinsically untrue. These are, the idea that women are to be considered as forming a distinct class in society, which ought to possess a distinctive class action and a peculiar class position; and the idea that if they are not men, it is only by some great injustice which demands instant remedy, and that the object of their highest ambition should be a successful rivalry in the masculine career.

433

GHOSTS OF THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL.*

[July 1858.]

MRS. CROWE'S Work is not new; but as the most compendious collection of ghost-stories in the language, serves better than any other as a text for what few words we have to say on the subject of the old-fashioned ghosts. The writer is a woman of genius. Her stories of Susan Hopley and Lilly Dawson are models of straightforward narration. A female De Foe could not have told them better; if, indeed, such stories can be said to be told, which seem rather like the conscientious detail of real incident. The power of producing this effect is not the result of art, any more than that undefinable tone which lies in a man's voice, when he means what he says, is the result of art. It is the untraceable transfer of something in the writer to his page. It is the influence, how exerted we cannot analyse, of a peculiar sort of mind and imagination. Such writers stamp their pages with the intensity of their own convictions. It is a characteristic of their minds that they will have reality or nothing. Most of us possess a certain nebulous district in our minds, inhabited by the things we are not sure of; we keep a suspense account of matters not yet determined, and many of which we are content enough to see no

*The Night Side of Nature. By Catherine Crowe. London: J. C. Newby, 1848.

son.

Spirit Drawings: a Personal Narrative. By W. M. WilkinLondon: Chapman and Hall, 1858.

An Angel's Message: being a Series of Angelic and Holy Communications, received by a Lady. London: John Wesley and Co., 1858.

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