The difference between a woman's career and a man's is this; if a man has not had all the success in life his "young ambition dreamed," he has usually carved out some sort of path; if, for example, he is not, as he intended, Lord Chancellor, he has probably a very pretty practice on the circuit, and has a respectable share in the hangings and transportations. It is the reverse with women. She who aimed at a coronet may sometimes end with a curate; but she is equally likely to end, like Christabelle, in nothing—that social nonentity, an old maid.
Among the higher classes, the Lady Mary or Lady Sophia of the family become as very heir-looms at the country-seat as the heavy arm-chairs worked by their great-aunts, only not half so picturesque. In the middle class of life, they keep their brother's house till he marries; then they quarrel with his wife, whose influence, in that class at least, amounts to absolute monarchy; then they reside in a small private family, where they enact the part of Iris at Thetis' wedding—find out that it is very dull, and wander from boarding-house to boarding-house, carrying the events of one to the inventions of another, till they are about as much dreaded and disliked as the visits of
