noble ambition out of women's minds, and crowded them all into the narrow arena of social competition, the lords of creation are turning round upon the victims of their own encroachment and selfishness with the most frightful abuse. It is horrible to read that article in the Saturday Review called Foolish Virgins. Malicious satire or contemptuous rage against the sex seem to be the only utterances possible to a formidable portion of the most brilliant writers of Europe. Judging from the newspapers and reviews, however, the practical position of European gentlemen toward women is greater wrong and contumely still. Men, by the forces and influences themselves have put in motion, have made women vain, they have made them frivolous, they have made them extravagant, they made them burdens to society, and now they are repudiating them.[1] "Unless you possess a fortune that will support you, we will not have you. The perquisites and privileges of wifehood are too great for such expensive fools. We prefer to take mistresses from the humbler walks of life, who will be less exacting." Such is said to be the tone and practice of large classes of men both in France and in "Christian England;" to-day, over a million of the marriageable ladies of the latter country are living in enforced celibacy, while for every one so deprived of her birthright of wifehood, some girl in a lower rank is given over to dishonour.
Thus the evil takes root frightfully downward and spreads correspondingly upward. Nor is it with us, even, a thing of the future. It is here among ourselves. The respect and deference so long accorded by American men to their countrywomen is perceptibly on the wane. It is an inheritance which came down to us from the religious devotion, courage, and industry of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who encountered with true feminine fidelity the perils of wilderness and war by the side of the fathers of the nation.[2] But like every other inheritance it
