ections and members, for society is built up on the
mutual dependence of all its sections and all its members. Hence the
defiant attitudes which women have lately assumed, and their
indifference to the wishes and remonstrances of men, cannot lead to any
good results whatever. It is not the revolt of slaves against their
tyrants--in that we could sympathize--which they have begun, but a
revolt against their duties. And this it is which makes the present
state of things so deplorable. It is the vague restlessness, the fierce
extravagance, the neglect of home, the indolent fine-ladyism, the
passionate love of pleasure which characterise the modern woman, that
saddens men, and destroys in them that respect which their very pride
prompts them to feel. And it is the painful conviction that the ideal
woman of truth and modesty and simple love and homely living has somehow
faded away under the paint and tinsel of this modern reality which makes
us speak out as we have done, in the hope, perhaps a forlorn one, that
if she could be made to thoroughly understand what men think of her, she
would, by the very force of natural instinct and social necessity, order
herself in some accordance with the lost ideal, and become again what we
once loved and what we all regret.

WOMAN AND THE WORLD.

This, we are told in a tone of pathetic resignation, is a day of hard
sayings for women. It is, we will venture to add, a day when women have
to meet hard sayings with replies a little less superficial than the
conventional stare of outraged womanhood or the trivial retort on the
follies of men. Grant that woman's censors are as cynical and
hollow-hearted as you will, there can be no doubt that their criticisms
are simply the expression of a general uneasiness, and that that
uneasiness has some ground to go upon. It is possible that observers
across the water may be cynical in denouncing the "magnificent
indecency" of the heroines of New York. It is possible that the
schoolmasters of Berlin may be cynical in calling public opinion to
their aid against the degrading exhibitions of the Prussian capital. It
is possible that the thunders of the Vatican are merely an instance of
Papal cynicism. It is possible that the protest of the Bishop of Orleans
is as hollow-hearted as the protests of censors nearer home. But such a
world-wide outbreak of cynicism without a cause is a somewhat improbable
event, and the improbability is increased when we