go through;
a tender mother, an industrious house-keeper, a judicious mistress. We
prided ourselves as a nation on our women. We thought we had the pick
of creation in this fair young English girl of ours, and envied no other
men their own.

We admired the languid grace and subtle fire of the South; the docility
and affectionateness of the East seemed to us sweet and simple and
restful; the vivacious sparkle of the trim and sprightly Parisienne was
a pleasant little excitement when we met with it in its own domain; but
our allegiance never wandered from our brown-haired girls at home, and
our hearts were less vagrant than our fancies. This was in the old time,
and when English girls were content to be what God and nature had made
them. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to the
world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we
had created another nation altogether. The girl of the period, and the
fair young English girl of the past, have nothing in common save
ancestry and their mother-tongue: and even of this last the modern
version makes almost a new language through the copious additions it has
received from the current slang of the day.

The girl of the period is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her
face, as the first articles of her personal religion; whose sole idea of
life is plenty of fun and luxury; and whose dress is the object of such
thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavor in this is to
outvie her neighbors in the extravagance of fashion. No matter whether,
as in the time of crinolines, she sacrificed decency, or, as now in the
time of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness; no matter either, whether
she makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience to every one she
meets.

The girl of the period has done away with such moral muffishness as
consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke. It was all
very well in old-fashioned times, when fathers and mothers had some
authority and were treated with respect, to be tutored and made to obey,
but she is far too fast and flourishing to be stopped in mid-career by
these slow old morals; and as she dresses to please herself, she does
not care if she displeases every one else. Nothing is too extraordinary
and nothing too exaggerated for her vitiated taste; and things which in
themselves would be useful reforms if let alone become monstrosities
worse than those which they have displaced so s