very heartily at Mr. Spectator. Women have run through
all the list of moral and intellectual qualities in their time, but we
do not remember an instance of a really humorous woman. Witty women
there have been, and no doubt are still in plenty, but the world has
still to welcome its feminine Addison.

The higher a man's nature, the keener seems his enjoyment of his own
irony and mockery of his own foibles; but did any woman ever seriously
sit down to write a "Roundabout Paper?" Women, we are generally told,
are "especially self-conscious;" in fact, the whole theory of women,
philosophically stated, from the shyness of the miss in her 'teens to
the audacious flirtation of a heroine of the season, rests wholly on the
assumed basis of "self-consciousness." But it is self-consciousness of a
very peculiar and feminine sort--a consciousness, not of themselves in
themselves, but of the reflection of themselves, in others, of the
impression they make on the world around. Woman, we suspect, lives
always before her glass, and makes a mirror of existence. But for
downright self-analysis, we repeat, she has little or no taste. A female
Montaigne, a female Thackeray, would be a sheer impossibility.

We have been led, as the _Spectator_ would have said, into these
reflections by the chorus of shrill indignation with which the world of
woman encounters the slightest comment of extraneous critics. The censor
is at once told flatly that he knows nothing of woman. He is a bachelor,
he is blighted in love, he is envious, spiteful; he is blind, deaf,
dumb. All this goes without saying, as the French have it, but he is
certainly ignorant. The truth is, it is woman who knows nothing of
herself. It is only self-analysis which reveals to us our inner
anomalies, our ridiculous self-contrasts; it is humor which recognises
and amuses itself with their existence. But it is just the absence of
this sense of anomaly in her nature or her life that is the charm of
woman.

Christmas has been bringing us, among its other festivities, a few of
those delightful amusements called private theatricals; and in private
theatricals all are agreed with Becky Sharpe, that woman reigns supreme.
We were present the other day at an entertaining little comedy of this
kind, where the whole interest of the piece was absorbed by a
fascinating widow and an intriguing attorney, and where both these parts
were sustained with singular ability and success. The amateur who