such a wide division between
the interests and the sympathies of the sexes in the endeavor, on the
one side, to approximate their pursuits.

There is a great demand made now for more work for woman, and wider
fields for her labor. We confess we should feel a deeper interest in the
question if we saw more energy and conscience put into the work lying to
her hand at home, and we hold that she ought to perform perfectly the
duties instinctive to her sex before claiming those hitherto held remote
from her natural condition. Much of this demand, too, springs from
restlessness and dissatisfaction; little, if any, from higher
aspirations or nobler unused energies. Indeed, the nobler the woman the
more thoroughly she will do her own proper work, in the spirit of old
George Herbert's well-worn line, and the less she will feel herself
above her work. It is only the weak who cannot raise their circumstances
to the level of their thoughts; only the poor who cannot enrich their
deeds by their thoughts.

That very much of this demand for more power of work comes from
necessity and the absolute need of bread, we know; and that the demand
will grow louder as marriage becomes scarcer, and there are more women
left adrift in the world without the protection and help of men, we also
know. But this belongs to another part of the subject. What we want to
insist on now is the pitiable ignorance and shiftless indolence of most
middle-class housekeepers; and we would urge on woman the value of a
better system of life at home, before laying claim to the discharge of
extra-domestic duties abroad.

PAPAL WOMAN.

The wonderful instinct which has always guided the Papacy in
distinguishing between forces that it may safely oppose and forces
before which it must surrender, has just received a startling
illustration in a scene reported to have taken place at the Vatican a
few days ago. Rome may refuse all compromise with Italy, but even Rome
shrinks from encountering the hostility of woman. The Brief of October
last sounded, indeed, marvellously like a declaration of war; even in a
Pope it argued no little resolution to denounce the "license of the
female toilet," the "fantastic character of woman's head-dress," and the
"scandalous indecency" of woman's attire. More worldly critics would
hardly have ventured to describe a piquant chignon or a suggestive
boddice as "a propaganda of the devil;" it will be long, at any rate,
before censors