never comes.

THE PRIESTHOOD OF WOMAN.

If the female philosophers who plead for the emancipation of their sex
would stoop from the sublimer heights of Woman's Rights to arguments of
mere human expediency, we fancy they might find some of their critics
disposed to listen in a more compliant mood. We can imagine a very good
point being made out of the simple fact of waste, by some feminine
advocate who would point out in a businesslike way how much more work
the world might get through if only woman had fair play. Waste is always
a pitiful and disagreeable thing, and the waste of whatever reserved
power may lie at present unused in the breasts of half a million of old
maids, for instance, is a thought which, with so much to be done around
us, it is somewhat uncomfortable to dwell much upon. The argument, too,
might be neatly enforced, just at present, by illustrations from a
somewhat unexpected quarter.

The Papacy seems determined to carry out its concordat with Woman. If we
are to credit the latest rumors from the Vatican, Rome has grown
impatient of the class who now present themselves at her doors as
candidates for canonization, and has fallen back from the obscure
Italian beggars and Cochin Chinese martyrs whom she has recently
delighted to honor on the more illustrious names of Christopher Columbus
and Joan of Arc. A little courage must have been needed for this retreat
upon the past, for neither the great navigator nor the heroine found
much support or appreciation in the prelates of their day; and the
somewhat uncomfortable fact might be urged by the devil's advocate, in
the case of the latter, that if Joan was sent to the martyr's stake, it
was by a spiritual tribunal.

On the other hand, there is the obvious desirableness of showing how
perfectly at one the Papacy is with the spirit of the age in this double
compliment to the two primary forces of modern civilization--the
democratic force of the New World, and the feminine force of the Old.
The beatification of the Maid of Orleans in its most simple aspect is
the official recognition, by the Papacy, of the claims of her sex to a
far larger sphere of human action than has as yet been accorded to them.
Woman may fairly meet the domestic admonitions of Papal briefs by this
newly discovered instance of extra-domestic holiness, and may front the
taunts of cynical objectors with a saintly patron who was the first to
break through the outer conventionalit