omething to do with marriage, her own peculiar and absorbing
business. Beyond this her mind does not stir. Any more positively gross
state one cannot imagine. There are women who are by accident more
degraded physically. _Mutatis mutandis_, there are none more degraded,
morally and intellectually, than those whose minds are constantly bent
upon marriage at any cost, and with anybody, however decrepit, however
silly, and however evil, who can make a settlement.

LITTLE WOMEN.

The conventional idea of a brave, an energetic, or a supremely criminal
woman is a tall, dark-haired, large-armed virago, who might pass as the
younger brother of her husband, and about whom nature seemed to have
hesitated before determining whether to make her a man or a woman--a
kind of debatable land, in fact, between the two sexes, and almost as
much one as the other. Helen Macgregor, Lady Macbeth, Catharine de'
Medici, Mrs. Manning, and the old-fashioned murderesses in novels, are
all of the muscular, black-brigand type, with more or less of regal
grace superadded according to circumstances; and it would be thought
nothing but a puerile fancy to suppose the contrary of those whose
personal description is not already known. Crime, indeed, especially in
art and fiction, has generally been painted in very nice proportion to
the number of cubic inches embodied, and the depth of color employed;
though we are bound to add that the public favor runs towards muscular
heroines almost as much as towards muscular murderesses, which to a
certain extent redresses the overweighted balance.

Our later novelists, however, have altered the whole setting of the
palette. Instead of five foot ten of black and brown, they have gone in
for four foot nothing of pink and yellow; instead of tumbled masses of
raven hair, they have shining coils of purest gold; instead of hollow
caverns whence flash unfathomable eyes eloquent of every damnable
passion, they have limpid lakes of heavenly blue; and their worst
sinners are in all respects fashioned as much after the outward
semblance of the ideal saint as can well be managed. The original notion
was a very good one, and the revolution did not come before it was
wanted; but it has been a little overdone of late, and we are threatened
with as great a surfeit of small-limbed, yellow-headed criminals as we
have had of the man-like black. One gets weary of the most perfect model
in time, if too constantly repeated; as