l fingers and thumbs of such a delicate
order, and we hum a few lines of the _Princess_ as Miss Hominy poses
herself for a Lady Professor. Still we cannot help a half conviction
that even this would be better than the present style of thing, the
pretty face that kindles over the news of a fresh opera and gives you
the latest odds on the Derby, the creature of head-achy mornings, of
afternoons frittered on lounges, and bonnet-strings, of nights whirled
away in hot rooms and chatter on stairs. There are moments, we repeat,
when, looking at woman as she is, we could almost wish to wake the next
morning into a world where all women were Miss Hominys.

But when we do wake we find the world much what it was before, and
pretty faces just as indolent and as provoking as they were, and a sort
of ugly after-question cropping up in our minds whether we had exactly
realized the meaning of our wish, or conceived the nature of a world in
which all women were Miss Hominys. There is always a little difficulty
in fancying the world other than we find it; but it is really worth a
little trouble, before we enfranchise woman, to try to imagine the
results of her enfranchisement, the Future of Woman. In the first place,
it would amazingly reduce the variety of the world. As it is, we live in
a double world, and enjoy the advantages of a couple of hemispheres. It
is an immense luxury for men, when they are tired out with the worry and
seriousness of life, to be able to walk into a totally different
atmosphere, where nothing is looked at or thought about or spoken of in
exactly the same way as in their own.

When Mr. Gladstone, for instance, unbends (if he ever does unbend), and,
weary of the Irish question, asks his pretty neighbor what she thinks of
it, he gets into a new world at once. Her vague idea of the Irish
question, founded on a passing acquaintance with Moore's Melodies and a
wild regret after Donnybrook fair, may not be exactly adequate to the
magnitude of the interests involved, but it is at any rate novel and
amusing. It is not a House of Commons view of the subject, but then the
great statesman is only too glad to be rid of the House of Commons.
Thoughtful politicians may deplore that the sentimental beauty of
Charles I. and the pencil of Vandyke have made every English girl a
Malignant; but after one has got bored with Rushworth and Clarendon,
there is a certain pleasure at finding a great constitutional question
summarily se