ns, a whole system of social life, has been laboriously
invented that the day might be wasted gracefully and without boredom. A
little riding, a little reading, a little dabbling with the paint-brush,
a little strumming on the piano, a little visiting, a little shopping,
a little dancing, and a general trivial chat scattered over the whole,
make up the day of an English girl in town. Transplant her into the
country, and the task of frittering away existence, though it becomes
more difficult, is faced just as gallantly as before. Mudie comes to the
rescue with the back novels which she was too busy to get through in the
season; there is the scamper from one country house to another, there
are the flirtations to keep her hand in, the pets to be fed, the cousins
to extemporize a mimic theatre, the curate--if worst comes to worst--to
try a little ritualism upon. With these helps a country day, what with
going to bed early and getting up late, may be frittered away as
aimlessly as a day in town.

Woman may fairly object, we think, to abolish at one fell swoop such an
ingenious fabric of idleness as this. A revolution in the whole system
of social life, in the whole conception and drift of feminine existence,
is a little too much to ask. As it is, woman wraps herself in her
indolence, and is perfectly satisfied with her lot. She assumes, and the
world has at least granted the assumption, that her little hands were
never made to do anything which any rougher hands can do for them. Man
has got accustomed to serve as her hewer of wood and drawer of water,
and to expect nothing from her but poetry and refinement. It is a little
too much to ask her to go back to the position of the squaw, and to do
any work for herself. But it is worse to ask her to remodel the world
around her, on the understanding that henceforth duty and toil and
self-respect are to take the place of frivolity and indolence and
adoration.

The great passion which knits the two sexes together presents a yet
stronger difficulty. To men, busy with the work of the world, there is
no doubt that, however delightful, love takes the form of a mere
interruption of their real life. They allow themselves the interval of
its indulgence, as they allow themselves any other holiday, simply as
something in itself temporary and accidental; as life, indeed, grows
more complex, there is an increasing tendency to reduce the amount of
time and attention which men devote to their a