ould exist; but while Miss Wyndhams and Mr.
Redfords abound, great sacrifices must be made to their existence." Such
sacrifices, we presume, as abstaining from Latin quotations, of extremely
moderate interest and applicability, which the wise and noble minority of
the other sex would be quite as willing to dispense with as the foolish
and ignoble majority. It is as little the custom of well-bred men as of
well-bred women to quote Latin in mixed parties; they can contain their
familiarity with "the humane Cicero" without allowing it to boil over in
ordinary conversation, and even references to "the pleasant Livy" are not
absolutely irrepressible. But Ciceronian Latin is the mildest form of
Miss Gay's conversational power. Being on the Palatine with a party of
sight-seers, she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark:
"Truth can only be pure objectively, for even in the creeds where it
predominates, being subjective, and parcelled out into portions, each of
these necessarily receives a hue of idiosyncrasy, that is, a taint of
superstition more or less strong; while in such creeds as the Roman
Catholic, ignorance, interest, the basis of ancient idolatries, and the
force of authority, have gradually accumulated on the pure truth, and
transformed it, at last, into a mass of superstition for the majority of
its votaries; and how few are there, alas! whose zeal, courage, and
intellectual energy are equal to the analysis of this accumulation, and
to the discovery of the pearl of great price which lies hidden beneath
this heap of rubbish." We have often met with women much more novel and
profound in their observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so
inopportunely long-winded. A clerical lord, who is half in love with
her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect
that she is inclined to free-thinking. But he is mistaken; when in a
moment of sorrow he delicately begs leave to "recall to her memory, a
_depot_ of strength and consolation under affliction, which, until we are
hard pressed by the trials of life, we are too apt to forget," we learn
that she really has "recurrence to that sacred depot," together with the
tea-pot. There is a certain flavor of orthodoxy mixed with the parade of
fortunes and fine carriages in "Laura Gay," but it is an orthodoxy
mitigated by study of "the humane Cicero," and by an "intellectual
disposition to analyze."

"Compensation" is much more heavily