men are too coarse, too clumsy, too
inept, and which requires the lighter touch and more delicate treatment
of female fingers. It is the everyday reproach heard of us abroad, that
our representatives are deficient in those smaller and nicer traits by
which irritations are avoided and unpleasant situations relieved. John,
they say, always imagines that to be national he must be "Bull," and
toss on his horns "all and every" that opposes him. Now, late events
might have disabused foreign cabinets on this score: a quieter beast
than he has shown himself need not be wished for. Still, he has
bellowed, and lashed his tail, and cut a few absurd capers, to show
what he would be at if provoked; but the world has grown too wise to be
terrified by such exhibitions, and quietly settled down to the opinion
that there is nothing to fear from him. Now, how very differently might
all this have been if the Duchess of S. were Ambassador at Paris, and
the Countess of C. at St Petersburg, and Lady N. at Vienna! There would
have been no bluster, no rudeness, no bullying--none of that blundering
about declining a Congress to-day because a Congress "ought to follow
a war," and proposing one to-morrow, "to prevent a war." Women despise
logic, and consequently would not stultify it. A temperance apostle is
not likely to adulterate the liquor that he does not drink; and for
this reason, female intelligence would have escaped this "muddle." Her
Ladyship would have thrown her blandishments over Rechberg--he is now
of the age when men are easy victims--all the little cajoleries and
flatteries of women's art would have been exerted first to find out, and
then to thwart, his policy. It is notorious that English diplomacy knows
next to nothing through secret agency. Would such be the case if we had
women as envoys? What mystery would stand the assault of a fine lady,
trained and practised by the habits of her daily life?

They tell us that our fox-hunters would form the finest scout-cavalry
in Europe; and I am convinced that a London leader of fashion--I have a
dozen in my eye at this moment--would track an intrigue through all its
stages, and learn its intimate details of place and time and agency,
weeks before a merely male intelligence began to suspect the thing was
possible.

Imagine what a blue-book would be in these times--would there be
any reading could compare with it? We used to admire a certain
diplomatist--a pleasant narrator of court gos