of her nature
leads her in other ways--her tendency is towards things which satisfy
her as a woman. It naturally follows that men do not give her what she
does not seem to want. They consult her on matters of mutual interest,
they ask for and often follow her advice in business; but in nine cases
out of ten no husband would allow his wife to tell him how to vote at an
election, or what form of government to support. This distinction is
infinitely more remarkable in France than any analogous condition would
be in England, because of the existence there of several rivals to the
throne, and the consequent splitting up of the entire nation into
adherents of each pretender. Yet even this exceptional position does not
induce Frenchwomen to become politicians. Some few of them, of course,
are so, and fling themselves with ardour into the cause they have
adopted; but, fortunately for the tranquillity of their homes, the
greater part of them have wisdom enough to comprehend that their real
functions on the earth are of another kind.

The majority of the champions of the enfranchisement of the sex have
loudly protested against the hackneyed truisms, formerly so rife, which
impute to women every imaginable form of silliness and frivolity; that
they, like Alphonse Karr's typical woman, have nothing to do but
"_s'habiller, babiller et se deshabiller_." But it will be well to
remember the existence of another class of maxims of even greater
weight, which dwell on the subtle influence of women, and of its
illimitable consequences. "If the nose of Cleopatra," remarks the most
famous of these aphorists--Pascal--"had been a hair's-breadth longer,
the fortunes of the world would have been altered." Has the influence of
the sex decreased since the days of the dusky beauty whose irresistible
fascinations

"----lost a world, and bade a hero fly?"

Rather, is it not infinitely more subtle, wider, and more prevailing
than ever? No one who recognises the skill with which that immense
influence may be exercised can listen without astonishment to the flimsy
arguments which are usually advanced in support of the question of the
political enfranchisement of the sex. That the results of giving this
particular form of ability--a power which is irresistible to the highest
intellectual refinement--the political arena for its field have not only
proved widely injurious to women who have so exercised it, but to those
most closely connected with th