em, it has been the author's object to
show.

"And what hope of permanent success," it has been cogently asked, "could
women have if they were to enter into competition with men in callings
considered peculiarly masculine, many of which are already overstocked?"
We are also brought here again face to face with that evil--the
lessening or the complete loss of womanly grace and purity. Take away
that reverential regard which men now feel for them, leave them to win
their way by sheer strength of body or mind, and the result is not
difficult to conjecture. Let the condition of women in savage life tell.
Towards something like this, although in civilised society not so
coarsely and roughly exposed to view, matters would tend if these
agitators for women's rights were successful. Husbands, brothers, sons,
have too keen a sense of what they owe of good to their female relatives
to risk its loss; or to exchange the gentleness, purity, and refinement
of their homes for boldness, flippancy, hardness and knowledge of evil.

Nature, herself, then, has disqualified women from fighting and from
entering into the fierce contentions of the prickly and crooked ways of
politics. There is a silent and beautiful education which Heaven
intended that all alike should learn from mothers, sisters, and wives.
Each home was meant to have in their gentler presence a softening and
refining element, so that strength should train itself to be submissive,
rudeness should become abashed, and coarse passions held in check by the
natural influence of women. High or low, educated or uneducated, there
is the proper work of the weaker sex. And, finally, we venture to
address her in the words of Lord Lyttelton:--

"Seek to be good, but aim not to be great;
A woman's noblest station is retreat;
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight;
Domestic worth--that shuns too strong a light."

BOOK I.

PART I.

POLITICAL WOMEN.

CHAPTER I.

ANNE DE BOURBON,
SISTER OF THE GREAT CONDE, AFTERWARDS DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.

THE brilliant heroine of the Fronde, of whose grace, beauty, and
influence Anne of Austria was so jealous--not to speak of the mortal
rivalry of the gay Duchesses de Montbazon and de Chatillon--although the
youngest of that famous trio whom Mazarin found so formidable in the
arena of politics, obviously claims alike from her exalted rank and the
memorable part she played in the tragi-comedy of t