of naughty Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint of him,
could she only have found her highest pleasure in letting him have his
own way. Her conscience distresses her; it is all her fault; at last,
worn out in the strife, she resolves to be a good girl, goes to his
library, finds him alone, and, in spite of an insulting reception,
humbles herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty pride, begs to be
allowed to wait on him as a handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously
announcing, that, since she will stay with him at all events, she _may_
stay as his wife; and the story leaves her in the last sentence sitting
in what we are informed is the only true place of happiness for a woman,
at her husband's feet.

This is the solution which the most cultivated women of England give of
the domestic problem, according to these fair interpreters of English
ideas.

The British lion on his own domestic hearth, standing in awful majesty
with his back to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, can be
supposed to have no such disreputable discussions as we have described;
since his partner, as Miss Bronte says, has learned to know her keeper,
and her place at his feet, and can conceive no happiness so great as
hanging the picture and setting the piano exactly as he likes.

Of course this will be met with a general shriek of horror on the part
of our fair republican friends, and an equally general disclaimer on the
part of our American gentlemen, who, so far as we know, would be quite
embarrassed by the idea of assuming any such pronounced position at the
fireside.

The genius of American institutions is not towards a display of
authority. All needed authority exists among us, but exists silently,
with as little external manifestation as possible.

Our President is but a fellow-citizen, personally the equal of other
citizens. We obey him because we have chosen him, and because we find it
convenient, in regulating our affairs, to have one final appeal and one
deciding voice.

The position in which the Bible and the marriage service place the
husband in the family amounts to no more. He is the head of the family
in all that relates to its material interests, its legal relations, its
honor and standing in society; and no true woman who respects herself
would any more hesitate to promise to yield to him this position and the
deference it implies than an officer of State to yield to the President.
But because Mr. Lincoln