ipation; as he objects to children, she declines
to be a mother; as he wishes to get the girls off his hands, she flings
them at the head of the first comer.

Now, if such a defence as this at all adequately represents the facts of
the case, we can only say that the girl of the period must be a far
lower creature than we have ever asserted her to be. A sensible girl
stooping to slang, a modest girl flinging aside modesty, simply to
conquer a fool and a fop, is a satire upon woman which none but a woman
could have invented, and which we must confess to be utterly incredible
to men. But the assumption upon which the whole of this mimetic theory
is based is one well worthy of a little graver consideration.

"Tell me how to improve the youth of France," said Napoleon one day to
Madame de Campan. "Give them good mothers," was the reply. There are
some things which even a Napoleon may be pardoned for feeling a little
puzzled in undertaking, and Madame de Campan would no doubt have added
much to the weight of her reply by a few practical words as to the
machinery requisite for the supply of the article she recommended. But
her request is now the cry of the world. The general uneasiness of which
we have spoken before arises simply from the conviction that woman is
becoming more and more indifferent to her actual post in the social
economy of the world, and the criticisms in which it takes form, whether
grave or gay, could all be summed up in Madame de Campan's request,
"Give us good mothers."

After all protests against limiting the sphere of the sex to a single
function of their existence, public opinion still regards woman
primarily in her relation to the generation to come. If it censures the
sensible girl who stoops to slang, or the modest girl who stoops to
indecency, it is because the sense and the modesty which they abandon is
not theirs to hold or to fling away, but the heritage of the human race.
But this seems to be less and less the feeling of woman herself. For
good or for evil, or, perhaps more truly, for both good and evil, woman
is becoming conscious every day of new powers, and longing for an
independent sphere in which she can exert them. Marriage is aimed at
with a passionate ardor unknown before, not as a means of gratifying
affection, but as a means of securing independence.

To the unmarried girl life is a sheer bondage, and there is no sacrifice
too great to be left untried if it only promises a chance