led complexion. The boldest effort to rectify
the inequalities of the position of plain girls has been made of late
years by a courageous school of female writers of fiction. Everything
has been done that could be done to persuade mankind that plain girls
are in reality by far the most attractive of the lot. The clever
authoress of "Jane Eyre" nearly succeeded in the forlorn attempt for a
few years; and plain girls, with volumes of intellect speaking through
their deep eyes and from their massive foreheads, seemed for a while, on
paper at least, to be carrying everything before them.

The only difficulty was to get the male sex to follow out in practice
what they so completely admired in Miss Bronte's three-volume novels.
Unhappily, the male sex, being very imperfect and frail, could not be
brought to do it. They recognized the beauty of the conception about
plain girls, they were very glad to see them married off in scores to
heroic village doctors, and they quite admitted that occasional young
noblemen might be represented in fiction as becoming violently attached
to young creatures with inky fingers and remarkable minds.

But no real change was brought about in ordinary life. Man, sinful man,
read with pleasure about the triumphs of the sandy-haired girls, but
still kept on dancing with and proposing to the pretty ones. And at last
authoresses were driven back on the old standard of beauty. At present,
in the productions both of masculine and feminine workmanship, the
former view of plain girls has been resumed. They are allowed, if
thoroughly excellent in other ways, to pair off with country curates and
with devoted missionaries; but the prizes of fiction, as well as the
prizes of reality, fall to the lot of their fairer and more fortunate
sisters.

Champions of plain girls are not, however, wanting who boldly take the
difficulty by the horns, and deny _in toto_ the fact that in matrimony
and love the race is usually to the beautiful. Look about you, they tell
us, in the world, and you will as often as not find beauties fading on
their stalks, and plain girls marrying on every side of them. And no
doubt plain girls do marry very frequently. Nobody, for instance, with
half an eye can fail to be familiar with the phenomenon, in his own
circle, of astonishingly ugly married women. It does not, however,
follow that plain girls are not terribly weighted in the race.

There are several reasons why women who rely on the