hat they sum up, with an admirably
comprehensive vagueness, as "intellect;" while, on the other hand,
scholars and thinkers are wont to look on time given to society as
something very like time absolutely wasted. In such a state of feeling,
it is difficult for a clever woman to exercise much power.

But, as other things improve, this unsocial feeling will dissolve.
Clever men will see that a couple of hours spent with other clever men
are not wasted just because a lady is of the party. Nobody would
seriously maintain that this is so even now, but people are very often
strongly under the influence of vague notions which they would never
dream of seriously maintaining. When women get their rights, the
_salon_ will become an institution. It will create a very fine field for
the cultivation of their talents. And in proportion as it allows a woman
to make a career for herself, it will bring relief to many excellent
husbands who will then no longer have to make careers for them at the
expense of overstraining their own too slender powers.

It is possible, however, that even then the husband of an ambitious wife
may not be fully contented. For people with any degree of weakness or
incapacity in them are always more prone than their neighbors to
littlenesses and meannesses, and a man who is not able to win much
renown on his own account may possibly not be too well pleased to see
his Wife surrounded by his intellectual betters. Indeed, he may even, if
he is of a very mean nature indeed, resent the spectacle of her own
predominance. It is some comfort to think that in such case the man's
own temper will be his severest punishment.

As a rule, however, it is pleasant to think that with ambition in women,
which is not their peculiarity, is yoked tact, which is their
peculiarity emphatically. Hence, therefore, wives who are ambitious for
their lords have often the discretion to conceal their mood. They may
rule with a hand of iron, but the hand is sagely concealed in a glove of
velvet. A man may be the creature of his wife's lofty projects, and yet
dream all the time that he is altogether chalking out his own course.

George II. used to be humored in this way by Queen Caroline. Bishop
Proudie, on the other hand, was ruled by his wife, and knew that he was
a mere weapon in her hands; and, what was even worse than all, knew that
the rest of mankind knew this. This must be uncommonly unpleasant, we
should suppose. The middle positi