There are, it must be owned, few things on earth of less interest at
first sight than a girl in her teens. She is a mere bundle of pale
colorless virtues, a little shy, slightly studious, passively obedient,
tamely religious. Her tastes are "simple"--she has no particular
preference, that is, for anything; her aims incline mildly towards a
future of balls to come; her rule of life is an hourly reference to
"mamma." She is without even the charm of variety; she has been
hot-pressed in the most approved finishing establishments, and is turned
out the exact double of her sister or her cousin or her friend, with the
same stereotyped manner, the same smattering of accomplishments, the
same contribution to society of her little sum of superficial
information. We wonder how it is that any one can take an interest in a
creature of this sort, just as we wonder how any one can take an
interest in the _Court Circular_. And yet there are few sentiments more
pardonable, as there are none more national, than our interest in that
marvellous document.

A people which chooses to be governed by kings and queens has a right to
realize the fact that kings and queens are human beings, that they
shoot, drive, take the air like the subjects whom they govern. And if in
some coming day we are to toss up our hats and shout ourselves hoarse
for a sovereign who is still in his cradle, it is wise as well as
natural that we should cultivate an interest in his babyhood, that we
should hang on the vicissitudes of his teeth and his measles, that we
should be curious as to the title of his spelling-book, and the exact
score of his last game at cricket.

It is precisely the same interest which attaches us to the loosely-tied
bundle of virtues and accomplishments which we call a girl. We recognise
in her our future ruler. The shy, modest creature who has no thought but
a dance, and no will but mamma's, will in a few years be our master,
changing our habits, moulding our tastes, bending our characters to her
own. In the midst of our own drawing-room, in our pet easy-chair, we
shall see that retiring figure quietly established, with downcast eyes,
and hands busy with their crochet-needles, what Knox called, in days
before a higher knowledge had dawned, "the Monstrous Regimen of Women."

We are far from sharing the sentiments of the Scotch Reformer, and if we
attempt here to seize a few of the characteristics of the rule against
which he revolted, we h