n occasionally bore
the public by complaining of and protesting against such restrictions;
but, on the whole, the public is satisfied that it is convenient that
they should be upheld. If we look at the matter from the point of view
of the educated, or even the well-to-do classes, such a conclusion seems
so reasonable that most of us can hardly induce ourselves to doubt its
correctness. Women do a certain tangible amount of good to the world by
being kept as a luxury and exotic. The most energetic and rebellious of
them may feel angry to be told so, but it is the truth that it suits men
in general to keep up a kind of hothouse bloom upon the characters of
women. The society of soft, affectionate, unselfish creatures is
decidedly good for man. It elevates his nature, it gives him a belief in
what is pure and genuine, it alleviates the dust and turmoil of a busy
career, and it enables him for so many hours of the day to refresh
himself with the company of a being who is in some things a mediaeval
saint, and in some, a child.

Whenever one contemplates the effect of more coarse experience of the
world, more knowledge, and more rough and hard work on such a nature,
one is invariably tempted to acquiesce in the view that it is good for
man to have her in the state she is. One feels disposed to object to
notions of female emancipation as profane. Education and science,
thought and philosophy, like the winds of heaven, should never visit her
cheek too roughly. The great thing is, to preserve in her that sort of
luxurious unworldliness which represents the religious and refined
element in the household to which she belongs. And a hundred things may
be and have often been said about the advantage of making pure sentiment
the foundation of all the relations that obtain between her and man.

As Plato thought, man elevates himself by elevating and sentimentalizing
his affections. All poetry and most literature is given up to this
sentimentalizing or refining process. Nor can it be denied that the
effect is to increase very much the capacity of happiness in all people
who are born to be happy or to enjoy life. What would youth be without
its imaginative emotions? We all know, and are taught to believe, that
it would be something much poorer than it is.

There is another side to the picture, and it is as well to contemplate
it seriously, before we make up our minds to treat with undisguised
contempt all the vagaries of those who wis