tional novel since she plighted her troth to this monster of
ingratitude! Of course a man likes to be flattered, and does as much as
he can in the way of believing in the little comedy too; in fact, it is
all amazingly graceful and entertaining on the one side and on the
other. Our only doubt is whether this graceful and entertaining mode of
interrupting all the serious business of life will not be treated rather
mercilessly by enfranchised woman. How will the enchantment of passion
survive when the object of our adoration can only spare us an hour from
her medical cases, or defers an interview because she is choked with
fresh briefs? One of two results must clearly follow. Either the great
Westminster philosopher is right, and love will play a far less
important part than it has done in human affairs, or else it will
concentrate itself, and take a far more intense and passionate character
than it exhibits now.

We can quite conceive that the very difficulty of the new relations may
give them a new fire and vigor, and that the women of the future,
looking back on the old months of indolent coquetry, may feel a certain
contempt for souls which can fritter away the grandeur of passion as
they fritter away the grandeur of life. But even the gain of passion
will hardly compensate us for the loss of variety. All this playing with
love has a certain pretty independence about it, and leaves woman's
individuality where it found it. Passion must of necessity whirl both
beings, in the unity of a common desire, into one. And so we get back to
the old problem of the monotony of life. But it is just this monotonous
identity to which civilization, politics, and society are all visibly
tending. Railways will tunnel Alps for us, democracy will extinguish
heroes, and raise mankind to a general level of commonplace
respectability; woman's enfranchisement will level the social world, and
leave between sex and sex the difference--even if it leaves that--of a
bonnet.

COSTUME AND ITS MORALS.

Nothing is more decisively indicative of the real value or necessity of
a thing than the fact that, while its presence is hardly noticeable, it
is immediately missed and asked for when it disappears; and it is thus
that the paramount importance of clothing asserts itself by the
conspicuousness of its absence. Of course the first purpose of dress is,
or should be, decency, and for this, quantity rather than quality is
looked for. But, as with