enter, or has the reputation of
mingling in low radical politics. That it is, she thinks, which
hinders George from getting a commission or a place, Caroline from
making an advantageous match, and prevents her and her husband from
obtaining invitations, perhaps honours, which, for aught she sees,
they are as well entitled to as some folks. With such an influence in
every house, either exerted actively, or operating all the more
powerfully for not being asserted, is it any wonder that people in
general are kept down in that mediocrity of respectability which is
becoming a marked characteristic of modern times?

There is another very injurious aspect in which the effect, not of
women's disabilities directly, but of the broad line of difference
which those disabilities create between the education and character
of a woman and that of a man, requires to be considered. Nothing can
be more unfavourable to that union of thoughts and inclinations which
is the ideal of married life. Intimate society between people
radically dissimilar to one another, is an idle dream. Unlikeness may
attract, but it is likeness which retains; and in proportion to the
likeness is the suitability of the individuals to give each other a
happy life. While women are so unlike men, it is not wonderful that
selfish men should feel the need of arbitrary power in their own
hands, to arrest _in limine_ the life-long conflict of inclinations,
by deciding every question on the side of their own preference. When
people are extremely unlike, there can be no real identity of
interest. Very often there is conscientious difference of opinion
between married people, on the highest points of duty. Is there any
reality in the marriage union where this takes place? Yet it is not
uncommon anywhere, when the woman has any earnestness of character;
and it is a very general case indeed in Catholic countries, when she
is supported in her dissent by the only other authority to which she
is taught to bow, the priest. With the usual barefacedness of power
not accustomed to find itself disputed, the influence of priests over
women is attacked by Protestant and Liberal writers, less for being
bad in itself, than because it is a rival authority to the husband,
and raises up a revolt against his infallibility. In England, similar
differences occasionally exist when an Evangelical wife has allied
herself with a husband of a different quality; but in general this
source at least