dred yards, her husband snatches it off, puts it on
his own mop, quiets her for its loss with a tap of the waddie, and
struts on in glory. Why not? Has he not the analogy of all nature
on his side? Have not the male birds and the male moths, the fine
feathers, while the females go soberly about in drab and brown? Does
the lioness, or the lion, rejoice in the grandeur of a mane; the hind,
or the stag, in antlered pride? How know we but that, in some more
perfect and natural state of society, the women will dress like so
many quakeresses; while the frippery shops will become the haunts
of men alone, and "browches, pearls and owches be consecrate to
the nobler sex?" There are signs already, in the dress of our young
gentlemen, of such a return to the law of nature from the present
absurd state of things, in which the human peahens carry about the
gaudy trains which are the peacocks' right.

For there is a secret feeling in woman's heart that she is in her
wrong place; that it is she who ought to worship the man, and not the
man her; and when she becomes properly conscious of her destiny, has
not he a right to be conscious of his? If the grey hens will stand
round in the mire clucking humble admiration, who can blame the old
blackcock for dancing and drumming on the top of a moss hag, with
outspread wings and flirting tail, glorious and self-glorifying. He is
a splendid fellow; and he was made splendid for some purpose surely?
Why did Nature give him his steel-blue coat, and his crimson
crest, but for the very same purpose that she gave Mr. A---- his
intellect--to be admired by the other sex? And if young damsels,
overflowing with sentiment and Ruskinism, will crowd round him, ask
his opinion of this book and that picture, treasure his bon-mots, beg
for his autograph, looking all the while the praise which they do not
speak (though they speak a good deal of it), and when they go home
write letters to him on matters about which in old times girls used to
ask only their mothers;--who can blame him if he finds the little wife
at home a very uninteresting body, whose head is so full of petty
cares and gossip, that he and all his talents are quite unappreciated?
_Les femmes incomprises_ of France used to (perhaps do now) form a
class of married ladies, whose sorrows were especially dear to the
novelists, male or female; but what are their woes compared to those
of _l'homme incompris?_ What higher vocation for a young maiden than