thing else instead. I had not all the articles in the book, though I had several.* A thousand thanks now, as also for your amusing letter. I had a visit of eighteen days from Lady Augusta Bruce; she is very agreeable and very good; I enjoyed her visit. I have now two musical nieces who play on the piano. My spouse hates music, and is heroic enough to say so, which, I think, puts him on a par with Hannibal or any of the great ancients; but as I have a particular fancy for that Carthaginian, I show it by comparing him to my spouse. I love his unquellable hatred of the Romans; I always hated them too. Our scamp has done a nice thing. I enjoy the Mexican affair; it is L. N.'s Moscow. I hope he'll send more and more men; serve them right. Perish armies if their death shows a principle, and the glorious principle of not falling like brigands on people at the other side of the globe! I hope some day the Chinese will cut all our throats over there; I should wish it if my own brother was one of them. The only history I read with gluttony is Boney's return from Russia; it is almost the only one where Justice, a tedious old dawdle, seems ground young and brisk. But I have no notion of two weights and two scales, of thinking right or wrong according to my partialities; only one must see all the bearings of the case, and that is difficult. Even Scamp's partisans are embarrassed with the Mexican affair.

I envy you the acquaintance of John Stuart Mill. I wish you would use all your powers to persuade him to come and see me when he comes through Paris; he is a man who thinks for himself; "he is a man for a' that." They are scarce enough, and whether one always agrees with them or not, they are of the real stuff one loves to see, and have a charm for me which the madcaps you talk of, who are only trying to glare and flare one's eyes out, have not; for they pretend to what the first have in reality. I have kept the secret of our expedition to Holland House most sacredly. General Fox was here and talked of it-not a word. I have so often been the confidant of political affairs, that I have the habit of never mentioning to one conspirator what another has said to me, though they both know that I know it; because, if we were in a court of justice and privately questioned, nothing could come of what I had said. I learnt this at sixteen years old. Yours ever, MARY MOHL.

* Mrs. Grote's collected papers.

CHAPTER IX.

1862-63.

Position of women in England-In Greece-Country squires despise womenMothers sneered at-Selfishness of fathers-Improvement due to French chivalry-Decline of the empire-Letter to Princess Batthyany with her book -Exhibition of 1862-Archbishop Whately's story-Visit to the Circourts-Friendship in France-Women in France and England-Young Italians— Arconati-Sanson's lesson at the Conservatoire-Montalembert's daughter takes the veil-His distress-Sale of stamps in the Tuileries-Dean Stanley's marriage-Norma for young ladies-Progress in France just before the Revo

lution.

THE following letter is in answer to one from me protesting against her unfavourable view of the position of women in England:

DEAREST MINNIE,

January 2, 1862 (alas! one's always getting older).

I was contemplating a letter to you when yours came.

I ought to have put in my preface that the manners of the present day and in the rising generation are perfectly left out by me, both in France and England. I deal only with the past. In fact, there's no manners at all now; one can't talk of the non-existent-but that you will deny too; but I don't think you are a judge; you see a fraction of the most cultivated literary society, and you are young and good-looking. It puts me in mind of the fermier-général in 1778, when all Paris was talking of bettering the state of the peasants, of a liberal government, of the rights of man, etc. The fermier-général, who was enormously rich, said, "Mais pourquoi donc changer? nous sommes si bien." I don't deny that women are well off in tolerably civilized places when they are young and pretty and clever, but I want to know how that was brought about. Do you suppose the Greek ladies had the best places, or could say

their soul was their own? When Orestes killed his mother the others said that, women being far inferior, he was not to be judged as if it were a man; the idea was an ordinary one, or they would not have proclaimed it. It is to the eleventh century that you owe your position; but I, who lived in the country in my youth among very well-bred, old-fashioned, and broad-landed country squires, have seen over and over what I say. The men talk together; the lady of the house may be addressed once in a way as a duty, but they had all rather talk together, and she is pretty mute if there is no other lady. I see it is the same now; they have no notion that a lady's conversation is better than a man's. The widower of a friend of mine, a clergyman, was quite astonished when Mr. Mohl said English women had more cultivation than the men, and you could talk to them on more subjects; he was so bothered that when he got alone with Mr. Mohl he returned to the subject, and could not believe he was serious. His wife gave out more sense in a quarter of an hour than he in a year. He did not invent this; it's the common opinion. My friend will have £12,000 a year, his sisters will have £200, and they won't have a sou of this, unless they marry, till he dies. Another friend of mine married at twenty a woman ten years older than himself. He was a widower at three and thirty, and he took special care to hunt after a wife as fast as he could. He won't let his daughters go out because he hates going out; his son may do anything he pleases, yet he is younger than the eldest. These poor girls are handsome. I don't say it's essential for girls to marry, but they ought to have the choice. No, they are women-why should they be independent? And haven't I seen boys behave impertinently to their mothers, who submit; and hasn't Lady William told me what court a mamma will pay to her eldest son to get him to doter his sister? Ah, Minnie, you are like the fermier-général. And what don't I see in all the novels about mammas trying to fish up husbands for their daughters, and the contempt thrown on all these women? Poor souls! if I had a daughter whose brother was to have £10,000 a year and she £200, I should fish too. Poor thing she is brought up in a fine house to be turned out, or dependent upon a pert sister-in-law, and her father spends more every year on his dog-kennels than he will give to her; and if the poor anxious mother had brought her daughters up to make their own clothes and to dress shabbily, the papa would have been mortified. They are his

playthings; but as to thinking of their future well-being, he never does. You always see the mamma sneered at because she wants to marry them well; the papa is never troubled about anything but himself, therefore he is not ridiculous. He thinks they are to make his tea and to nurse him when he is old and gouty, and that is what they were born for. As I have no daughters, and have married my adopted one to my entire satisfaction, I am in a good position to speak out; it will absolutely please me to be a little abused, because I shall be delighted to answer. I had a lawsuit in England and one in France. I lost the former because I was never allowed to speak to my lawyer; it bored him, forsooth. I gained £2500 in the latter. I went to Limoges, took a lawyer with me and followed it up. He talked it over with me. He was one of the first lawyers here. I have done justice to the good feelings of the men in England when they like a lady; but as a sex they think women inferior-they have no money, they are to obey their husbands. Of course there are exceptions; but public opinion puts them in a very different position here, and especially it never comes into any one's head that women are born to nurse and look after the men-folk. What little women possess of independence all over Europe is due to the French of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

I have letters from Hilly telling me she is so occupied with Flo she can scarcely write. She was to come and see me in December, but it has passed away. She is a slave to her family and her kind heart. It's all very well when it's for Flo, whom she dotes upon, but for a parcel of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc., it is very provoking. She is like some one that has been boned as meat is. She is like a molluscous animal, she has lost the power of enjoyment; all the sharp and crisp edges of her impressions are so blunted by constantly giving up all for other people, that she cares for nothing. It is very amiable, but intensely vexatious, because this perpetual self-sacrificing makes her sacrifice her best friend to any relation. I would not mind if it was for her good, but I am the only person she knows who don't make use of her, and who wants her to do anything for her own sake. What a blessing it would be to be a foundling! Really, as a French lady said one day, "Je voudrais que tout le monde fût bâtard;" and all because she is single she is to be at their becks and calls. "What can she have to do? she has neither husband nor child.”

So her

soul is not her own; it's only married folk who have a right to such a possession.

Now you have read my fine-drawn book you can understand the terror that came over me at the idea of dear Mrs. helping me.

Do tell me what she says of the platonics? No great sympathy that way, I suspect. If I had said the whole truth I should have said that these ancient manners were dying out; but they have left women in a better position-anybody may see that for himself; I have implied all this. Nothing is more ungraceful than saying everything as if Friend Reader was a goose. Thank you much for writing that people of taste and refinement will understand me, which I modestly believe to be very true.

Madame B

is looking very handsome en veuve decolletée, which, I suppose, may answer to the "moderate affliction" department. Mrs. Hollond is a great favourite, and less incomprise here than in your ungallant country.

Are you likely to come, and when? Your papa ought to be here. Many say this régime is driving downward at redoubled pace. They certainly do things they used not-ex. : last Saturday (15th), at a grand ball at Péreires, M. de Langle, Gardes des Sceaux, went up to a lawyer named Berton, who writes in the Droit, and asked him how he dared criticize a new law which had been discussed. "Sir," he said, "it was I who proposed that law." The article was extremely mild and cautious. The law was to declare that any man who had among his own private papers a caricature of any high functionary might be prosecuted. The whole ball-room was in a state of emotion. When Lavergne went in this had just happened; he did not hear it, but it was repeated to him, and he related it on Tuesday at Mrs. Hollond's. A gentleman on the 13th, two days before the scene, had just heard the law, and related it (at a dinner I gave to Arthur Stanley on his passage through Paris) to Laprade and Prévost-Paradol, who were beside him. At the Senate, Monday, the séance was quite violent. I wish your father was here for the sake of posterity. You know Laprade was destitué for answering St. Beuve's attack in the paper.