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ROSSING the narrow strait which separates England from the Continent of Europe, we enter at once a society in which the sphere of woman is in many respects wider and nobler than in any country we have hitherto visited in our travels. The English woman has an independence of thought and action, scarcely imaginable upon the continent of Europe. The slave of conventionalities, bound in fetters of custom stronger than bands of brass in many respects, she is in many others, the finest woman in the world. The dissemination of education among the higher and middle classes, the opening of the higher schools, grudgingly and yet only partially accorded-but still begun; the encouragements to literary work of the better sort, have done much to improve the condition of English women, and the free intercourse between the sexes, the moulding of the thought and feeling of the one by that of the other, has elevated the standard of both. The English woman is the picture of physical health-too much so, as some writers have maintained, for beauty. Her complexion, at first fresh and blooming, is apt to become red and lose its softness by exposure to the fogs and damps of the English climate, and perhaps also from

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the solid quality of the English diet. Living largely in the open air, a capital walker, a graceful and daring horsewoman, she is very apt to possess an excellent appetite and to develop a solidity of form and figure imposing rather than graceful. Her beauty is seldom delicate or fragile. Hawthorne invited the anathemas of the whole English nation by calling her "beefy." But she possesses a high degree of dignity, and a fearlessness and independence of movement which challenge admiration at all times. Few sights are more beautiful than an English lady in the field; her high-bred steed perfectly in hand, her face lit up with the excitement of the chase, her complexion brightened and cleared by the freshness of the morning air, the perfect fit of her riding-habit displaying and heightening the graceful lines of her form, and her hair just a little disarranged by the rapidity of her flight, as she "takes the hedge" with the best rider of them all, and scours away across the plain like a vision of light and power.

For she is strong, even in her loveliness. Her virtues are pronounced. She is as shrewd in managing the disposition of her daughters as a finished diplomatist. She trains them in the idea that the chief end of woman is to marry well; she watches every chance, she makes the most of every advantage. If she fails she is not discouraged; if she is beaten she will not retire from the field. She has her duty to do by her family, and she does it, according to her standard, faithfully and well. No one knows better than she how to overcome the rebellious impulses of the heart when they interfere with her cherished plans. She can point to her own experience, and she is generally successful in making her pupils see the necessity of prudence and calculation even in matters of the heart.

But there are nobler sides to her character than that of the manœuvring mother, or the intriguante. She is the successful woman of business, carrying on large enterprises with consummate energy and skill; she is the instructor of children and youth, the visitor and the helper of the sick the poor, and the needy. She can turn away from the luxurious appointments of her home, and take her place in the hospital by the wounded, dying sufferer, moistening his fevered

lips and soothing his pain; she can go to the camp and the battle-field and bring the light and peace of her presence, the comfort and order she knows so well how to create in the very places where men despair. When the English army lay dying in the trenches at Scutari, the hospitals crowded with the sick and the dying, the necessary articles for their relief so tied up with official tape that men despaired of obtaining them, it was an English woman-Miss Florence Nightingale -who improvised a force of sappers, and broke through every barrier between her sick and their relief.

In the terrible marches of the British army in Afganistan, English women have borne the hardships, and cheered the fainting hearts of their husbands and their brothers. They have met the terrors of the Sepoy rebellion in India with an unflinching courage and devotion, and "wherever a noble deed is wrought" they have been ready to take their places and fulfill their work.

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere" is not the type of the English woman of the higher classes, although for lack of opportunity for better things, many of them fall into her naughty ways, and

ready to "Gorgonize" the beholder "from head to foot with a stony British stare,"

"Pale with the golden beam of eyelash
dead on the cheek.

Passionless, pale cold face, star sweet on
a gloom profound,

Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for

a transient wrong,

Done out in thought to beauty

and ever as pale as before."

but even these can change in a twinkling to some

"Maud, with her exquisite face,

And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,

And feet like sunny gems on an English green.

Maud, in the light of her youth and her grace,

Singing of Death and Honor that cannot die,

Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,

And myself, so languid and base."

or to her, whom Tennyson, from whom we have borrowed these lines, idealizes as

She can be the

who

or Madeline.

"Revered, beloved, O you that hold

A nobler office upon earth

Than arms or power of brain or birth,
Could give the warrior Kings of old.
"Whose court is pure, whose life serene,

God give her peace, her land repose;
A thousand claims to reverence close,
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen."

"Airy fairy Lilian

Flitting fairy Lilian,"

"When I ask her if she loves me
Clasps her tiny hands above me
Laughing all she can.”-

Smiling frowning evermore,

She is perfect in love lore

Whether smile or frown be fleeter

Whether smile or frown be sweeter,
Who may know ?"

But when duty calls her, when her heart is stirred, this creature which but a moment before seemed made only to while away the flight of time, becomes

"The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim earl that ruled,

In Coventry, and when he laid a tax

Upon the town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamoring, "If we pay we starve,"

She sought her Lord, and told him of their tears,

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax they starve,"

-and rode through the town to secure its repeal; or better still,

Contrasts like these may frequently be found among the pictures of English women, which the Laureate of England has sketched with loving or scornful hands.

What can be said of beings who appear under such entirely opposite colors in different places and to different eyes. The old Romans said "Varium et mutabile semper fæmina," and so far as English women go were entirely correct. The same woman seen in the country, the life and soul of every out door enjoyment, the never failing consoler and companion of the children in their sorrows or their games, becomes a being of another order in London in the