in whom, however, there can be no idea of modesty. They are supposed to be wooed, and not to woo; but they both can, and, to a considerable extent, do exercise the latter power. If they cannot ask, they can demand to be asked; and to think that the latter is a less powerful agency than the former is to think very naively. If women were not often, in reality, very active wooers, such common expressions as "setting her cap at him," "drawing him on," "throwing herself at his head," etc., etc., could hardly have arisen, and it must not be forgotten that the same thing can be done both coarsely and refinedly, visibly and so as to be hardly perceptible. No doubt there is something called modesty amongst civilised women, but there are also jealousy and prudential considerations—very powerful solvents of anything of the sort. Yet with all this we have the prevailing idea that (even in a civilised state of things) it is man who woos and woman who is won; man who advances and woman who retires; man who seeks and woman who shuns. The reason probably is that the actions of man are of a more downright nature, and easier to observe and follow, than those of woman—who, as a clever writer has remarked, approaches her object obliquely—and, secondly, that it is man mostly, and not woman, who has given his opinion on this and other matters through the most authoritative channels—for it is man who, by virtue of his intellect and his selfishness, holds the chief places of authority.
May not these factors have affected in some degree,
