her ; that she loves to be won — to grant a favor ; that exact reasonings irritate and vex her ; that the secret of governing her resides in making use of the weapon she herself pos- sesses and uses so often, her sensibility. It is in his wife, therefore, rather than in himself that the husband will find the elements of his power. Like the diamond she can only be conquered by herself. To know how to offer diamonds so as to have them returned, is a talisman which applies to the most minute details of domestic life. The politics of marriage resembles that of nations — a bauble may lead the people where whole armies could never drive them !
The general education of our girls is as pernicious as it could well be made, Eeared with the idea that the end and aim of their existence is marriage, they are taught little which is calculated to prepare them for its sacred and sol- emn duties. Dress is instilled as the sole science worthy of female ambition — the arrangement of that fig-leaf ^'introduced" by Mother Eve. They have heard for fifteen years, says Diderot, only this : "My daughter, your fig-leaf fits badly ; my daughter, your fig-leaf fits well ; my daugh- ter, would not your fig-leaf be more becoming so f Fed, almost exclusively, upon works of fiction, their diseased intelligence incessantly creates some imaginary hero with whose impossible attributes they are wont to invest their "intended," and a miserable life-time barely suffices to instruct them that the heroes of romance are as rare as the Apollos of sculpture. Surely it is not surprising if they persist in the fruitless search for their ideal long after the disenchantments of a marriage which renders it thenceforth a crime. ISTor if in the relations of practical life they emulate the example of the spirituelle princess, who, on being informed of a riot occasioned by the scarcity of bread, exclaimed: "Why don't they eat cake!" Many
