This prince died in 1862, in Paris, at the age of ninety-two; one whose character would have adorned a Roman age.

THE GENTLEWOMAN.*

THE National Association for the Promotion of Social Science has long held that whatever most conduces to the well-being and comfort of our sisters, forms an important branch of social science; and not contenting itself with a mere declaration to that effect, it has followed it up by the formation of a society "for promoting the industrial employment of women." The object held in view by this society, which we believe has received the sanction of the Queen's approval, is to provide employment for educated women, and the manner in which it has been proposed to carry this out, has been by the establishment of printing presses conducted entirely by women, employment in telegraphic offices, as governesses, amanuenses, secretaries, shopwomen, saleswomen, and hairdressers, by emigration, and by the proposed foundation of an institution similar to that of the Sisters of Charity.

Such propositions are not of a practical character. Supposing all such means of employment open to the sisterhood, and many of them have long been so, it is obvious that only a portion could avail themselves of such means, even if the field of employment were unlimited, which is very far from being the case, especially in printing and telegraph offices. There is not employment sufficient even for those who have served apprenticeship in the printing business, and if the cases of the applicants for relief to the Printers' Pension Society were studied, as they ought to be by the charitable, it would be found that the poor printer often becomes blind or paralysed at an early period of life. As to telegraphic offices, their number. is very limited, and as to emigration, if it has failed, it is well known that it has been mainly because the so-called ladies do not possess those requirements which are most needed by colonists-men who have to work, and to work hard, do not require toys. But even colonists are not inexhaustible, and many have their own sisters and daughters to establish in life. But that which is most objectionable of all is that any and all of these plans take females out of their especial sphere. Woman's place in nature is as the companion, the comfort, and the helpmate of man-the mother of future generations, the housekeeper of the present. In a natural state of society it is the duty of man to provide for the women and children, of the woman to see to the application of the means, to the wants and well-being of the family. All these proposed employments take her out of her natural and proper sphere-it may be sometimes only for a time-but many are objectionable, as not only removing her from the way of obtaining that education which best suits her for being a useful helpmate, but also as inducing habits which are totally opposed to her ever being such in after life.

It is the fate of all reformers to be met at first by opposition, if not also sometimes by a touch of ridicule, and if we cannot always coincide with

* The Gentlewoman. By the Author of "Dinners and Dinner Parties." Chapman and Hall. 1864.

the views of the eccentric author of "The Gentlewoman," still there is no doubt that in the main he is in the right-that the Englishwoman is no longer what she ought to be-that great innovations have been introduced into many classes of society which are prejudicial to the interests of all parties concerned-and that there is a very wide opening for improvement and reform. What is equally important is that the kind of reforms advocated by our author do not unsex the sisterhood, but, on the contrary, are especially directed to the object of rendering them more serviceable, economical, and consequently lovable and respectable housewives:

The real and substantial relief for distressed ladies, is not to depend upon charity, because charity cannot be substantially extended to every eleven women out of every twelve-"the preserves of paupers and sanctuaries of sloth" are already too full. Let poor ladies adopt that which gentlewomen learned when in their girlhood, let them study the manipulation of food-it is their duty; it is not difficult to a woman that can read and has a turn for industry. Moreover, let poor ladies turn their minds to that which Miss Nightingale did-and they will come in for all those praises which Lord Brougham so eloquently bestowed on the Sisters of Charity-and they will no longer have occasion to talk of the want of employment; let them reconcile their minds to work, for work they must, and not to think work beneath them; let them read Burke on the vicissitudes of families; and let those poor ladies who have depended on a pretty face and personal appearance to gain a husband, learn "that few men can support women merely for ornament, and soon they tire of their toys." Let them acquire the knowledge which is so befitting a female-so simple, so easy-and which would place them above genteel penury, and they may firmly rely that they will be treated with all the respect, all the kindness, and all the consideration that is at all times yielded to useful industry, and there would end the misfortunes of poor ladies and the great social evil. Lastly, let all ladies without education, or with a bad education, abandon the idea that they are fitted for "anything not menial," or "anything genteel," and not forget that twenty millions sterling is annually wasted in food by the people that require "anything not menial”. "anything genteel."

During the last dozen years English housewives have most deplorably neglected their duty; they have permitted domestics to wear cheap Manchester tawdry, and their own cast-off clothes, and to so outrage decency that the nation is disgraced in caricatures all over the Continent-representing the English females with petticoats which expose details that are supposed to be hidden. Even our cads and cabmen are put to the blush, who, to their credit, try to preserve decency at the entrance of their conveyances, by skilfully placing their hands on the objectionable garment, and, as far as possible, prevent the passers seeing the shameless exposures of the women who should know better. But the offences of the whole garment may well cause the reflective to shudder, not on account of those immolated in the inflammatory monstrosity, but on account of the thousands of infanticides and murders that have resulted from the masking.

Neatness and simplicity was the characteristic of former days, but which is changed for masquerade; shame appears to be unknown. The daughters of the semi-genteel, the daughters of the shopkeeper, the drivers of perambulators, the Molls of common soldiers, and domestic servants of all kinds, are all engaged in one common purpose, trying to outvie each other in their shameless dress. From whence comes the money to purchase the folly? It is a fearful question, and the intent of the indulgence is still more fearful. Dress is the cause of the sacrifice of virtue-dress is the cause of theft-dress increases the expenses of our criminal law, and fills our prisons; and when skin-deep beauty fades, relief is sought in the gin-shop, which ends in bridewell and death.

This is a sad picture, characterised by the writer's usual proneness to run into extremes, but still it is true in the main. So likewise, in depicting the overstrained pretence to gentility so characteristic of the present day, he describes two weddings:

There was a mob collected before the door of a lodging-house, to see the departure of the bride and bridegroom; there was a chariot with two grey horses, a postilion with a satin pink jacket, and a bouquet as large as a birch-broom; a passage was made by the mob for the six bridesmaids; they lined the opening, three on either side; they were all tawdry, and duly crinolined and mantled in those six-and-sixpenny red cloaks, sold at cheap shops, and appeared like the figurantes at Astley's Theatre. The day was very hot and the sun very bright, which gave great effect to the beauty of the bridesmaids and their lovely dresses, and great was the sensation of the crowd. The bride appeared, and when duly seated, out rushed the dirty mother, and into the chariot she jumped, overwhelming her daughter with kisses so strong and so long, that the bridegroom had to pull her out. Here was a sensation, and loud was the applause; there then came a shower of old shoes, and off drove the bride amidst the shouts of the mob. To a certainty this bride claims the title of lady, because of the chariot, the bouquet, the mantled bridesmaids, and the shower of old shoes.

The author was passing a rag-shop, and was attracted by the grandeur of the wedding cortége. There were three large flys, each drawn by a white horse, each driver had a white favour stuck in his coat, each fly conveyed six women and children; dressed, oh, how they were dressed! and what trouble to get in such beautiful balloon petticoats. Curiosity led the author to wait the return from church: the bride and bridegroom came first in a chariot with two grey horses, a postilion dressed in a bright, shiny, cherry-coloured jacket, a white favour stuck in his hat and a bouquet under his nose; and then came the three flys, looking so nice, as the mob said, all with white favours. On inquiry, it appeared that the bridegroom was a retailer of split peas, hay, and corn at little shop about twelve feet square. No doubt but that this bride claims to be a lady; and so does every wench that advertises for situations, "anything not menial,' thing genteel," to sell gin behind a publican's bar, or bread over a counterthey invariably call themselves ladies."

any

Who has not witnessed the counterpart of such follies? It is not many months ago that in our own neighbourhood-a suburban Stoke Pogis-we accidentally witnessed the going forth of the bride and bridegroom from the bride's mother's very humble greengrocery. The bride was a

sempstress, the bridegroom an omnibus conductor. The bride's father being an omnibus driver, he drove the fly; the conductor that day rode inside. There were four or five carriages besides, and the party, half a mile from home, would have been supposed by any one who had seen olden times to have belonged to any social rank but that in which they really moved.

Here is another picture of the present as compared with the past:

In those days mothers and fashionable daughters knew the uses and prices of starch and smalt blue-pearlash was not allowed to be used-and young ladies, instead of sending their ruffs and laces as in the preceding ages to Holland, washed and stiffened and ironed at home; indeed, assisted the laundry-maid, who in those days was a person of respectability, above the average middle-class of the present day, and who never thought of saying they could do nothing menial," or wanted to be genteel. The washing was done at home, and many of the laundries in Grosvenor-square, Brook-street, and the neighbourhood, still remain, although not used. Then came the great enemy of the females of the

middle and inferior classes. Manchester poured in its cheap dress; every other house was a shop for the sale of gossamer rubbish, which superseded the substantial and respectable draper of that period; every village huckster's shop was crammed with the cobweb rubbish, comfort and home were invaded, cheap shops became the rage, mothers allowed their daughters to be dressed as dolls, and themselves changed the useful morning gown for the flaunting evening dress; markets were abandoned, homes were made uncomfortable, because household duties were neglected. Clubs arose, taverns and hotels held out the comforts that were not to be had at home. Dolls and muslin-dressed mothers declared their duty to be degrading, and cooking fell to what it is, and hence it is that eleven out of every twelve women die worth nothing, and four husbands out of every five die in the same unhappy circumstances.

In the present day girls in every rank of life seem to think every kind of work shameful. Fifty years ago young gentlewomen looked after their own wardrobes, and when the fire required coals they did not ring for the servant to put them on; now young ladies, with only yellow faces for their fortunes, cannot do that which the young gentlewomen did. Now they want somebody even to put on their stockings; and if their parents should by chance keep a carriage, although if looking to all things they ought not to do so, yet the silly creatures look for husbands as well placed as their parents, and assume that they are to start where the parents leave off; the poor things think of carriages and servants, and the usual indications of wealth, which turns out a dream never to be achieved.

It is unfortunately the custom of parents to try and appear that which they are not. Keeping up appearances," concealing poverty, sacrificing gain and comfort without the least consideration for old age or the future of children. Bythe-by, it is generally said that there are no children now-a-days, and that is pretty nearly the fact. You may walk many miles before you meet a girl dressed according to her age; from five years old they are all dressed in those vulgar sugar-hooped petticoats, that are outrageous indecencies; their lubberly brothers, with incipient flock on their upper-lips, smoke and assume the swagger of fashionable snobs, without prospects or expectancies. They fancy themselves "Esquires," and address each other as Esquire," and when they do their betters the honour of a call, they knock at their door with the clamour of footmen. This is the result of their education, and their assumption of vulgar greatness ends in a tour to the diggings. The girls pant and pine for dress and trumpery ornaments, and for amusements utterly inconsistent with their position or future well-being; they stand without correction, they are neglected in essentials, and it is the want of domestic knowledge that causes so many shipwrecked females; the supposed well-to-do parent becomes insolvent or dies, and in the absence of domestic knowledge nothing is left to sustain them in their doomed struggle for existence, except that which it is dismal and dreary to think of.

What, then, is the remedy proposed for a state of things which demands the pen of a Juvenal to expose in all its flagrant folly and demoralising effects a state of things which, between flippant young men, toys of girls, and sluts of servants, is becoming a national disgrace? Simply to educate the sisterhood to that position in life to which it has pleased a kind Providence to call them. As surely as over-educating the parish girl-teaching her geography and crochet-work instead of domestic duties and plain sewing-raising her above her position by tea-parties and addresses by gentlemen in black, who shake hands with their more interesting pupils -unfits a girl ever afterwards for servitude, so does the neglect of the common duties of life lead the young gentlewoman to disappointment and chagrin:

Among the innumerable difficulties besetting a hard-working father, especially