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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

who belongs to that company of women at whose head stands Becky Sharp. “Boys adored her. These are moths. But more;, the birds of the air, nay, grave owls (who stand in this metaphor for bewhiskered experience) thronged, dashing at the appari­tion of terrible splendour.’’ Mrs. Fryar Gunnett, the Countess of Saldar and Mrs. Marsett, Lady Blandish and Lady Grace Halley are all different species of the siren genus of woman. Rhoda and Dahlia Flemming are sisters. Dahlia falls into the toils of Edward Blanscove, and Rhoda, to save her sister’s reputation, she says, but really to save and spare her own and her father’s name, arranges a marriage between Dahlia and Nicholas Sedgett. After the marriage has taken place it is then discovered that Sedgett has a wife elsewhere. Poor, broken-hearted Dahlia, doubly wronged, will not marry Blanscove when he urges it. “There was but one answer for him, and when he ceased to charge her with unforgiveness, he came to the strange conclusion that, beyond our calling a woman a saint for rhetorical purposes and esteeming her as one for pictorial, it is indeed possible, as he had slightly descried in this woman’s presence, both to think her saintly and to have the sentiment inspired by the over- earthly in her person. Her voice, her simple words of writing, her gentle resolve, all issuing of a capacity to suffer evil and pardon it, conveyed that character to a mind not soft for receiving such impressions.”

“The Tragic Comedians” contains a highly dramatic love story. Alvan is the hero, the incidents taken from the life of Ferdinand Laysalle. The lesson it teaches is that one should accept what is nearest to perfection within our reach, and not lose by striving for the unattainable that joy, beauty and honor which comes to our hand. Alvan would not accept his bride unless she came to him dowered with the sanction of her parents to her marriage, and she, her mind narrowed and cramped by conven­tional surroundings, lacks the power to seize the highest happiness offered to her. When we contemplate Alvan’s scorn of Julia’s want of moral courage, the thought that women are what men have made them seems borne in upon one’s mind. Men have not sought in woman straightforwardness and moral courage. They have decried both. They have rather desired them to be “ educated for the market, to be timorous, consequently secretive, etc.” So when to a woman of fertile brain there comes an opportunity for the exercise of power, it is perhaps exerted by fifiesse, by dexterous underhand play, and then are women held up to scorn as not having the honesty of men — so the world says. “Men create by stoppage a’volcano, and are then amazed at its eruptiveness.”

“ Diana of the Crossways ” is the story of a beautiful, clever, generous, high- spirited girl, who at nineteen is an orphan. She acquires that difficult position known as social success, and finds, to quote our author, that “ there are men with whom it is an instinct to pull down the standard of the sex by a bully-like imposition of sheer physical ascendency whenever they see it flying with an air of gallant independence.” Then Sir Lukin, the husband of Diana’s friend, Lady Dunstane, by his behavior in what he terms “ a momentary aberration,” closes for her the house that should be her home. We learn how Diana concluded that in marriage was her only safety, and here the reader will find passages surcharged with weighty ideas, and we are brought face to face with that man of men, Thomas Redworth, who has waited to tell Diana that he loves her until he shall be able to give her a home which shall be a worthy setting for such a jewel. Mr. Warwick, “the gentlemanly official” whom Diana married, after two years of wedded life tries to obtain a divorce from her, with Lord Dannisbrough in the position of defendant. The hearing of the case resulted in that the plaintiff was adjudged not to have proven his charge. About a year after this Diana meets Percy Dacier, Lord Dannisbrough’s nephew, at the Italian Lakes, and a pronounced friendship results. Six months after, he and she keep watch by the mortal remains of his uncle. Then their friendship is remarked, and we come to the stage where they agree to unite their fates. Her trunks are packed; the tickets for Paris are taken; he waits at the station for her; she does not come, because her friend, Emma Dunstane, has sent for her in the extremity of illness. The author says that