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be found valuable in affairs of state, these lovers of fun bold up to the ridicule of the world, as sitting in parliament or in the cabinet, girls in their teens, or young wives of two or three and twenty, transported bodily, exactly as they are, from the drawing-room to the House of Com­mons. They forget that males are not usually selected at this early age for a seat in Par­liament, or for responsible political functions. Common sense would tell them that if such trusts were confided to women, it would be to such as having no special vocation for mar­ried life, or preferring another employment of their faculties (as many women even now prefer to marriage some of the few honourable occupa­tions within their reach), have spent the best years of their youth in attempting to qualify themselves for the pursuits in which they desire to engage; or still more frequently perhaps, widows or wives of forty or fifty, by whom the knowledge of life and faculty of government Avhich they have acquired in their families, could by the aid of appropriate studies be made avail­able on a less contracted scale. There is no country of Europe in which the ablest men have not frequently experienced, and keenly appreciated, the value of the advice and help of clever and experienced women of the world, in the attain­ment both of private and of public objects; and