To understand rightly the real spirit of an age or country, it is not enough to study dry statistics or history in the form of records of wars and political changes. We must study the works of the best poets, novelists, and dramatists, who seek to embody types and to hold up the mirror to contemporary ideas and manners. A careful perusal of such works as those of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, and George Eliot at home, and of Bret Harte, Howells, James, and Mrs. Burnett in the United States, will give a truer insight into the inner life of the country and period than any number of blue-books or consular returns. They show what the writers of the greatest genius, that is, of the greatest insight, see as types of the actual ideas and characters surrounding them; and the fact of their works being popular shows that the types are recognised as true. Now it is certain that the English literature of fiction and its latest development, that of the American novelists, show an ever-increasing recognition of the female individual as an equal unit with the male in the constitution of modern society. Those dear ‘school marms’ of Bret Harte’s and Wendell Holmes’, who career so joyously through mining camps, receiving courtesy and radiating civilising influences among the rough inhabitants; or touch the hearts and throw a mellow light over the autumn days of middle-aged professors and philosophers, are far removed from the slaves of prehistoric savages or the inmates of a Turkish harem. So also in the more complex relations of a more crowded civilisation, in the circles of Washington, New York, and Boston, the ideal American woman is always depicted as bright, intelligent, and independent, with a character and personality of her own, and the suspicion never seems to enter the author’s head that she is in any respect inferior to the male characters with whom she is associated. The same may be said to a great extent of English literature from the time of Shakespeare downwards. No better portrait than Portia was ever drawn of the Perfect woman, nobly planned To soothe, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.