And in the long gallery of good and loveable women, from Rosalind and Imogene down to Lucy Roberts and Laura Pendennis, we have not one who is a mere non-entity or child of passionate impulse. Nor is the recognition of woman’s equality less marked in the bad characters. Lady Macbeth is of a stronger nature than Macbeth; Becky Sharp more clever and full of resources than the men with whom she plays like puppets; Maggie Tulliver, with all her wild struggles with herself and her surroundings, has far more in her than her brother Tom. Compare these characters with those of the school of modern French novels, which turn mainly on adultery and seduction, committed for the most part not in any whirlwind of irresistible passion, but to gratify some passing caprice or vanity, and it is easy to see how wide is the gulf which separates the ideals and moral atmosphere of the two countries. It is not therefore from any wish to indulge in what Herbert Spencer calls the ‘unpatriotic bias,’ and depreciate my own country, that I am disposed to think that the younger English-speaking communities are somewhat in advance of ourselves in this matter of the relations of the sexes, but simply because I think that the feeling is there more widespread and universal. We have in English society two strata in which women are still considered as inferior beings to men: a lower one, where better ideas have not yet permeated the dense mass of ignorance and brutality; and a higher one, where among a certain portion, let us hope a small one, of the gilded youth and upper ten, luxury and idleness have blunted the finer susceptibilities, and created what may be most aptly called a Turkish tone about women. There are many of this class, and unfortunately often in high places, where their example does widespread mischief, whose ideal might be summed up in the words of the Irish ballad:— I am one of the ould sort of Bradies, My turn does not lie to hard work; But I’m fond of my pipe and the ladies, And I’d make a most illigant Turk. And most ‘illigant Turks’ they make, though far worse than real Turks who are born and brought up in the ideas and surroundings of a lower civilisation; while the tone of our English Turks is far more nauseous and disgusting, as denoting innate selfishness, sensuality, and vulgarity. Of these two classes there seem to be fewer in the newer English communities; and if they exist, they are in such a small minority that they conceal their existence, and pay the homage of vice to virtue which is called hypocrisy.