In the family, the task of the wife is the management of domestic affairs, the education of the children, and the comfort of the husband, of whom she should be the inspiration. By the side of the eminent man, yet in the shade, there is always a woman; this career of hidden utility and of modest devotion is the one best suited to woman. In civil life there are several fields of occupation which they may enter with success: art, literature, instruction, _administration_, medicine. "Modesty itself demands that we should call in women as physicians, not to men, but to women; for it is an abiding outrage upon all purity that their ignorance should forcibly expose to masculine curiosity the sufferings of their sisters.... Nervous diseases, especially, would find in feminine genius the only adversary able to understand and combat them." The author says that it is the duty of society to see that poor women do not work for one-third or one-fourth the wages of men; and that, in manufactures, they have not the most dangerous and least remunerative labors. "Parent-Duchâtelet," says he, "attests that of three thousand lost women, _only thirty-five had an occupation that could support them_, and that fourteen hundred had been precipitated into this horrible life by destitution. One of them, when she resolved on this course, _had eaten nothing for three days_." M. Legouvé thinks it shameful that men should enter into competition with women in the manufacture of articles of dress and taste. In the fifth and last chapter, the author recognizes the remarkable capacity of women in administration, of which he cites numerous examples. He demands that they should have the superintendence of prisons for women, hospitals, charitable institutions, the legal guardianship of foundlings, the management, in short, of all that concerns social charity, because they will acquit themselves in it infinitely better than men. But he refuses to them all participation in political acts and in all that concerns the government, because they have no aptitude for things of this nature. Finally, he concludes thus: "Our task is finished; we have examined the principal phases of the life of women, in the character of daughters, wives, mothers, and women, comparing the present with the past, and endeavoring to indicate the future; that is, by pointing out the bad, verifying the better, seeking the best. "What principle has served us in this as a guide? Equality in difference. "In the name of this principle, what ameliorations have we demanded in the laws and customs? "For daughters: "Reform in education. "Laws against seduction. "The postponement of the marriageable age. "The actual participation of the betrothed parties in the execution of their contract. "Abolition of the formal request to the father of consent to marriage, which is an insult to the father and an injustice to the child. "For wives: "An age of legal majority.