You, dear Mr Editor, who have your eyes garnished with Solomon's spectacles about you, cannot but have perceived on the parlour-tables and book-shelves of your fair friends--by whose firesides you are courted even as the good knight, and the _Spectator_, by the Lady Lizards of the days of Anne--a sudden inundation of tabby-bound volumes, addressed, in supergilt letters, to the "Wives of England"--the "Daughters of England"--the "Grandmothers of England." A few, arrayed in modest calf or embossed linen, address themselves to the sober latitudes of the manse or parsonage-house. Some treat, without _per_mission, of "Woman's Mission"--some, in defiance of custom, of her "Duties." From exuberant 4to, down to the fid-fad concentration of 12mo--from crown demy to diamond editions--no end to these chartered documentations of the sex! The women of this favoured kingdom of Queen Victoria, appear to have been unexpectedly weighed in the balance, and found wanting in morals and manners; or why this sudden emission of codes of morality? No one denies, indeed, that woman has, of late, ris' wonderfully in the market; or that the weaker sex is coming it amazingly strong. The sceptres of three of the first kingdoms in Europe are swayed by female hands. The first writer of young France is a woman. The first astronomer of young England, _idem_. Mrs Trollope played the Chesterfield and the deuce with the Yankees. Miss Martineau turned the head of the mighty Brougham. Mademoiselle d'Angeville ascended Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Rachel has replaced Corneille and Racine on their crumbling pedestals. I might waste hours of your precious time, sir, in perusing a list of the eminent women now competing with the rougher sex for the laurels of renown. But you know it all better than I can tell you. You have done honour due, in your time, to Joanna Baillie and Mrs Jamieson, to Caroline Southey and Miss Ferrier. You praised Mrs Butler when she deserved it; and probably esteem Mary Howitt, and Mary Mitford, and all the other Maries, at their just value--to say nothing of the Maria of Edgworthstown, so fairly worth them all. I make no doubt that you were even one of the first to do homage to the Swedish Richardson, Frederika Bremer; though, having sown your wild oats, you keep your own counsel anent novel reading.