It is simply to the flaws and failures of female intelligence that the parallel applies. A very pleasant old parson, whom I knew when I was a boy, and who used to discourse to me much about Edmund Burke and Gavin Hamilton, told me once that he met old Primate Stewart one day returning from a visitation, and turned his horse round to accompany the carriage for some distance. “Doctor G.,” said the Archbishop, “you remind me most strikingly of my friend Paley.” “Oh, my Lord, it is too much honour: I have not the shadow of a pretension to such distinction.” “Well, sir, it is true; I have Paley before me as I look at you.” “I am overwhelmed by your Lordship’s flattery.” “Yes, sir; Paley rode just such another broken-down old grey nag as that.” Do not therefore disparage my plan for the employment of women in diplomacy by any ungenerous comparisons with the elderly ladies at present engaged in it. This would be as unfair as it is ungallant. There are a variety of minor considerations which I might press into the cause, but some of them would appeal less to the general mind than to the official, and I omit them--merely observing what facilities it would give for the despatch of business, if the Minister, besieged, as he often now is, by lady-applicants for a husband’s promotion, instead of the tedious inquiry, “Who is Mr D.?--where has he been?--what has he done?--what is he capable of?” could simply say, “Make Mrs T. Third Secretary at Stuttgart, and send Mrs O’Dowd as Vice-Consul to Simoom!” A MASTERLY INACTIVITY. It is no small privilege to you “gentlemen of England who live at home at ease,” or otherwise, that you cannot hear how the whole Continent is talking of you at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, “who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of ‘the confounded foreigner.’” The ‘Times’ proclaims how infinitely superior we are every morning; and each traveller--John Murray in hand--expounds in his bad French, that an Englishman is the only European native brought up in the knowledge of truth and the wash-tub.