the pretentious gallants who, by means of obvious tailoring, offer destruction to the susceptible dames around them. There can be no doubt that an elegant male costume is out of place and a vulgar blot along a sleepy little street where men in blouses pass and bonneted girls and women wheel barrows before them. The farmer’s life has undoubtedly a larger share of natural interests than that of the _hobereau_. It is more purely animal, without any attachments to a world unconnected with the land. Ask a farmer what he thinks of politics, and he will tell you that he has nothing on earth to do with idiots or tricksters. He who must warily watch the humours of the seasons cannot trouble himself with the humours of electors and the ravings of voluble deputies. He walks his dew-washed meadows at dawn in wide-leafed felt; and, as he surveys the produce of his labour, his long hours of sweating travail, can he feel other than contempt of the highly remunerative and windy profession of the politician? The superiority of the lord of the soil to whom he pays tribute, he will readily acknowledge, but none other. In the west he will speak of his family as “my sons and the creatures,” meaning his daughters. In the land of the Cévennes, his children are _les drôles_, and the same unquestioning obedience is expected from both sexes by this rough and silent tyrant of the soil. Outside his farm he has little esteem to waste upon his fellows; within, is far from prodigal of tenderness to his women-folk. These he expects to stand at meals in a corner of the kitchen, while he and his sons sit to eat. He governs haughtily, with few words; but in his rude heart he knows that the real, the silent, and unobtrusive government lies in the hands of his wife, who, with the tact and watchfulness of affection, corrects the errors of his harsh temper, and smooths out the asperities of home-life. It would be difficult to find a people to whom modern feminism is more repugnant than the French, and hard to name one that owes more to the intelligence, good-will, and incessant labour of women. Frenchmen object to women in the liberal professions, and make a desperate hue and cry the day a talented lady seeks leave to wear the lawyer’s toque and gown. Yet the fields are tended by women; flags are waved at railway gates by them; in the lower ranks they bravely do all the rougher work of men, and nobody lifts a voice in protest. Woman may leave her home to make money in the humbler walks of labour, and cause no flutter in male bosoms; but let her elect to do so in paths where ambition lures and pay is higher, and instantly a howl of dismay runs through the ranks of her oppressors and slaves. And yet, if common sense and logic were general instead of rare virtues, even in France, it would be understood that the abandonment of the homes by peasant women is of much more serious consequence to a nation than the infrequent flight into legal and medical circles.