Rather, is it not infinitely more subtle, wider, and more prevailing than ever? No one who recognises the skill with which that immense influence may be exercised can listen without astonishment to the flimsy arguments which are usually advanced in support of the question of the political enfranchisement of the sex. That the results of giving this particular form of ability--a power which is irresistible to the highest intellectual refinement--the political arena for its field have not only proved widely injurious to women who have so exercised it, but to those most closely connected with them, it has been the author's object to show. "And what hope of permanent success," it has been cogently asked, "could women have if they were to enter into competition with men in callings considered peculiarly masculine, many of which are already overstocked?" We are also brought here again face to face with that evil--the lessening or the complete loss of womanly grace and purity. Take away that reverential regard which men now feel for them, leave them to win their way by sheer strength of body or mind, and the result is not difficult to conjecture. Let the condition of women in savage life tell. Towards something like this, although in civilised society not so coarsely and roughly exposed to view, matters would tend if these agitators for women's rights were successful. Husbands, brothers, sons, have too keen a sense of what they owe of good to their female relatives to risk its loss; or to exchange the gentleness, purity, and refinement of their homes for boldness, flippancy, hardness and knowledge of evil. Nature, herself, then, has disqualified women from fighting and from entering into the fierce contentions of the prickly and crooked ways of politics. There is a silent and beautiful education which Heaven intended that all alike should learn from mothers, sisters, and wives. Each home was meant to have in their gentler presence a softening and refining element, so that strength should train itself to be submissive, rudeness should become abashed, and coarse passions held in check by the natural influence of women. High or low, educated or uneducated, there is the proper work of the weaker sex. And, finally, we venture to address her in the words of Lord Lyttelton:-- "Seek to be good, but aim not to be great; A woman's noblest station is retreat; Her fairest virtues fly from public sight; Domestic worth--that shuns too strong a light." BOOK I. PART I. POLITICAL WOMEN. CHAPTER I. ANNE DE BOURBON, SISTER OF THE GREAT CONDE, AFTERWARDS DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.