German men are well aware that their wives have nothing in common with the fascinating ideal woman of their imagination, and they are quite satisfied that it should be so. Their work, their studies, their profession, or their business demands all their attention, and they could not dream of dismissing them from their minds when they enter their homes. A woman who would distract her husband’s attention from such important subjects would be an impediment to his success, while the typical housewife, by her cares and ministrations, furthers it. Like most men, Germans have chivalrous leanings, and enjoy a courteous intercourse with ladies, but it is generally not their wives who reap the advantages of this taste. It is the other ladies, those they meet in society, and not seldom do they muster all their powers of gallantry, all their means of pleasing, and all their faculty to amuse in the company of women of light character, often in every respect inferior to their wives. It is those German women who feel that their happiness and their lives have been sacrificed, not for their husbands, but to a vicious conception of married life, who sympathize with the women of Ibsen, and have thus contributed largely to the fame of that dramatist in Germany. Ibsen has not Ibsenized the German ladies, but his pieces have revealed the existence of a grudge long harboured by German women. It is only just to record that, though Englishwomen, especially those who live and are treated up to the English ideal, as we mentioned before, live under much happier circumstances as children, girls, _fiancées_, and wives, there are many of our countrywomen whose marriages have been a cruel disillusion. Many Englishmen marry too young, before they know their own minds, and under the feverish impulse of a first love. When such young husbands are thoughtless, selfish, or when they have made a bad choice, a miserable married life is the result. In a great number of young households happiness prevails, thanks to the strong-mindedness and tact of the young wife, who can take care of herself and of her husband also. But thousands of marriages turn out utter failures, not for want of love, but from the husband’s utter ignorance of how to take care of his wife’s health, beauty, and happiness. Though it is the fashion in this country not to adapt but to translate literally Ibsen’s pieces, there would be no difficulty to so adapt them as to render them exact representations of the state of many an English home. And this is sufficient to explain his fame in England. Here, as on the continent, it is the selfish, mean, bullying husbands who cannot find any sense in Ibsen’s pieces, and who are extremely shocked at what they consider Ibsen’s perversion in attempting to enlist, by inexplicable devices, the sympathies of the audience for the erring wife, when these should be vouchsafed to the husband, who appears to be such a respectable, common-sense man.