She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle, with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways, she loathes her fashions and her company, and--outbids her for them! It is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat only inspires Mrs. Colisle with a more stubborn persistence. Victory cannot lessen the sad regrets of Mrs. Belle Etoile's soul for outraged instincts and insulted taste. It is an ill match,--a strife between greyhound and mastiff, a contest at heavy draught between a thoroughbred and a Flanders mare. Mrs. Etoile knows this as well as you and I can possibly know it. She is perfectly aware of her serfdom. She is poignantly conscious of the degrading character of her servitude, and that it is not possible to gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles; and yet she will continue to wage the unequal strife, to wear the unhandsome fetters, simply because she has not the courage to extricate herself from the false position into which the strategic arts of Fashion have inveigled her. Now I do not intend to moralize. I have no purpose to frighten the reader prematurely off to the next page by unmasking a formidable battery of reflections and admonitions. I have merely instanced the above cases, three or four among a thousand of such as must have presented themselves to the attention of each one of us; and I adduce them simply as examples of what I call "bad symptoms" in any diagnosis of the state of the social frame. They indicate, in fact, a total absence of _social courage_ in persons otherwise endowed with and illustrious for all the useful and ornamental virtues, and consequently they make it plain and palpable that society is in a condition of dangerous disease. Whether a remedy is practicable or not I will not venture to decide; but I can confidently assure our reformers, both men and women, that, if they can accomplish anything toward restoring its normal and healthy courage to society, they will benefit the human race much more signally than they could by making Arcadias out of a dozen or two Borrioboola-Ghas. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. 1. _Croquet._ By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. Boston: James Redpath. 2. _Handbook of Croquet._ By EDMUND ROUTLEDGE. London: George Routledge and Sons. 3. _The Game of Croquet; its Appointments and Laws._ By R. FELLOW. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 4. _Croquet, as played by the Newport Croquet Club._ By one of the Members. New York: Sheldon & Co.