Women, when they first began to work, followed the masculine idea, shared the masculine culture. As a portion of general literature, the novel, as the most popular, exerts the widest sway. No educational influence in this country compares with it; even that of the pulpit looks trivial beside it. There are thousands whom that influence never reaches; hardly one who cannot beg or buy a newspaper, with its story by some "Sylvanus Cobb." From the first splash of the Atlantic on a Massachusetts beach to the farthest cañon which the weary footsteps of the Mormon women at this moment press; from the shell-bound coast of Florida, hung with garlands of orange and lime, to the cold, green waters of Lake Superior, in their fretted chalice of copper and gold,--the novel holds its way. On the railroad, at the depot, in the Irish hut, in the Indian lodge, on the steamer and the canal-boat, in the Fifth-avenue palace, and the Five-Points den of infamy, its shabby livery betrays the work that it is doing. Until very lately, it has kept faith with history and the classics; but it is passing more and more into the hands of women,--of late into the hands of noble and independent women; and there are signs which indicate that it may soon become a potent influence of redemption. It has thus far done infinite harm, by drawing false distinctions between the masculine and feminine elements of human nature, and perpetuating, through the influence of genius often _intensifying_, the educational power of a false theory of love. Social customs follow in the train of literature; and sometimes in keeping with popular errors, but oftener in stern opposition to them, are the lives and labors of remarkable individuals of both sexes,--lives that show, if they show nothing else, how much the resolute endeavor of one noble heart may do towards making real and popular its own convictions. The influence of newspapers sustains, of course, the general current derived from all these sources. Public opinion, then, flows out of these streams,--out of classical literature, history, general reading, and the proverbial wisdom of all lands; out of social conventions, and customs and newspapers. These streams set one way. Only individual influences remain, to stem their united force.