The author of "John Halifax" has so laid us under obligation by work faithfully done, that it seems worth while to indicate the inconsistencies which warp her "Thoughts about Women." She speaks of the "Woman's-Rights movement" in this country, as if it were a movement to _force_ women into a certain position, instead of an effort to set them _free_, to the end that they may ascertain whether they have any capacity for it. She sneers at letters and account-books kept by women; and we read her words in a country where women are widely and creditably established as book-keepers, and where they hold classes to instruct others in accounts! She tells us that more than one-half of English women are obliged to provide for themselves; and gives a noble example of two young women, who, on their father's death, continued to carry on a disagreeable business, to keep books, manage stock, and control agents. They sustained a delicate mother in ease, and never once compromised their womanhood. What became of the womanly unfitness for letters and accounts in that case? She speaks of the contemptible and unwomanly habit of beating down, and says that men are less prone to it than women. Who keeps the purse-strings of a family? Who condemn women to the practical ignorance which makes them too uncertain of values to turn at once from a manifest overcharge? But, sadder still, this woman brings against her sex the two grave charges of common falsehood and disloyalty in friendship. We may pity her for a social experience which seems to her to justify the statement; but let us never repeat the libel. Let Margaret Fuller answer it, not only by a life of radiant truth, but by the words in which she speaks of the honor of which young hearts are capable, and the secret of her own young life voluntarily kept by forty girls. In her chapter on "Lost Women," Miss Muloch does grateful service when she draws attention to those who choose to dwell in the very gutters of idle gossip and filthy scandal, who soil their lips and tongues while they take selfishly faithful care of their reputations. This word needed to be spoken. Better for a woman, that she should be a cast-away in a city refuge, with a mind comparatively pure, than a woman in high society, capable of catching or uttering the vile "double entendre," always on the lookout for a possible vulgarism, wringing decency out of human life as if it were only a wet napkin, and sceptical of the purity and innocence she has not yet found in her own heart. In estimating the influences which modify public opinion concerning women, I am not willing to be silent concerning the popular idea of love. It is a common thing to hear it said, with a sort of sneer, that no _man_ ever died for love,--as if it were a quite romantic and in nowise _dis_creditable thing that many women should!