Many causes produce the grim female. It may be that she is grim from social pride as well as from natural hardness. If she has been used to live with people whom, rightly or wrongly, she considers her inferiors, she will probably queen it over them in a very unmistakeable manner. The prelatic blood is renowned for this sort of thing; and a bishop's daughter, or an archbishop's grand-daughter, or Mrs. Proudie, prelatic by marriage only, if of the grim class, is one of the grimmest of her class. The halo of sanctity round the mitre and the crozier will be greater in her eyes than even the glitter of the strawberry leaves; and she holds herself consecrated by her birth or marriage to the understanding of every moral question, and specially to the final settlement of every tough theological position. Or she may be grim because of her isolation and meagre intercourse with the world at large; such as she is found in the remoter districts. This kind comes into the exceptional or novelist's class, and is often more masculine than grim. These are the women who hunt and fish and shoot like men, and who may be found in all weathers wandering alone about the mountains in short petticoats and spatterdashes--women who affect to be essentially mannish in person, habits and attire, and who may be quite jolly easy-going fellows in their own way, or else grim and trenchant, as nature or the fit takes them. This is a kind not at all uncommon in country places among the higher class of resident ladies--ladies who are so highly placed locally that they can afford to disregard public opinion, and who are so independent by disposition that they naturally go off to the manly side, and make themselves bad imitations, as the best they can do. The grim female tries her strength with all newcomers. She is like one of the giants or black knights of old romance, who lived in castles or caves, whence they pounced on all passers-by, and either wrung their necks if they conquered or retreated howling if discomfited. This is what the grim female does in her degree. She dashes on all who are presented to her, and has a passage of arms as the first act of the new drama. If her opponents yield out of timidity or good-breeding, or perhaps from not understanding the warlike nature of the encounter, she puts her foot on them forthwith, and ignominiously crushes them; if they defy her, and give her back blow for blow, ten to one she cuts them and becomes their enemy for ever after. For she has not breadth enough to be magnanimous, and the one thing she never forgives is successful opposition. Very grim is she in the presence of human weakness, moral and physical. Woe to that unhappy maid of hers who has slipped on the narrow path of prudence! She will be turned out to perish with no more compunction than if she were a black-beetle to be swept out of the way.