The original notion was a very good one, and the revolution did not come before it was wanted; but it has been a little overdone of late, and we are threatened with as great a surfeit of small-limbed yellow-headed criminals as we have had of the black-haired virago. One gets weary of the most perfect model in time, if too constantly repeated; as now, when we have all begun to feel that the resources of the angel's face and demon's soul have been more heavily drawn on than is quite fair, and that, given 'heavy braids of golden hair,' 'bewildering blue eyes,' 'a small lithe frame,' and special delicacy of feet and hands, we are booked for the companionship, through three volumes, of a young person to whom Messalina or Lucrezia Borgia was a mere novice. And yet there is a physiological truth in this association of energy with smallness--perhaps, also, with a certain tint of yellow hair, which, with a dash of red through it, is decidedly suggestive of nervous force. Suggestiveness, indeed, does not go very far in an argument; but the frequent connexion of energy and smallness in women is a thing which all may verify in their own circles. In daily life, who is the really formidable woman to encounter?--the black-browed, broad-shouldered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as a man's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no more biceps than a ladybird, and of just about equal strength with a sparrow? Nine times out of ten, the giantess with the heavy shoulders and broad black eyebrows is a timid, feeble-minded, good-tempered person, incapable of anything harsher than a mild remonstrance with her maid, or a gentle chastisement of her children. Nine times out of ten her husband has her in hand in the most perfect working order, so that she would swear the moon shone at midday if it were his pleasure that she should make a fool of herself by her submissiveness. One of the most obedient and indolent of earth's daughters, she gives no trouble to any one, save the trouble of rousing, exciting and setting going; while, as for the conception or execution of any naughty piece of self-assertion, she is as utterly incapable of either as if she were a child unborn, and demands nothing better than to feel the pressure of the leading-strings, and to know exactly by their strain where she is desired to go and what to do.