The old form of feminine affectation used to be that of a die-away fine lady afflicted with a mysterious malady known by the name of the vapours, or one, no less obscure, called the spleen. Sometimes it was an etherealized being who had no capacity for homely things, but who passed her life in an atmosphere of poetry and music, for the most part expressing her vague ideas in halting rhymes which gave more satisfaction to herself than to her friends. She was probably an Italian scholar and could quote Petrarch and Tasso, and did quote them pretty often; she might even be a Della Cruscan by honourable election, with her own peculiar wreath of laurel and her own silver lyre; any way she was 'a sister of the Muses,' and had something to do with Apollo or Minerva, whom she was sure to call Phoebus or Pallas Athene, as being the more poetical name of the two. Probably she had dealings with Diana too--for this kind of woman does not in any age affect the 'seaborn,' save in a hazy sentimental way that bears no fruits--a neatly-turned sonnet or a clever bit of counterpoint being to her worth all the manly love or fireside home delights that the world can give. What is the touch of babies' dimpled fingers or the rosy kisses of babies' lips compared to the pleasures of being a sister of the Muses and one of the beloved of Apollo! The Della Cruscan of former days, or her modern avatar, will tell you that music and poetry are godlike and bear the soul away to heaven, but that the nursery is a prison and babies are no dearer gaolers than any other; and that household duties disgrace the aspiring soul mounting to the empyrean. This was the Ethereal Being of last generation--the Blue-stocking, as a poetess in white satin, with her eyes turned up to heaven and her hair in dishevelled cascades about her neck. She dropped her mantle as she finally departed; and we still have the Della Cruscan essence, if not in the precise form of earlier times. We still have ethereal beings who, as the practical outcome of their etherealization, rave about music and poetry and æsthetics and culture, and horribly neglect their babies and the weekly bills.