Possessed by a restless discontent with their appointed work, and fired with a mad desire to dabble in all things unseemly, which they call ambition; blasphemous to the sweetest virtues of their sex, which until now have been accounted both their own pride and the safeguard of society; holding it no honour to be reticent, unselfish, patient, obedient, but swaggering to the front, ready to try conclusions in aggression, in selfishness, in insolent disregard of duty, in cynical abasement of modesty, with the hardest and least estimable of the men they emulate;--these women of the doubtful gender have managed to drop all their own special graces while unable to gather up any of the more valuable virtues of men. They are no more philosophical than the most inconsequent sister who judges all things according to her feelings, and commends or condemns principles as she happens to like or dislike the persons advocating them; and they are as hysterical and intemperate in their political cries as if the whole world wagged by impulse only. They are no more magnanimous under rebuke than the stanchest advocate of the sacredness of sex, but resent all hostile criticism as passionately, and from grounds as merely personal, as if they were still shrouded from public blame by the safety of their privacy; and they are as little useful in their blatant energy as when they spent their days in working monstrous patterns in crude-coloured wools, or found spiritual satisfaction in cutting holes in strips of calico to sew up again with a new stitch. They have committed the mistake of abandoning such work as they can do well, while trying to manipulate things which they touch only to spoil; they have ceased to be women and not learnt to be men; they have thrown aside beauty and not put on strength. The latest development of the impulses which animate the epicene sex has taken its expression in after-dinner oratory. If we were as malicious to women as those whose follies we rebuke would have the world believe, we should encourage them to fight it out with womanly modesty and the world's esteem on this line. Their worst enemies could not wish to see them inflict on themselves a greater annoyance than the obligation of getting on their legs after the cheese has been removed, to turn on a stream of verbal insipidity for a quarter of an hour at a stretch. Only men who have something to say on the subject that may be on hand, and so are glad of every opportunity for elucidation or advocacy, or men who are eaten up with vanity, take pleasure in speechifying after dinner. Its uselessness is apparent; its mock hilarity is ghastly; even at political 'banquets,' when words are supposed to have some deep meaning, we get very little substance in it; while all the funny part of the business is the dreariest comedy, the unreality of which brings it close to tragedy.