If even death itself is only a transmutation of forces--an active and energizing change--what can we say of this worse than mental death? How can we characterize a state which is simply stagnation? Not all of us have our work cut out and laid ready for us to do; very many of us have to seek for objects of interest and to create our own employment; and were it not for the energy which makes work by its own force, the world would still be lying in barbarism, content with the skins of beasts for clothing and with wild fruits and roots for food. But the _désoeuvrés_ know nothing of the pleasures of energy; consequently none of the luxuries of idleness--only its tedium and monotony. Life is a dull round to them of alternate vacancy and mechanical routine; a blank so dead that active pain and positive sorrow would be better for them than the passionless negation of their existence. They love nothing; they hope for nothing; they work for nothing; to-morrow will be as to-day, and to-day is as yesterday was; it is the mere passing of time which they call living--a moral and mental hybernation broken up by no springtime waking. Though by no means confined to women only, this disastrous state is nevertheless more frequently found with them than with men. It is comparatively rare that a man--at least an Englishman--is born with so little of the activity which characterizes manhood as to rest content without some kind of object for his life, either in work or in pleasure, in study or in vice. But many women are satisfied to remain in an unending _désoeuvrement_, a listless supineness that has not even sufficient active energy to fret at its own dullness. We see this kind of thing especially in the families of the poorer class of gentry in the country. If we except the Sunday school and district visiting, neither of which commends itself as a pleasant occupation to all minds--both in fact needing a little more active energy than we find in the purely _désoeuvré_ class--what is there for the unmarried daughters of a family to do? There is no question of a profession for any of them. Ideas travel slowly in country places, and root themselves still more slowly, even yet; and the idea of woman's work for ladies is utterly inadmissible by the English gentleman who can leave a modest sufficiency to his daughters--just enough to live on in the old house and in the old way, without a margin for luxuries, but above anything like positive want. There is no possibility then of an active career in art or literature; of going out as a governess, as a hospital nurse, or as a Sister. There is only home, with the possible and not very probable chance of marriage as the vision of hope in the distant future. And that chance is very small and very remote; for the simple reason--there is no one to marry.