I have no doubt of this, that one reason why the Englishwoman is a success is that she starts as a good little English girl, or even a bad one. No little girl in the world is so attractive, not the overdressed _bébé_, all ribbons and laces, of the French, not the dumpy product of the German, not the pallid _bambina_ of the Italian, and least of all the spoilt little horror of the American. What can equal the creamy satin of her complexion, the sturdy straightness of her limbs, the curl of her hair, the joyous gleam of her eyes? Beauty, it is sad to say, too often leaves them as they grow older, but, when they are little girls, nearly all Englishwomen are not merely pretty, but beautiful. There can be no sight more nearly approaching the ideal of fairyland than Kensington Gardens on a fine morning of spring or summer, when the sun is glinting through the elm trees and the Broad Walk is all alive with hoops and perambulators. Nor is the sight less enchanting by the sea in the later summer, when golden locks tumble in the wind and bare legs twinkle in the waves. Even the little girls of the back street, when they are not too dirty, and of the remote village are beautiful with the glorious quality of British youth, which no competition can take away from us. It is not a fragile beauty nor one of languorous _morbidezza_, but it has a jovial quality, and breathes the spirit of the opening lines of “L’Allegro,” yet its colours have a delicacy in their brilliance which give it a special grace. Its merits are not all chargeable to us, the dwellers in England. It is due in part to the English climate which we ever curse and ever discuss, in part to the mixture of races which were blended into our admirable composition, and in part to our excellent nursery tradition and our incomparable English nurses.