The combination occurs, perhaps, more frequently than is commonly supposed, but it is such a grave departure from the respected tradition that we hasten to forget each instance as quickly as possible, to prevent any danger of a cumulative impression. Yet it is in no spirit of pandering to the tradition that the Englishwoman’s mind appears in this chapter unadorned or unexplained by her appearance: it is simply a matter of convenience. The mind of woman is not legitimately considered by itself, for the whole, the representative woman is not purely a function of her mind. Nevertheless, the Englishwoman’s mind, if not essential to the Englishwoman, exists, and it is growing. It would be unchivalrous to pass it by without observation. In George Meredith’s day it was hardly resolved that a woman might have a mind at all: this in itself is a measure of the later growth, for on this head, at least, there is now no doubt. The creator of Diana Warwick represented the Saxon man firmly treading with his heel on any feminine mental sparks which might set on fire the chips of his crumbling social structure. His faith in the sex’s capacity for growth has been justified to-day, when it would be absurd to represent women as anything but emancipated. Meredith’s view of the men as “pointed talkers” and the women as “conversationally fair Circassians” is no longer true. The women of England have made some progress on the upward route which he hoped that they would take. At the same time, it will not do to contemplate our ladies as at the end of their journey instead of very much on the road. Exceptional women there have always been in this country, but the average woman still has an average mind, as the exceptional women, who are the severest critics of their sisters, will be the first to assert. They are the leaders through the jungle, forced ever to look back in impatience at the leisurely crowd following in the rear, calmly accepting the removal of the obstacles with which they have not to struggle, and far from guessing the need of the mental hatchet which had so happily cleared them away. It is probably true in all countries, but certainly in ours, that the necessity of cultivating a mind, even the latent possibility of doing so, is not apparent to the majority of women. It is made so easy for them to do without this troublesome acquisition. They are taught at school just sufficient for them to fill their probable station, which they do with docility and without ambition. Neither in their work nor their play have they any sense of a void aching to be filled up. Indeed what void could there be—unless it were pecuniary—when there is golf and tennis, bridge, fox trotting and hesitating, cinema gazing, novel-reading, playgoing to musical comedies and revues, or, in the most domestic regions, sewing and the rearing of children to keep them happily in the conviction that life is full enough without the added burdens of thought and knowledge? Men