In letters, at all events, there is no need to be so irritable. In this domain of art, ornamented by no nation more signally than our own, the critic of to-day may discern so much that has been notably done and so much that is indubitably promised that, in regarding our Englishwomen of letters, he may surrender himself to a benevolent glow of gratitude and admiration. With the names of Virginia Woolf, Clemence Dane, Rose Macaulay, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, “Somerville and Ross,” Elizabeth of the German Garden, Jane Harrison and Evelyn Underhill occurring agreeably, among many others, to his mind, he might well be content to succumb to the temptation of gracefully acknowledging in this art a divided empire and withdrawing with a courtly bow. But he would be neglecting his duty. There is a goodly body of women upon the heights, but it is nothing to the multitudes still ambling in the sentimental lanes of the Valley of Twaddle. The home, the home is the test, the bookstall counter, the lending library, the beach on a summer’s day. Turn thither the eye, and who shall say that the Englishwoman has reached the limits of progress? In this country and in America a mass of second-rate novels is yearly produced which it is appalling to contemplate. For whom are they, and for whom are those drugs of the mind, the story magazines, produced? Chiefly for women. The lending library of a seaside town tells a plain enough tale. Which are the well-thumbed books with dog-eared pages? Not those on whose title page appears any of the names that I have mentioned above, but senseless masquerades of artistic fiction, panderings to prurience and love of sensation, spongy sweets of sentiment and little tarts of so-called “mystery.” The tale that these shelves tell is that the bulk of Englishwomen have no wish to think when they read. Books are to them as a cup of tea—a pleasant narcotic—or as a stick of chewing gum that can be comfortably sucked for hours in a state of vacuity. And when they are moved, dear sensitive ladies, who touches their delicate chords? Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Mrs Barclay. It is no use for them to retort that the men are just as bad, for it is not true. It is women who keep up the circulation of the worse popular novelists. The Englishman who works with his head or his hands reads comparatively little: his work, exercise, cards, billiards, golf and other sport leave him too little time. He only sips the cup of sentiment and sensation of which the woman swallows daily goblets. Also, it is the man who sets out deliberately to improve his mind far more frequently than the woman. Men are the chief customers for the “Everyman” editions and “The Home University Library”; men read technical books and papers about their hobby, whether it be chess or motor cycling or stamp collecting or photography, while women at best acquire a new stitch in knitting; men read the political news in the papers while their wives