I have purposely selected the case of ‘Delicia’ from several more or less similar ones as a type of the fate frequently meted out by men to the women who have by their own intellectual attainments succeeded in winning fame and fortune. There are three radical errors chiefly made by the ‘superior’ sex in their hasty estimation of what are called ‘clever’ women;—the first on the question of heart; the second in the matter of permanence; and the third on the always momentous consideration of good looks. If a woman does anything out of the common in the way of art or literature, she is immediately judged by men as being probably without tenderness, without permanence in her work, and certainly without personal beauty. Now, as far as tenderness goes, a woman who thinks, who has read much and has studied human life in its various wonderful and often sad aspects, is far more able to realise the rareness and the worth of true love than the woman who has never thought or studied at all. She,—the woman thinker,—understands with full pathos the real necessity there is for being kind, patient and forbearing one with the other, since at any moment Death may sever the closest ties and put an end to the happiest dreams; and in her love—if she does love—there must needs be far more force, truth and passion than in the light emotion of the woman who lives for society alone, and flits from pleasure to pleasure like a kind of moth whose existence and feeling are but for a day. On the question of permanence in her work, she is the equal of man, as permanence in both ambition and attainment depends chiefly on temperament. A man’s work or fame may be as unstable as that of any weak woman if he himself is unstable in nature. But put man and woman together,—start them both equally with a firm will and a resoluteness of endeavour, the woman’s intellect will frequently outstrip the man’s. The reason of this is that she has a quicker instinct and finer impulses. And lastly, on the subject of good looks,—it is not a _sine qua non_ that a clever woman must be old and must be ugly. It sometimes happens so,—but it is not always so. She may be young and she may be lovely; nevertheless, men prefer to run after the newest barmaid or music-hall dancer, who is probably painted up to the eyes, and whose figure is chiefly the result of the corset-maker’s art, under the impression that in such specimens alone of our sex will they find true beauty. Were they told that a certain artist who painted a certain great picture was a young and beautiful woman, they would never believe it; if someone volunteered the information that the sculptor whose massive marble group of classic figures adorns one of the galleries in Rome was a woman whose smile was ravishing and whose figure was a model for Psyche, they would shrug their shoulders incredulously. ‘No, no!’ they would say, ‘Clever women are always ‘unsexed,’—give me the barmaid—the shop-girl—the dancer—the