First, there was noticed the ascetic feeling, inherited from the old monks, of the essential _unholiness_ of women, and their consequent unworthiness to meddle with sacred things. This idea has probably occurred for the first time to many an English lady when she has penetrated by chance into some hallowed precinct, some tempting and shadowy cloister, of a monastery in Italy or Syria, and has been driven out tumultuously by a whole flock of cowled and sandalled brethren, cackling like so many geese at the intrusion of a cat into a hen-house. Perhaps, as at Vallombrosa among the Apennines, or St. Saba in the desert, she has seen the gentlemen of her party courteously received and comfortably lodged within the noble walls of the convent, while she has been left to such nocturnal repose as might be found in a flea-haunted pavilion outside, or in her tent pitched in a valley of centipedes. She has been accustomed to think of women generally as of the types common in decent English society, a little strait-laced, or perhaps a little “gushing,” as the case may be; and she has very honestly taken it for granted that, if there be any serious harm in the world, it is the opposite sex who are principally to blame. Suddenly, it is revealed to her that, by a large number of her fellow-creatures, she herself and all her female belongings,--her eminently respectable governesses, the Misses Prunes and Prism; her dear old grandmother, Mrs. Goody-Good; and her majestic aunt, Lady Bountiful,--all are looked upon as little better than so many Succubi of Satan, sent to lure the souls of those ridiculous old monks to destruction. The shock has not rarely produced a peal of ungovernable laughter such as those hoary cloisters had never echoed ere profane Saxon Balmorals trod their pavement; but, when _la pazza Signorina Inglese_ has retired to her hotel or her tent, she finds that a new and very unpleasant light has been thrown on matters whereon she had never reflected before. Modern English Ritualism and Monasticism are doing their best, in more ways than need now be specified, to introduce into English life these Oriental and gross ideas about women, that pseudo-purity which is most impure. In so far as they prevail, they will do us an injury quite incalculable. Needless to say that, to people trained in such a school, a female minister of religion would be a monstrous thing. _Almost_ as well might the creature trill out the melodies of _La Traviata_ or _La Grande Duchesse_, or perform her part in a ballet in the costume of a sylph! The view of womanhood taken by these ultra-sanctified persons and by the most cynical and profligate old _roués_ is practically the same. Surely, it is to be hoped that all this worse than folly will be swept away in the blast of public impatience and indignation which sooner or later must burst, like a breath of wholesome autumn storm, through the incense-laden atmosphere of Ritualism, and consign to the four winds all its trumpery