It has been observed before this that it is always the great-grandmothers in whom is embodied the last meritoriousness of the sex; always the great-grandmothers for whom is cherished this pensive masculine regard. And it may perhaps be worth while to note that these “proud, idle flirts” of Addison’s day have now become _our_ virtuous great-grandmothers, and occupy the same shadowy pedestal of industrious domesticity. I have little doubt that _their_ great-grandmothers, who worked--or did not work--the tapestries upon the Addisonian walls, were in their day the subject of many pointed reproaches, and bidden to look backward on the departed virtues of still remoter generations. And, by the same token, it is encouraging to think that, in the years to come, we too shall figure as lost examples of distinctly feminine traits; we too shall be praised for our sewing and our silence, our lack of learning and our “stayathomeativeness,” that quality which Peacock declared to be the finest and rarest attribute of the sex. What a pleasure for the new woman of to-day, who finds herself vilified beyond her modest deserts, to reflect that she is destined to shine as the revered and faultless great-grandmother of the future. To return, however, to the contrasting nature of the complaints lodged against her in her more fallible character of great-grand-daughter. Hazlitt, who was by no means indifferent to women nor to their regard, clearly and angrily asserted that intellectual attainments in a man were no recommendation to the female heart,--they merely puzzled and annoyed. “If scholars talk to women of what they can understand,” he says, “their hearers are none the wiser; if they talk of other things, they only prove themselves fools.” Mr. Walter Bagehot was quite of Hazlitt’s opinion, save that his serener disposition remained unvexed by a state of affairs which seemed to him natural and right. He thought it, on the whole, a wise ordinance of nature that women should look askance upon all intellectual superiority, and that genius should simply “put them out.”--“It is so strange. It does not come into the room as usual. It says such unpleasant things. Once it forgot to brush its hair.” The well-balanced feminine mind, he insisted, prefers ordinary tastes, settled manners, customary conversation, defined and practical pursuits.