"Yes, and there were names--!"

"Names, yes, but that is all. The lady's name is remembered for the curiosity of her having equalled the ordinary poet or artist of her time, but her performances either are lost or only known to curious scholars. They have not the quality which makes things permanent."

"What do you say to Sappho?"

"There is nothing of her but a name, and fragments that curious scholars read."

"Worse luck to her if she invented Sapphics," added Herbert.

"One of womankind's torments for mankind, eh?" said his neighbour.

"And there are plenty more such," asserted Mrs. Duncombe, boldly (for these were asides). "It is only that one can't recollect--and the men have suppressed them."

"I think men praised them," said Jenny, "and that we remember the praise, not the works. For instance, Roswitha, or Olympia Morata, or Vittoria Colonna. Vittoria's sonnets are extant, but we only value them as being hers, more for what she _was_ than for their intrinsic merit."

"And," added Eleonora, "men did not suppress Hannah More, or Joanna Baillie. You know Scott thought Miss Baillie's dramas would rank with Shakespeare's."

Mrs. Tallboys was better read in logic and mathematics than in history, and did not follow Jenny, but she turned her adversary's argument to her own advantage, by exclaiming, "Are the gentlemen present familiar with these bright lights?"

"I confess my ignorance of some of them," said Julius.

"But my youngest brother knows all that," said Rosamond at a brave venture.

"Macaulay's school-boy," murmured Lady Tyrrell, softly.

"Let us return to the main point," said Mrs. Tallboys, a little annoyed. "It is of the present and future that I would speak, not of the past."

"Does not the past give the only data on which to form a conclusion?" said Julius.

"Certainly not. The proposition is not what a woman or two in her down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature."

"I hardly know where to meet you if you reject all arguments from proved facts," said Julius.

"And the Bible. Why don't you say the Bible?" exclaimed his wife in an undertone; but Mrs. Tallboys took it up and said, "The precepts of Scripture are founded on a state of society passed away. You may find arguments for slavery there."

"I doubt that," said Julius. "There are practical directions for an existing state of things, which have been distorted into sanction for its continuance. The actual precepts are broad principles, which are for all times, and apply to the hired servant as well as to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron.

And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the noblest figures anywhere depicted."

"I know," said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting impatiently again to declaim, "that men, even ministers of religion, from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor.

Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the sex, we shall continue to hear of such disgraces to England as I see in your police reports--brutal mechanics beating their wives."

"I fear while physical force is on the side of the brute," said Julius, "no abstract recognition of equality would save her."

"Society would take up her cause, and protect her."

"So it is willing to do now, if she asks for protection."

"Yes," broke in Rosamond, "but nothing would induce a woman worth sixpence to take the law against her husband."

"There I think Lady Rosamond has at once demonstrated the higher nature of the woman," said Mrs. Tallboys. "What man would be capable of such generosity?"

"No one denies," said Julius, "that generous forbearance, patience, fortitude, and self-renunciation, belong almost naturally to the true wife and mother, and are her great glory; but would she not be stripped of them by self-assertion as the peer in power?"

"Turning our flank again with a compliment," said Mrs. Duncombe.

"These fine qualities are very convenient to yourselves, and so you praise them up."

"Not so!" returned Julius, "because they are really the higher virtues!"

"Patience!" at once exclaimed the American and English emancipators with some scorn.

"Yes," said Julius, in a low tone of thorough earnest. "The patience of strength and love is the culmination of virtue."

Jenny knew what was in his mind, but Mrs. Tallboys, with a curious tone, half pique, half triumph, said, "You acknowledge this which you call the higher nature in woman--that is to say, all the passive qualities,--and you are willing to allow her a finer spiritual essence, and yet you do not agree to her equal rights. This is the injustice of the prejudice which has depressed her all these centuries."

"Stay," broke in Jenny, evidently not to the lady's satisfaction.

"That does not state the question. Nobody denies that woman is often of a higher and finer essence, as you say, than man, and has some noble qualities in a higher degree than any but the most perfect men; but that is not the question. It is whether she have more force and capacity than man, is in fact actually able to be on an equality."

"And, I say," returned Mrs. Tallboys, "that man has used brute force to cramp woman's intellect and energy so long, that she has learnt to acquiesce in her position, and to abstain from exerting herself, so that it is only where she is partially emancipated, as in my own country, that any idea of her powers can be gained."

"I am afraid," said Julius, "that more may be lost to the world than is gained! No; I am not speaking from the tyrant point of view. I am thinking whether free friction with the world way not lessen that sweetness and tender innocence and purity that make a man's home an ideal and a sanctuary--his best earthly influence."

"This is only sentiment. Innocence is worthless if it cannot stand alone and protect itself!" said Mrs. Tallboys.

"I do not mean innocence unable to stand alone. It should be strong and trustworthy, but should have the bloom on it still, not rubbed off by contact or knowledge of evil. Desire of shielding that bloom from the slightest breath of contamination is no small motive for self-restraint, and therefore a great preservative to most men."

"Women purify the atmosphere wherever they go," said the lady.

"Many women do," returned Julius; "but will they retain that power universally if they succeed in obtaining a position where there will be less consideration for them, and they must be exposed to a certain hardening and roughening process?"

"If so," exclaimed Mrs. Tallboys, "if men are so base, we would soon assert ourselves. We are no frail morning glories for you to guard and worship with restraint, lest forsooth your natural breath should wither us away."

As she spoke the door opened, and, with a strong reek of tobacco, in came the two other gentlemen. "Well, Rector, have you given in?"

asked the Captain. "Is Lady Rosamond to mount the pulpit henceforth?"

"Ah! wouldn't I preach you a sermon," returned Rosamond.

"To resume," said Mrs. Tallboys, sitting very upright. "You still go on the old assumption that woman was made for you. It is all the same story: one man says she is for his pleasure, another for his servant, and you, for--for his refinement. You would all have us adjectives. Now I defy you to prove that woman is not a substantive, created for herself."

"If you said 'growed,' Mrs. Tallboys, it would be more consistent,"

said Jenny. "Her creation and her purpose in the world stand upon precisely the same authority."

"I wonder at you, Miss Bowater," said Mrs. Tallboys. "I cannot understand a woman trying to depreciate her sex."

"No," thrust in Gussie Moy; "I want to know why a woman can't go about without a dowager waddling after her" ("Thank you," breathed Lady Tyrrell into Herbert's ear), "nor go to a club."

"There was such a club proposed in London," said Captain Duncombe, "and do you know, Gussie, the name of it?"

"No!"