Irdoes not seem to the literary man very long ago that Goldsmith died, and yet what a revolution has oceurred since then may be seen from the following single extract from his writings "Women are confined within the narrow limits of domestic assiduity, and when they stray beyond them they move beyond their sphere, and consequently without grace."
Woman in Goldsmith's day, unless she were a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, was in but little better condition than the pampered ladies of an Eastern land. She wasencaged at any rate until she had got for herself a lord, and looked forward to nothing beyond "domestic assiduity" and the rearing of her numerous offspring. Men married in those days. Now they cannot, for, says avery recent lady writer "to dress well is expensive," and wives must dress. Nothing artificial or second-rate should ever be seen on a lady, and knowing this, we are informed by this feminine scribe behind the scenes, that women. in their frantic competition with each ovher not infrequently rain themselves and their husbands, others are content with shams, those coarse and vulgar imitations of costly things which so eloquently proclaim the character of the wearer, "sham! ermine, sham sable, sham lace, sham jewellery, even sham gold' ornaments." Such women, says this terrible critic, "imagine themselves smart when they are only tawdry." They have, too, no spark oforiginality, but are content to follow fashion with a "monkey-like repetition of the same models and colours" with never a thought as to the personal appropriateness of the styles chosen. The latest is always the best, in fashions as in husbands.
But dress as a form of ambition is not by any means new. Women vied with each other in adornment before even Goldsmith's time. Eve probably was much more fastidious as to the fit of her pristine garment than was her peccant husband. It has remained for modern times to widen the horizon of feminine ambition, and as a matter of course it has been in western lands alone where this has become possible. The elevation of woman brought about by custom, education, and religion, has put her upon a pedestal from which she looks abroad upon the world, and, spying here a something and there a something that takes her fancy or excites her desires, emboldens her to venture into regions hitherto untrod by female feet, and inspires the hope that Socrates might after all have been right when he said that, " Woman, once made equal to man, becomes his superior."
That this is true in some walks of life hitherto monopolised by the sterner sex will not long remain unproved. In 1890, Miss Philippa Fawcett was at the head of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, having beaten all her male contemporaries in what is one of the severest mathematical tests known to the civilised world. On another occasion there had to be a special class for one lady examinee who simply romped away from all her rivals, male and female, and is now no uncommon thing to find professors of higher mathematics in petticoats. Artists, novelists, doctors, and lawyers have had their preserves broken in upon by persistent poachers of the gentler sex who would not be denied. Few names were more frequently upon the lips of picture lovers a few years ago than those of Roza Bonheur and Lady Butler. In the world of letters, each in her way predominant, we have had "John Strange Winter," "Ouida," George Eliot," Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Marie Corelli. Great doctors, great lawyers, and even great musicians are as yet unknown amongst the new-fledged aspirants to professional repute. 'I'here has hardly been time yet.
But there can be no doubt that the gradual change which social evolution is bringing about in civilised States will result in still further modification of the lives of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.