The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 17, 1857.

details, showing what trades it is really pos-
sible for a woman to undertake, and what
must be considered as definitely beyond her
reach. A book which we reviewed a short
time since on " The Industrial Condition of
Women" would afford valuable help ; and
nothing would impress the truth, whatever it
may prove to be, on the public mind so well
as reiterated discussion in the columns of a
newspaper.

So much for the one point—that of making
women independent. Let us look at the
other—that of making them good wives and
mothers. If a working man finds discomfort
at home—if his dinner is ill cooked and his
children untidy, he is apt to resort to the
public•house; if his wife is wrapped up in
her own pursuits and ideas, and has no means
of understanding or taking interest in his, she
will be a dull companion; and if she is not
accomplished in the household arts which
help to make both ends meet, she will be a
ruinous one. Order, practical information,
cookery, needlework, and general economy,
are thus, we conceive, the ends to be kept in
sight by those who write for the improvement
of the working classes.

Judged by these tests, the paper before us does
not come up to the mark which its con ductors
are no doubt perfectly well able to reach,
provided they agree with us as to the im-
portance of the points we have mentioned.
It may be questioned, indeed, whether a
journal written exclusively for women by
women has not a tendency to increase the
isolation which the nature and education of
women is already too likely to engender. If the
two sexes arc to sympathise with each other, it
would seem that they ought to read the same
things ; not that they should be fed on a sort
of intellectual pap from which every mascu•
line element is carefully excluded, and which
is sugared and weakened to suit the assumed
narrowness of their ideas, and the assumed in-
feriority of their intellect• " I don't want to
" read what women write ; I want to read what
" men write," was the remark of a lady (not
" strongminded") to whom we submitted
some numbers of a journal somewhat similar
to the one before us. That such narrowness
and inferiority too often exists must unfor-
tunately be allowed ; but it is to be lessened,
not by condescending to the level of women,
but by raising women to the level of men—by
making her neither a mere toy nor a mere
upper servant, but a helpmeet and a com-
panion, whose power to advise in difficulty
should be commensurate with her right to
console under misfortune. We are no advo-
cates for the cant of "woman's rights,' nor
does the Waverley journal show the least trace
of any such nonsense. It is well written, and
its topics as far as they go are judiciously
selected and treated in a good spirit and we
are happy to see that its literary criticism is
not of the mealy-mouthed ord3r which usually
marks the organ of a class or a locality. We
have written the above remarks not with any
wish to accuse it of deficiencies, but rather as
pointing out paths in which its influence
might be useful. We have the best opinion
of its ladylike tone and the amount of in-
formation it contains, and we wish its con-
ductors every success in the arduous task to
which they have committed themselves.

Peripatetic Papers. Edited by John M'Gilchrist.

London: J. Blackwood.
THIS volume professes to be composed by fifteen
different individuals, " some of them in various
"degrees connected with literary pursuits, but none
"of them professionally." It is strange with such
a number of contributors that the style should ex-
hibit such little varisty. There is no originality in
the volume, and there is a singular want of freshness
of style in many of the papers. Many of the essays
are evidently composed by persons who believe im-
plicitly in newspapers, and there is an exagge-
rated estimate of their value in one of the
essays. The author of it does not understand how
the great freedom of our journals can be preserved
by our insular position, and he does not see the
difficulties of continental nations on this most ex•
plosive of powers. The article on " Insurance
Frauds" is one of the best in the volume. There
are some droll hexameters on " Money," which are
ratter clever. We extract a few