We have our smattering of physicalscience humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Moses against Colenso; in modern languages we are more than your match. What have you to offer us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand waiting for a buyer in the marriage-market of Belgravia? You will not suffer us to enter the learned professions nor the Service; you will not encourage us to be architects, attorneys, land-agents, or engineers. We know and we feel that there is not one of these callings either above our capacity or unsuited to our habits, but you deny us admittance; and now we ask, What is your scheme for our employment? what project have you that may point out to us a future of independence and a station of respect? Have you such a plan? or, failing it, have you the courage to proclaim to the world that all your boasted civilisation can offer us is to become the governesses to the children of our luckier sisters? But there are many of us totally unsuited to this, brought up with ways and habits that would make such an existence something very like penal servitude -what will you do with us?

With this cry-for it became a cry-in my ears, I tried to go asleep. I counted seventeen hundred and forty-four; I thought of the sea; I imagined I was listening to Dr Cumming, and I endeavoured to repeat a distich of Martin Tupper; but the force of conscience and the congo carried the day, and I addressed myself vigorously to the question. I thought of making them missionaries, lighthouse-keepers, lunacy commissioners, Garter Kings-at-Arms, and suchlike, when a brilliant thought flashed across my brain, and, with the instinct of a great success, I saw I had triumphed. Yes," cried I aloud, "there is one grand career for women-a career which shall engage not alone all the higher and more delicate traits of their organisation, which

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will call forth their marvellous clearsightedness and quick perception, their tact, their persuasiveness, and their ingenuity, but will actually employ the less commendable features of female nature, and find work for their powers of concealment, their craft in deception, and their passion for intrigue. How is it that we have never hit upon it before? for of all the careers meant by nature for women, was there any one could compare with Diplomacy!"

Here we have at once the longsought-for career-the desideratum tanti studii. the occupation for which men are too coarse, too clumsy, too inept, and which requires the lighter touch and more delicate treatment of female fingers. It is the everyday reproach heard of us abroad, that our representatives are deficient in those smaller and nicer traits by which irritations are avoided and unpleasant situations relieved. John, they say, always imagines that to be national he must be "Bull," and toss on his horns "all and every" that opposes him. Now, late events might have disabused foreign cabinets on this score a quieter beast than he has shown himself need not be wished for. Still, he has bellowed, and lashed his tail, and cut a few absurd capers, to show what he would be at if provoked; but the world has grown too wise to be terrified by such exhibitions, and quietly settled down to the opinion that there is nothing to fear from him. Now, how very differently might all this have been if the Duchess of S. were Ambassador at Paris and the Countess of C. at St Petersburg, and Lady N. at Vienna ! There would have been no bluster, no rudeness, no bullying-none of that blundering about declining a Congress to-day because a Congress "ought to follow a war," and proposing one to-morrow, "to prevent a war." Women despise logic, and consequently would not stultify it. A temperance apostle is not likely to adulterate the liquor

that he does not drink; and for this reason, female intelligence would have escaped this "muddle." Her Ladyship would have thrown her blandishments over Rechberg -he is now of the age when men are easy victims-all the little cajoleries and flatteries of women's art would have been exerted first to find out, and then to thwart, his policy. It is notorious that English diplomacy knows next to nothing through secret agency. Would such be the case if we had women as envoys? What mystery would stand the assault of a fine lady, trained and practised by the habits of her daily life? They tell us that our fox-hunters would form the finest scout-cavalry in Europe; and I am convinced that a London leader of fashion-I have a dozen in my eye at this moment-would track an intrigue through all its stages, and learn its intimate details of place and time and agency weeks before a merely male intelligence began to suspect the thing was possible.

Imagine what a blue-book would be in these times would there be any reading could compare with it? We used to admire a certain diplomatista pleasant narrator of court gossip-giving, as he did, little traits of Kings and Kaisers, and telling us the way in which majesty was graciously pleased to blow his royal nose. Imagine a female pen engaged on such themes! What clever and sharp little touches would reveal the whole tone of a "reception!" We should not be told "His Majesty received me coldly," but we would have a beautiful analysis of the royal mind in all its varied moods of displeasure, concealment, urbanity, reserve, and deception. Compared with the male version of the same incident, it would be like Faraday's report on a case of supposed poisoning beside the blundering narrative of a country apothecary!

It is a long time-a very long time before an old country has energy enough to throw off any of

its accustomed ways. It requires the vigorous assault of young and sturdy intelligences, and, above all, immense persistence, to effect it.

Light comes very slowly indeed through the fog of centuries' growth, and there is hope always when even the faintest flicker of a ray pierces the Boeotian cloud. Now, for some years back, it may have been remarked that a sort of suspicion has been breaking on the minds of our rulers, that the finer, the higher, and subtler organisations of women might find their suitable sphere of occupation in the diplomatic service.

SO

"I don't speak German, but I play the German flute," said the apologetic gentleman; and might we say. We don't engage ladies in diplomacy, but we employ all the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a wellmannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary.

I remember an old medical lecturer in Dublin formerly, who used to hold forth on the Materia Medica in the hall of the University, and who, seeing a "student" whose studies had been for some time before pursued in Germany, appear in the lecture-room, with a note-book and pen to take down the lecture-"Tell that young gentleman," said the Professor, "to put up his writing materials, for there's not one word he'll hear from me that he'll not find in the oldest editions of the 'Dublin Pharmacopœia."" In the same spirit our diplomatists may sneer at the call for blue-books. We have all of us had the whole thing already in the Times,' and why? Because we choose to employ unsuitable tools. We want to shave with a hatchet instead of a razor; for be it remarked, as no things are so essentially unlike as those that have a

another broken-down old grey nag as that."

Do not therefore disparage my plan for the employment of women in diplomacy by any ungenerous comparisons with the elderly ladies at present engaged in it. This would be as unfair as it is ungallant. There are a variety of minor considerations which I might press into the cause, but some of them would appeal less to the general mind than to the official, and I omit them-merely observing what facilities it would give for the despatch of business, if the Minister, besieged, as he often now is, by lady-applicants for a husband's promotion, instead of the tedious inquiry, "Who is Mr D.?-where has he been-what has he done ?-what is he capable of?" could simply say, "Make Mrs T. Third Secretary at Stuttgart, and send Mrs O'Dowd as Vice-Consul to Simoom!"

Scarcely had my brief tribute to the fame of R. N. F. appeared in the Magazine of last month, than I read the following in the 'Galignani' of the 2d inst. It will be remembered, perhaps, that I left him at Padua, and there, it is satisfactory to know, the gifted gentleman still resides-not, however, at the Stella d'Oro, but in the more suitable accommodation of the city jail. Here is the paragraph :—

"SWINDLING ON THE CONTINENT.A letter from Venice of March 29 gives us the following piece of information which may still be of service to some of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it would seem that the proceedings of the party have been brought to a standstill, at least for some time. This is not, however, it may be recollected, the first occasion we have had to bring the conduct of the individual referred to under the notice of our readers for similar practices :

"I am informed that one Mr Newton, alias Neville, alias Fane, and with a dozen other aliases, has been ar

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rested at Padua for swindling. ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotelkeepers, and other geese easily fleeced on the Continent. In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their

suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence at the Stella d'Oro. They arrived without which had been lost in the Danube; but luggage and without money, both of they expected remittances from India! The obliging landlord lent money, purchased clothes, fed them gloriously, and contrived, between the 8th Feb. and 25th of March, to become the creditor of Newton and son for 1000 swanzig. The expenses continued, but the remittances never came. The patient landlord began to lose that virtue, and denounced these aliases as swindlers. The police of Vienna, hearing of the event, sent information that these two accommodating gentlemen had practised the victimising art for two months in December last at the Hotel Regina Inghilterre, at Pesth, run up a current account of 700 florins, and decamped; and a hotel-keeper recognised the scamps as having resided

at the Luna, in Venice, in 1862, and "plucked some profit from that palefaced moon." Mr Newton's handwriting proved him to be in 1863 one Major Fane, who had generously proposed to bring all his family, consisting of ten persons, to pass the winter at the Barbesi Hotel at Venice, if the proprietor would forward him 700 fr., as, owing to his wife's prolonged residence at Rome and Naples, he was short of money, which, however, he expected, would cease on the arrival of supplies from Calcutta. These gentlemen are now in durance vile, and there is no doubt but that this letter will lead to their recognition by many other victims.'

Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however, that this great man's career is now ended, and that R. N. F. will no more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite; and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling high in heaven, and the bright rivulets are laughing in the gay sunlight, R. N. F. will issue from his dungeon to taste again the sweets of liberty, and to partake once more of the flesh-pots of some confiding landlord. F. is a man of great resources, doubtless. When he repeats a part, he feels the same sort of repugnance that Fechter would to giving a fiftieth representation of Hamlet, but he would bow to the necessity which a clamorous public imposes, however his own taste might rebel against the dreariness of the task. Still, I feel assured that he will next appear in a new part. We shall hear of himthat is certain. He will be in search of a lost will, by which he would inherit millions, or a Salvator Rosa that he has been engaged to buy for the Queen, or perhaps he will be a missionary to assist in that religious movement now observable in Italy. How dare I presume, in my narrow inventiveness, to suggest to such a master of the art as he is? I only know that, whether he comes before the world as the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, a proprietor of the 'Times,' the agent of Lord Palmer

ston, or a recent convert from Popery, he will sustain his part admirably; and that same world that he has duped, robbed, and swindled for more than a quarter of a century will still feed and clothe him still believe in the luggage that never comes, and the remittance that will never turn up.

After all, the man must be a greater artist than I was willing to believe him to be. He must be a deep student of the human heart— not, perhaps, in its highest moods; and he must well understand how to touch certain chords which give their response in unlimited confidence and long credit.

No doubt there must be some wondrous fascination in these changeful fortunes-these ups and downs of life-otherwise no man could have gone, as he has, for nigh thirty years, hunted, badgered, insulted, and imprisoned in almost every capital of Europe, and yet no sooner liberated than, like a giant refreshed, he again returns to his old toil, never weary wherever the bread of idleness can be eaten, and where a lie will pay for his liquor.

Talk of novel-writers-this is the great master of fiction-the man who brings the product of imagination to the real test of credibility

the actual interest of his public. Let him fail in his description, his narrative, the progress of his events, or their probability, and he is ruined at once. He must not alone arrange the circumstances of his story, but he must perform the hero, and that, too, as we saw lately at Padua, without any adventitious aid of dress or costume. I can fancy what a sorry figure some of our popular tale-writers would present if they had to appeal to an innkeeper with this poor story of their luggage lost in the Danube. What a contempt the rascal must have had for Italian notions of geography, too, when he adopted a river so remote from where he stood! And yet I'd swear he was as cool, as collected, and as self-sustained