Axel," cried Frida, running up to her husband, "what have you done? What have you done?"

"I have showed a young man," said Axel, striding up and down the room, as if he had fought a great battle with the world-out-of-joint, and made everything right again, "I have showed a young fellow, who wanted to make a fool of himself over a pretty face, his true standpoint."

Frida looked at him, loosened her hands, and, throwing a shawl over her shoulders, said, "If you will not go, I will," and went out, hearing him call after her, "Yes, go go! But the old sneak shall clear out!"

As she crossed the court, they were bringing round Franz's carriage, and as she entered the inspector's room Haber"Have you dared to do that?" said mann had just been saying to the young Frida, sinking, pale, into a chair, and gaz- man, "Herr von Rambow, you will forget ing with her great, clear eyes at her hus-it. You have spent your life hitherto, in band's triumphal march through the room, our small circle; if you travel,- as I "have you dared to thrust your petty should think advisable, then you will pride of birth between the pure emotions have other thoughts. But, dear Franz," of two noble hearts?" said the old man, so trustingly, in his recollection of earlier times, "you will not disturb the heart of my child?"

"Frida," said Axel, and he knew very well that he had done wrong, and his conscience smote him, but he could not confess it, "I believe I have done my duty."

Any one may notice, if he will, that the people who never in their lives do their duty always make the most use of the word.

"No, Habermann," said Franz, just as the young Frau entered the room.

"Good heavens!" cried Habermann, "I have forgotten something. You will excuse me, gracious lady!" and he left the room.

66

Always considerate, always discreet!" said Frida.

"Yes, that he is," said Franz, looking after the old man. The carriage drove up, but it was kept waiting; the two had much to say to each other, and, when at last Franz got into the carriage, Frida's eyes were red, and Franz also dashed away a tear.

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Greet the good old man for me," said he, "and greet Axel, also," he added, in a lower tone, as he pressed her hand. The carriage drove off.

A CORRESPONDENT writes to us as follows: "I am informed that the Dutch settlements on the Gold Coast will in all probability soon be transferred to the British Government, and this arrangement if carried out will be beneficial to our commerce in that part of the world, and will also be attended with results of a higher kind. Since the beginning of the present century the kingdom of Ashanti has continually been striving by war or intrigue to obtain a seaport the natural desideratum of all ambitious inland Powers, whether in Europe or in Africa. The English Government has always endeavoured to preserve the independence of the coast tribes under its protectorate; the Dutch have pursued exactly the opposite policy. This has finally brought about a state of hostility

between the English natives and the Dutch natives, which the local Dutch and English Governments have been unable to alter, and the details of which would not read very nicely in print. But happily there is no necessity for giving them. If the Dutch leave the coast the Ashantis will be entirely dependent on us for their munitious of war, and for certain luxuries which have become as much necessaries with them as tea and coffee are with us. They will therefore be compelled to give up their schemes of territorial conquest, leave their neighbours alone, and apply their vigorous minds to the development of the gold mines and other internal resources of their country."

Pall Mall Gazette.

From The New Monthly Magazine.
FEMININE INTUITIONS.

To what the critics say of most women,
that they cannot reason at all, Mr. Herman
Merivale replies that at any rate the few
who can are apt to vanquish in fair con-
troversy the ablest men; and this he takes
to be chiefly because they see distinctly
what they aim at, and are apt to argue as
the Bourgeois Gentilhomme's maid fenced.
Philosophers tell us that women have the
deductive intellect, and not the inductive
-by which is practically meant that they
have "great quickness in suggestion, in
the detection of possible consequences,
and in hazarding skilful remarks." They
do not, observes an accurate analyst of
the Intellect of Women, proceed by ar-
gumentative conclusions from clearly de-
fined premises, but they throw out observ-
ations which they cannot tell how they
came by, but which give the discussion a
new turn, and open up new lines of
thought. A French proverb bids us take
the first advice of a woman, and not the
second; which proverb Archbishop Trench
hails is
one of much wisdom; for in
processes of reasoning, out of which the
second counsels would spring, women may
and will, he says, be inferior to men; but
in intuitions, "in moral intuitions above
all they surpass us far," having what Mon-
taigne ascribes to them in a remarkable
word, "l'esprit primesautier," the leopard's
sprng, which takes its prey, if it be to
take it at all, at the first bound.

not the ultimate secret of logic." At any rate, so far as the better half of Mormonism is concerned, he may spare them his reasons, and welcome.

Pedgift Senior's counsel to Allan Armadale is suggestive: "When you say No to a woman, sir, always say it in one word. If you give your reasons, she invariably believes that you mean Yes." The cynical old attorney's estimate of the sex would ill square with that of their laureate, in the Angel in the House:

How quick in talk to see from far
The way to vanquish or evade;
How able her persuasions are

-'I will

To prove, her reasons to persuade. Coleridge appends to his remark on the mind acting intuitively sometimes, just as the outward senses perceive immediately, without any consciousness of the mechanism by which the perception is realized, an assertion that this is often exemplified in well-bred, unaffected, and innocent women. And he cites his knowledge of a lady, on whose judgment, from constant experience of its rectitude, he could rely almost as on an oracle. But, he adds, "when she has sometimes proceeded to a detail of the grounds and reasons for her opinion, then, led by similar experience, I have been tempted to interrupt her with take your advice,' or 'I shall act on your opinion; for I am sure you are in the right. But as to the fors and becauses, leave them to me to find out.'" It is like Lord Mansfield's advice to the newly appointed Governor of Jamaica, a naval officer, who mistrusted his own competency to preside in the Court of Chancery: "Trust to your own good sense in forming your opinions; but beware of attempting to state the grounds of your judgments. The judgment will probably be right; the argument will infallibly be wrong.' Clito tells his companion that now je puis We can never, it has been said, feel that à loisr te conter mes raisons the other exan opponent is quite at our mercy so long claims, Tes raisons! c'est-à-dire autant d'ex- as he insists upon holding his tongue, and travajances; and the note of exclamation is wise enough to give no reasons for a may well find echoes through all space. As another persona dramatis says, in another act of the same comedy, "Tais-toi,

99 of

Hence the "Spare me your reasons the sage who had consulted a lady on a matter of moment, and who meant to abice by her judgment. Burke says of men in general that they often act right from their feelings, and afterwards reason but il from them on principle; and if so it be with the male creature, much more so with souls feminine. When Corneille's

tu m'étourdis de tes sottes raisons."

foolish action.

A skilful debater, again, never assigns too good a reason for any measure which he is anxious to carry. One is reminded Ar idle reason, remarks Dean Swift, of Captain Absolute's caution to Fag, when that mendacious varlet, or valet, declares lessens the weight of the good ones you gavebefore. It has been noted of Brigham a lie to be nothing unless it is backed, – Young that, according to unfriendly critics, on which account, whenever he draws on he never rises into the dignity of an arguhis invention for a good current lie, he men in addressing a body of devotees who have given the best possible proof of faith in his doctrines. Perhaps the Prophet may have discovered that verbal logic is

66

To at least half a dozen other judges of note has this dictum been ascribed. Only the other day a leading journal confidently fathered it on Lord Campbell.

makes a point of forging indorsements as well as the bill. "Take care you don't hurt your credit, by offering too much security," is the captain's advice. An essayist on Strong Wills observes that any body quite confident of his own line, and keeping to it, contemptuous of opposition, serenely and stolidly certain, is accepted as a guide by men worn out by too wide an embrace of every question: "Only he must not be too clever, and he must never give reasons." For these they can dispute, but to certainty and will they bow as to powers mysterious and divine.

As before, the explanation he offers is, that they trust more to first impressions and natural indications of things, without troubling themselves with a learned theory of them; whereas men, affecting greater gravity, and thinking themselves bound to justify their opinions, are afraid to form any judgment at all, without the formality of proofs and definitions, and blunt the edge of their understandings, lest they should commit some mistake: they stay for facts, till it is too late to pronounce on the characters. He calls women naturally physiognomists, and men phrenologiststhe former judging by sensations, the litter by rules.

Moore declares of Byron that it was impossible to lead him to any regular train of reasoning; that he was, if not inca- Doctor Aubertin, in White Lies, tells pable, impatient of any "consecutive the ladies of Beaurepaire how often he has ratiocination on his own side," and in this, seen science baffled, and untrained intellias indeed in many other peculiarities be- gences throw light upon hard quest ors: longing to him, may be observed striking" and your sex in particular has luminous traces of a feminine cast of character; instincts and reads things by flashes that -"it being observable that the discur- we men miss with a microscope." Pribasive faculty is rarely exercised by women; but that nevertheless, by the mere instinct of truth (as was the case with Lord Byron), they are often enabled at once to light upon the very conclusion to which man, through all the forms of reasoning, is, in the mean time, puzzling, and, perhaps, losing his way:

And strike each point with native force of mind,

While puzzled logic blunders far behind."

"You were always a prodigious reasoner," retorts one of Mrs. Gore's fine ladies, on a discursive companion: "I am apt to jump at my conclusions, and seldom find them worse than those to which other people climb on their knees." Schleiermacher affirms women to be even our best

teachers in cases requiring quick judg; ment. In another place he exalts and magnifies the value of that power of judging through the imagination which "women possess in a pre-eminent degree." Hazlitt asserts women to have often more of what is called good sense than men having fewer pretentions, being less implicated in theories, and judging of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, therefore, he contends, more truly and naturally. "They cannot reason wrong; for they do not reason at all." Elsewhere, again, he insists on the pre-eminence of women in tact and insight into character -on their being quicker than men to find out a pedant, a pretender, a blockhead.*

bly a multiplicity of parallel passiges might be cited from the opera omnia of Mr. Charles Reade. Here is one from Griffith Gaunt, referring to Catherine's conviction of there being a duel afoot: "and indeed the intelligent of her sex do sometimes put this and that together, and spring to a just but obvious inference, in a way that looks to a slower and safer reasoner like divim

tion."

Mr. Carlyle affirms of "female intellets when they are good," that nothing equls their acuteness, and that their rapidityis almost excessive. The most obvious characteristics of the feminine intellect, according to Mr. Caldwell Roscoe, are elicacy of perceptive power and rapidity of movement. He asserts that a woman ees a thousand things which escape a min; that physically even, she is quicker sghted; that mentally she takes in many nore impressions in the same time than a nan does. Moreover, that women differ rom men in having far more varied, subtle,and numerous inlets to knowledge; pon which they rely-not caring to renember and arrange previous experience, as a man does. The female intellect "valks directly and unconsciously, by more delicate insight and a more refined and nore

chant, a preference, a falling in love, as mer observers, not as principals. Mr. Trollope somewhere remarks that just as men hunt foxes by the ad of dogs, without in the least comprehending how the dog's sense of smell can work with such acuteness, so is the organ by which women instinctively, as it were, know and feel how other women are regarded by men, and how also men are regarded by ther women, equally strong, and equally incomprhen* Quicker too, by a great deal, to find out a pen-sible. A glance, a word, a motion, is enough.

THE question of killing deadly snakes at Gov- | rah district, one of the smallest portions of the ernment expense in India is again under discussion. The Government is losing its subjects at the rate of above a hundred a day, or 40,000 a year by snake bites, but it fears losing rupees in the crippled state of its treasury. The last enforcement of the law was under Mr. Commissioner Plowden, many years ago in the Banco