traits in the race; secondly, to the woman's physical weakness, inclining her to timidity, vacillation, and an absorbing desire to please; thirdly, to the diversion of her energies and the over-stimulation of her emotions effected by maternal duties; and, fourthly, to the comparative ignorance of life in which she is and should be brought up. No more satisfactory are the reasons alleged on the other side, such as the comparative recentness of women's attempts in literature, science, and art, the prejudice and opposition of men, and the influence of past centuries of imperfect education and inherited ignorance. Of these the first two are untrue or exaggerated, and the third must strike with surprise any person who reflects that women presumably inherit as much from their educated fathers and grandfathers as from their uneducated mothers and grandmothers. There seems more logical cogency in the arguments of a recent writer, who shrewdly asks: If women were ever intellectually equal to men, when and why did they begin to fall behind? and if they never were equal, how can they hope to catch up now, when masculine education is advancing at as great a rate as feminine?

(4.) There now remains only our fourth and last question, that of woman's proper sphere. Here again "who shall decide when doctors disagree?" Basing all theories, however, on experience and history, as previously cited, we may perhaps assert tentatively a few propositions. In writing, women will be wise to recognize with George Eliot the fact of sex in literature, and realize that to write as women is the office they have to perform. After their kind, in her opinion, women can fully equal men. Probably woman's kind in literature will always be found to be the humbler species, the lyric, and especially the hymn, letterwriting, and domestic novels. In art she will do well to confine herself to the lower and no less useful branches, decoration, and the various art industries; in music and drama she must be con tent with being indisputably a finer interpreter than man. In teaching, philanthropy, and medicine she can take an honorable place, and in religious work (apart from the vexed question of preaching) she will be universally welcomed. In the sciences of invention and discovery she had best not hope for great achievement, but be satisfied with a large arena of usefulness in assisting and carrying out the creations of men. For it is in this subordinate relation that women can probably find their truest and widest

sphere, that of Influence. It is the modern fashion to decry this power as degrading; none the less it is a vitally important factor in human affairs. Buckle declares that in the modern world the spread of civilization and the influence of women have been commensurate. Not only on morals, he tells us, but on knowledge has this influence been of enormous importance, for it is women who encourage in men those processes of deduction and imagination which are foreign to the male nature. To the same secret but beneficent agency Mill ascribes the aversion of the world nowadays to war and its addiction to philanthropy. In whatever field of mental activity we look, women have from all time been the great inspirers and moulders of men. No one can mention Barak, Pericles, Dante, or Petrarch without thinking simultaneously of Deborah, Aspasia, Beatrice, or Laura. The finest compositions by Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin would probably never have been written but for the women to whom they are dedicated, and the paintings of Andrea del Sarto and Titian show almost too plainly the earthly and feminine sources of their inspiration. The French Academy owes its birth to the female purists assembled in the Hotel de Rambouillet, and indeed throughout the history of French literature women seem to have abided by the famous advice of Lebrun: "Inspire, do not write." In the various salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, literary, political, philosophical, semi-religious, or wholly revolutionary, a new French literature and philosophy, and above all, the spirit of a terribly new political age, may be said to have been cradled. Clubs have now arisen to draw men away from ladies' drawing-rooms, and the power of the press has eclipsed that of any social circle, but none the less can women expect and claim a vital if subordinate or indirect share in all the activities of men.

To those who are not contented with this, we can only say: Take your own way. You are probably as well fitted as a man at least to acquire learning, and all opportunities are now open to you. But if in achievement you fail to attain the highest rank, do not be surprised, but look with more tolerant respect on the women who are satisfied to be and confess themselves the intellectual inferiors of men.

G. G. BUCKLer.

PROGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

V. THE PACIFIC STATES.

BY MICHAEL G. MULHALL, F. S. S.

THESE States, eleven in number, comprise more than 40 per cent. of the area of the Union, but are of such recent formation that they have less than 4 inhabitants per square mile, against 35 in the Prairie States. Census reports show:

The population in 1850 consisted of a group of gold-diggers in California, and it was not until 20 years later that these States began to attain any importance, viz.:

Here, as in other parts of the Union, urban population grew

San Francisco and Denver are the only cities that count more than 100,000 souls; the former is now the seventh city of the

Union, having outstripped New Orleans and Cincinnati since the census of 1870. The Pacific States are remarkable for the great number of foreign settlers and he paucity of negroes, the former composing one-fourth of the population, the latter less than one per cent. The foreign element is, nevertheless, on the wane, seeing that in 1870 it stood for nearly one-third of the population. This is the only section of the Union in which British settlers hold the highest place, outnumbering both Germans and Irish.

Agriculture. The area of improved laud under farms has trebled in twenty years, and yet has not kept pace with population, viz.:

Acres improved.

Acres per inhabitant.

The new farms established in the above interval of twenty years covered an area equal to the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium put together. The production of grain and meat has been as follows:

There is a deficit of grain, but a large surplus of meat, about 500,000 tons yearly. No part of the Union has such abundant flocks and herds; for if we take horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs collectively there are 8 head to each inhabitant, as compared with 3 in the Prairie States and less than 3 in the Union at large. The value of farm products is approximately as follows:

This gives an average of $13 an acre, against $94 in the Prairie, and $14 in the Middle States. The production of grain

and meat in comparison with the number of persons employed in farming in these and the other States is shown as follows:

If we admit the formula that one ton of meat is equal to 8 tons of grain it will appear that the labor of each farm hand is equivalent to 30 tons of grain in the Pacific States, 22 in the Prairie, 7 in the Southern, and 8 in the Eastern States, the average for the whole Union being 14 tons per hand. In other words, each hand in the Pacific States produces double the average. This is partly accounted for by the fact that the farms in these States are much larger, and the number of acres to each farming hand much greater, than elsewhere, viz.:

If the agriculture of the whole Union were on the same footing as in the Pacific States the improved area under farms (at 74 acres per hand) would reach 615 million acres, or 70 per cent. more than at present. This shows how efficient and economical is the labor applied in these States, where a machine with a couple of men cuts, threshes, winnows, and bags 60 acres of wheat in a day. The largest farms on the Pacific slope are in Nevada, averaging 1,300 acres, the smallest in Utah, average 126 acres. In the latter State the number of improved acres gives only 39 acres to each farm hand, which shows that the labor of two Mormon farmers is required to produce as much as one ordinary hand, not for want of industry on the part of Mormons, but because small farms are ill-suited to labor-saving machinery of the newest kind. There is an immense field for agriculture, as yet undeveloped, the Pacific States having only