terrifies most women—­the loss of social status—­she put up her own name over the door, and without the least self-assertion quietly entered into competition with the sterner sex.  The result has been eminently satisfactory.  This year Miss Robinson has exhibited at Saltaire and at Manchester, and next year she proposes to exhibit at Glasgow, and, possibly, at Brussels.  At first she had some difficulty in making people understand that her work is really commercial, not charitable; she feels that, until a healthy public opinion is created, women will pose as ‘destitute ladies,’ and never take a dignified position in any calling they adopt.  Gentlemen who earn their own living are not spoken of as ‘destitute,’ and we must banish this idea in connection with ladies who are engaged in an equally honourable manner.  Miss Faithfull concludes her most valuable article as follows:  ’The more highly educated our women of business are, the better for themselves, their work, and the whole community.  Many of the professions to which ladies have hitherto turned are overcrowded, and when once the fear of losing social position is boldy disregarded, it will be found that commercial life offers a variety of more or less lucrative employments to ladies of birth and capital, who find it more congenial to their tastes and requirements to invest their money and spend their energies in a business which yields a fair return rather than sit at home content with a scanty pittance.’

I myself entirely agree with Miss Faithfull, though I feel that there is something to be said in favour of the view put forward by Lady Shrewsbury in the Woman’s World, {289} and a great deal to be said in favour of Mrs. Joyce’s scheme for emigration.  Mr. Walter Besant, if we are to judge from his last novel, is of Lady Shrewsbury’s way of thinking.

* * * * *

I hope that some of my readers will be interested in Miss Beatrice Crane’s little poem, Blush-Roses, for which her father, Mr. Walter Crane, has done so lovely and graceful a design.  Mrs. Simon, of Birkdale Park, Southport, tells me that she offered a prize last term at her school for the best sonnet on any work of art.  The poems were sent to Professor Dowden, who awarded the prize to the youthful authoress of the following sonnet on Mr. Watts’s picture of Hope: 

   She sits with drooping form and fair bent head,
   Low-bent to hear the faintly-sounding strain
   That thrills her with the sweet uncertain pain
   Of timid trust and restful tears unshed. 
   Around she feels vast spaces.  Awe and dread

   Encompass her. 
   And the dark doubt she fain
   Would banish, sees the shuddering fear remain,
   And ever presses near with stealthy tread.

   But not for ever will the misty space
   Close down upon her meekly-patient eyes. 
   The steady light within them soon will ope
   Their heavy lids, and then the sweet fair face,
   Uplifted in a sudden glad surprise,
   Will find the bright reward which comes to Hope.