Ourselves : a Series of Essays on Women. By E.
Lynn Linton. (Routledge.)—This is a book well worth reading, or, should we rather say, very easily to be read. For the most part, it will please men and make women angry, for Mrs. Lynn Linton does not spare her own sex, but lays on the lash with an almost savage energy. Yet in one sense it is not satisfactory. These questions must be treated with the utmost tact and candour ; every qualification must be carefully considered ; sweeping generalizations sad rhetorical statements are most carefully to be avoided. And our author makes large assertions and rapid deduc- tions. We prefer to take as an instance, not one of the veratce gucestiones between men and women, but one which concerns class and class. We read, "There is scarcely a home in England where the kitchen shares equally with the dining-room." Of course, this is true in one sense. Take the moderately affluent home as an example. The "dining-room" has its three courses, its dessert, and its wino ; the kitchen, its plain joint, pudding, cheese, and beer. This is not sharing alike. But how could it be otherwise ? Does Mrs. Linton herself open a bottle of port for her servants when she opens one for her family ? But if she means that servants do not get very often, we may say as a rule, the same quality of meat, bread, groceries, &c., that is consumed upstairs, we make bold to say that she is wrong. In no family which the writer
knows intimately enough to be able to judge of its practice in this respect is there any other rule.
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