Concerning Hen, and other Papers. By the Author of "john
Halifax, Gentleman." (Macmillan.)—These papers, numbering altogether eight, are the last that Mrs. Craik wrote. They illus- trate with great felicity two sides of her character,—her high ideals of life, and her practical benevolence. The first and second papers discuss the relations of men and women. Mrs. Craik held firmly that in some things women are better than men, but she was no undiscriminating champion of the equality of the sexes, if by equality is to be understood the capacity of women to do equally well all that men do. She held the old-fashioned opinion that women, after all, are meant, in the first place, to be wives and mothers. How they may best be these is forcibly set forth in the second paper, "For Better, for Worse." The author urges strongly, even vehemently, that a good woman has no right to live with a bad man. If he is hopelessly bad, she must leave him; not by divorce, a practice which Mrs. Craik abhorred, but by legal separa- tion. Among the other papers may be found a plea for a holiday- home for shop-girls, under the title of "A House of Rest," and another for the Irish industries set on foot by Mrs. Ernest Hart. No one can close this volume without an increased regret that this admirable woman and writer has said her last word and done her last work.
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