COERESPONDENCE. 279 



feel miserable in the rain; yet I certainly 

 never felt the smallest desire to adopt his 

 costume. Nor have I ever seen two persons^ 

 or two big dogs, engaged in fighting, that I 

 did not envy the man who rushed between the 

 combatants and stopped the unseemly exhibi- 

 tion ; yet I decidedly experienced no wish to 

 do it myself. It would not be my place. 

 Men have their costume, their avocations, 

 their sayings and doings, their varied callings 

 in the world, and women have theirs. Each 

 should be separate and distinct from the other. 

 A manly woman, or a womanly man, is, in the 

 eyes of all rightly-judging persons, a most 

 objectionable creature. There are many 

 things which a woman may legitimately 

 admire, and, in a certain sense, envy, yet with 

 which she should never desire to meddle^ 

 unless she is ambitious to merge her woman- 

 hood in the semblance of man. The cross- 

 skddle is one of these. It may do very weU 

 in. the wild^ of a country whose inhabitants 

 are froin' childhood accustomed to it, and 

 where aU ride alike, but not in civilised 

 England. As weU seek to advocate the dres& 



