The first question propounded to a traveller on returning from a transatlantic tour is usually, ‘What is your opinion of American women?’ for, in truth, the American woman is by far the most important element in the social machinery of the States.

Her reputation for beauty and smartness has spread over the whole earth, and to doubt her fascination would be a heresy even beyond this agnostic age. However, we are, fortunately, not wholly dependent on the crude judgment of awe-struck, startled travellers, saturated as they are with old-world prejudice, and prisoned in its narrow, conventional traditions; for the Americans, having already interviewed and exhausted all Europe, are now laudably engaged in the process of interviewing each other, and that with an acuteness and insight far beyond the observing faculty of the bewildered foreigner.

Nothing, in fact, can be more interesting than the analytical descriptions of their own people to be found in the pages of the great living novelists of America; and we may certainly accept in perfect faith the clever, clearly outlined sketches of eminent writers, such as Howells, Henry James, Cable, Aldrich, Edgar Fawcett, and other leaders of the great modern school of fiction, as the fullest expression of that wonderful product of social progress and advanced intelligence—the nineteenth-century American woman.