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It is a long time–a very long time–before an old country has energy enough to throw off any of its accustomed ways. It requires the vigorous assault of young and sturdy intelligences, and, above all, immense persistence, to effect it.

Light comes very slowly indeed through the fog of centuries’ growth, and there is hope always when even the faintest flicker of a ray pierces the Boeotian cloud. Now, for some years back, it may have been remarked that a sort of suspicion has been breaking on the minds of our rulers, that the finer, the higher, and subtler organisations of women might find their suitable sphere of occupation in the diplomatic service.

“I don’t speak German, but I play the German flute,” said the apologetic gentleman; and so might we say. We don’t engage ladies in diplomacy, but we employ all the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted to royalties, we promote him. If he speak French tolerably, we make him a Minister; if he be fluent, an Envoy Extraordinary.

I remember an old medical lecturer in Dublin formerly, who used to hold forth on the Materia Medica in the hall of the University, and who, seeing a “student” whose studies had been for some time before pursued in Germany, appear in the lecture-room, with a note-book and pen to take down the lecture–

“Tell that young gentleman,” said the Professor, “to put up his writing materials, for there’s not one word he’ll hear from me that he’ll not find in the oldest editions of the ‘Dublin Pharmacopoeia.'” In the same spirit our diplomatists may sneer at the call for blue-books. We have all of us had the whole thing already in the ‘Times;’ and why? Because we choose to employ unsuitable tools. We want to shave with a hatchet instead of a razor; for be it remarked, as no things are so essentially unlike as those that have a certain resemblance, there is nothing in nature so remote from the truly feminine finesse as the mind of a male “old woman.”

It is simply to the flaws and failures of female intelligence that the parallel applies. A very pleasant old parson, whom I knew when I was a boy, and who used to discourse to me much about Edmund Burke and Gavin Hamilton, told me once that he met old Primate Stewart one day returning from a visitation, and turned his horse round to accompany the carriage for some distance. “Doctor G.,” said the Archbishop, “you remind me most strikingly of my friend Paley.”

“Oh, my Lord, it is too much honour: I have not the shadow of a pretension to such distinction.”

“Well, sir, it is true; I have Paley before me as I look at you.”

“I am overwhelmed by your Lordship’s flattery.”

“Yes, sir; Paley rode just such another broken-down old grey nag as that.”

Do not therefore disparage my plan for the employment of women in diplomacy by any ungenerous comparisons with the elderly ladies at present engaged in it. This would be as unfair as it is ungallant.

There are a variety of minor considerations which I might press into the cause, but some of them would appeal less to the general mind than to the official, and I omit them–merely observing what facilities it would give for the despatch of business, if the Minister, besieged, as he often now is, by lady-applicants for a husband’s promotion, instead of the tedious inquiry, “Who is Mr D.?–where has he been?–what has he done?–what is he capable of?” could simply say, “Make Mrs T. Third Secretary at Stuttgart, and send Mrs O’Dowd as Vice-Consul to Simoom!”