ture seems to be designed to confine women to the intellectual level of the populace, and to keep every incentive to thought and aspiration away from them.
And what sort of minds are they, who send such reading matter forth into the world? We have made the acquaintance of several examples. They are the so-called "editors." The journalistic profession seems to distinguish itself above all others, not only in that it throws open its doors to all manner of incapacity, and unworthiness, but also in that it rewards incapacity, and unworthiness better than any other profession does. No shoemaker, no tailor, no mason, no woodchopper finds employment, and customers, if he does not know his trade. But in the journalistic trade — it is indeed a mere trade for most of them — every thirsty loafer, every unsuccessful clerk, who never before in his life thought of literature, is at once a finished "editor." And if that sort of genius has once taken his seat upon the "editor's" chair, he becomes a "great man" in the twinkling of an eye. What of modesty there may still have been in him, what of possibility to learn, what of doubt in his own competency, is suddenly clean blown away; he is superior to everybody, repels every sort of information, advocates every stupidity with the consciousness of infallibility, and drags everything into the mire that does not chime in with his own vulgar conceptions, or his party servility. But the trait by which these representatives of German intelligence, and German language, dis-
