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"How the dignity and delicacy of such a person could have been affected, if the preliminary negotiation with her hobbling Strephon had been conducted through the instrumentality of honest Christie's hammer, I cannot possibly imagine."

This is evidently not to be construed into a satire against women, for Peacock follows the lead of Defoe in the chivalrous justice which, so far from ridiculing women, pointed out on the contrary the absurdity of the conditions that had made them seem absurd. In the same story he describes Sir Henry as—

"* * * one of those who maintained the heretical notion that women are, or at least may be, rational beings; though, from the great pains usually taken in what is called education to make them otherwise, there are unfortunately very few examples to warrant the truth of the theory."

In another connection he observes that the repression of feminine activity shows—

"* * * the usual logic of tyranny, which first places its extinguisher on the flame, and then argues that it cannot burn."

As to the mercenary marriage, further satire is contributed by Thackeray, whose plaints over the matches made every day in Vanity Fair are well known; by Dickens and Brontë in short, glancing shafts; and by Trollope, who makes it the main or secondary theme of half a dozen novels. On the more intricate subject of the Eternal Feminine, the contributions come from Lytton, Brontë, (not, however, from Mrs. Gaskell or George Eliot), Trollope, and Meredith. The first three agree on the bane of enforced idleness, which breeds frivolity and inane restlessness.