Strange and inconsistent this: and strange and inconsistent what follows.

When the poor rope-dancer at Highbury Barn-she also a "female Blondin," when this poor martyr paid the penalty of her feats, in broken limbs, and the condition of a cripple for life; it was somewhat forgotten that she was a single woman, with no stout arm to work for her; and that she perilled her life to do a daughter's duty, and to maintain an aged mother. There was a huge sensation and much wrath wrongly directed: a world of good folk agreed to consider her as a poor, vain, silly thing; rightly punished for her culpable ambition; and the kid gloves and heavy moustaches cried, fie, for shame! and applied some rather harsh epithets to the unfortunate victim.

The-rope dancer of Highbury Barn was one of "Our Six-HundredThousand,” and merely engaged in getting her own bread and her mother's -as best she could.

Her sister-professional, at Aston Park, was enrolled among the two millions and upwards of English women who labour to provide the necessaries of life, and divers of its comforts, for a husband, besides supporting his children.

Balancing herself blindfold upon a rope, the latter loses her life in the effort to keep in idleness the man whose duty it was to maintain her, and society is called upon to shed tears for "the widower!"

The former, in the exercise of the same dangerous calling for the joint-maintenance of herself and her widowed parent, falls from the rope, breaks her limbs, and is sent forth from the hospital a cripple for the rest of her days; the mother deprived of bread and afflicted for her child, is not commiserated by the public, and, with the exception of a half score of good Samaritans, the Pit, Boxes, and Gallery of our world call the daughter harsh names, and tell her that "she merits what she's got."

How is this to be explained unless we are to conclude that in order to support a husband a woman may learn and exercise a trade, no matter how unseemly or perilous; but that she has no right to do so merely to find bread for her own famishing mouth, and to keep an aged mother from the workhouse. The angry talkers, and the ladies and gentlemen who make themselves conspicuous, these by pooh-poohing, those by clamouring against the employment of women; the knights-errant and the good men and true who feel a noble shame at the thought of women fighting the battle of life and wearing out health, strength, and spirits in weaving a rope of sand, that is toiling for the pay that is not sufficient to save them from starvation-of these lookers on, listeners, and speakers, not one was observed to reflect upon the conduct of a husband who lived upon the money earned by his wife in the practice of a most perilous profession pursued to support her "natural protector" and his seven children. Yet the three kingdoms rang with the story of the Aston-Park tragedy, and every man, woman, and child shuddered at the details.

Ah! let us remember; a woman's voice was heard: from the towers

of Balmoral came words of Christian indignation; thrilled with horror, The Sovereign spoke; and in Her imperial accents the reproof was heard; but the Press was silent, and the sentiment of the Public found no utterance. Was there, then, nothing monstrous in this dependance of a man upon a woman-of a husband upon his wife? Why did we shut our eyes to the calamity that befel the mother of the rope-dancer of Highbury Barn in the loss of her daughter's services, and why did we open them to shed tears of pity for the bereavement of the widower of the rope-dancer of Aston-Park?

Let us search into the evidence that is to justify our railing at the cripple, and our hysterical sympathy for the man reduced by his wife's extinction to look about elsewhere for his beef, beer, and tobacco.

Here are the facts:

The daughter of "Funny Joe," the clown; "Madame Geniéve;" "the female Blondin ;" "a member of the celebrated Huntini family," as the mourning widower informed the Coroner, was, at the time of her frightful death, seventeen years a wife, the mother of seven children, and, according to the evidence of Mr. Porter the surgeon, within one month of bringing an eighth into the world: within one month: ponder that ye women of England! Yet this unhappy victim does not appear to have benefited much by marriage. Possessed of a husband, home, and children, she had not found exemption from the toil for daily bread; had not given up "the rope-dancing profession;" not taken her place by the fireside; not consecrated her time to the sacred duties of wife and mother.

Why?

She could not; she was one of the "two millions."

Let us hear what says the widower whom Jupiter Tonans very properly declared "had so good a cause to rue the day of the Foresters' Fete."

"She had always been used to rope-dancing."

"Ever since she was three and a half years of age she had been accustomed to it ;""and from that time to the present she has been more or less engaged in it;" maiden and married life included.

'She has been in every town in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Her first performance on the high rope was, I believe, at the old Ranelagh Gardens at Woolwich; that was fourteen years ago," or three years after her marriage. She had been seventeen years a wife when she was dashed to pieces upon the ground. "From that time to the present she has been in the habit of performing on the high rope."

And now comes the climax; without a blush, without a sense of shame, or the remotest consciousness of the self-accusation it conveyed, the husband of "the female Blondin" stated, in conclusion, that "she," his wife, "had been the SOLE SUPPORT OF HIMSELF AND SEVEN CHILDREN.

Justly, indeed, might the leading journal lament the bereavement of the widower, "who had so good cause to rue the day of the Foresters'

Fête" the wife and mother lay a shattered corpse in her coffin: his bread-winner was gone: the rope had dismissed her.

Poor "female Blondin ;" victim and martyr, the daughter of "Funny Joe," the clown in the "travelling theatre" of Messrs. Bennett and Patch! As an infant she gained her bread by rope-dancing; as a young girl she did the same; as a married woman and a mother she not only continued to earn for herself both food and raiment, "blue muslin skirt, spangles, and fleshings" included; but for the long seventeen years that she was a wife, and of which for fourteen she was in the habit of performing on the high rope, she was the sole support of her husband, and, as they came, of his children, seven having been born into this life when the rope gave way, and the dancer was blotted out.

Very reasonably the papers condemned the passion for that species of excitement, the fascination of which increases in proportion to the peril to life or limb of some wretched posture-master. Great and genuine disgust was expressed that the Foresters continued their Fete after the appalling accident which converted into a crushed and breathless mass "the graceful and smiling woman" in the "blue muslin skirt, spangles, and fleshings." Before their eyes, the rope-dancer's career had suddenly terminated in the ghastly dance of death; the tragedy was over; the victim sacrificed; but the curtain refused to fall.

The managers feared "the roughs" and "a row," so the entertainment proceeded. The holiday-makers went on with their merriment, and "the lads and lasses gleefully played at kiss-in-the-ring" on the verdant turf but a minute before pressed by the lifeless body of the female Blondin.

Listen to the leading journal on this hideous revelry:-"Were there no wives and mothers there to express indignation on behalf of their own sex; no husbands and fathers to speak for the widower who had so good cause to rue the day of the Foresters' Fete?"

All this is very well, very right and proper; but the commiseration for the aged woman, the mother of the female Blondin, who had as good cause to rue the popular Fete at Highbury Barn-where was it? Who felt it beyond the half-dozen good Samaritans, and in what way was it manifested? Was there no one to speak for the widow whose bread was taken from her suddenly and fearfully; whose daughter was a cripple thenceforth, with the bitter consciousness that her occupation was gone, that she could do nothing more for her mother, and that her filial devotedness had not protected her from the flippant censure of the multitude. It seems to us, dear reader, that the scolding and the heartfelt sympathy were each mis-directed: and that truly this should have changed place with that.

Again; in the many columns devoted to the details of the Aston Park tragedy, and the many "leaders" that supplemented them, we were unable to detect a word of wondering pity for the position of the wife burdened for seventeen years, the whole term of her married life, with

"the sole support" of a husband; for the cares of the mother whose seven children looked to her for bread; for the agony of the woman who, within a month of hailing the first wail of another helpless dependant upon her earnings, arrayed herself in the blue skirt with the "tawdry spangles," and beneath the summer sun, in the gaze of thousands, to the strains of "lively music," and the cheers of the marvelling multitude, made three steps blindfolded, three steps only, upon that spliced and worthless rope, to fall helpless, hopeless,-to perish miserably with her unborn babe,-perish miserably, winning the bread of her husband and his seven children.

And a provincial journalist greets her remains with, "poor wretch,' and contemptuous pity!

Strange this diversion of the public sympathies-of the popular indignation. Yet how touching this story of a woman braving danger and death, not once or twice, but habitually, and that for seventeen years, that she may feed her beloved ones: how thrilling the incidents, how tragic the finale. "The breaking short off of two yards of the rope," "near to the pulley-blocks," when the man, who deposed to the fact, was assisting the husband "to fix the guy-lines at four o'clock :" the alleged absence of "any timidity" on the part of the poor victim when made aware of the ominous circumstance and informed that "she would have to wait" and the full-the fatal confidence in her husband's care that we are told was expressed by the trusting wife; how reconcile it with "the fear that the rope was not secure," and "the hope it would not break," which the mother, trembling for her unborn babe, communicated to one of the officials? And the condition of the rope on examination after the thread of that woman's life had been snapt asunder by "the breaking short off" of the strands "as rotten as tinder?" What is the evidence? Hear the words addressed to the Coroner by the experienced foreman to Messrs. John and Henry Wright of the Universe Works.

"This rope, you will find, has every appearance of the dry rot."

"Even the heart of it is rotten. Each of the strands of this rope when untwisted should bear a hundredweight, but these are as rotten as tinder ; you can almost rub them to pieces in your hands. If it was a good rope it would have broken in the lengths, the strands would have drawn out; as it is, they are broken short off." Note the description of it by others: “frayed and ragged; "of so bad a quality that when it arrived at the hall, on Saturday, one of the officials, after an inspection, declared that it was a rope on which he would not allow a dog to go."

Alas, poor "female Blondin," unhappy wife and mother; stifling her fear, cherishing her hope, and trusting her life and that of her infant to her husband's judgment; to the forethought and intelligence of a man too ignorant and obtuse to be admonished by the breaking short off of two yards in the process of fixing the guy-lines at four o'clock on the fatal day. Upon this rope, this "frayed and ragged" rope, “rotten at the heart," in chains, and then blindfold, she ventures once, twice, thrice, and the last three short steps hurry her into eternity. The rope breaks, and

"the sole support" of the family; of the man and his seven children, is gone for ever.

Strange, dear reader, that the heroism and devotedness of this woman did not elicit one word of comment or admiration; strange, dear ladies and gentlemen, that your sympathy was demanded for "the widower," the husband who sold her services at the fete for fifteen pounds sterling; who superintended the adjustment of the rope, "rotten as tinder;" who handed the balancing-pole to the smiling victim, chalked the soles of her boots "to give her a greater hold," and fastened the steel chains to her wrists and her ancles; who was then a spectator, as he had been for fourteen years, of the deadly peril of his wife dancing upon the high rope, and a witness of the appalling death of the mother of his children.

We note this, by the way; the object of our paper being much higher than to blame the unhappy man, or number him with the "lazy fellows," who, void of shame and manliness, force their wives to keep them. After this fashion, the husband of "Funny Joe's" daughter may have been grateful to the helpmate who took upon herself his obligation and maintained the home. A dull, quiet, good-tempered drone, enjoying life, eating, drinking and sleeping, without heeding the fact that he did not work for the food he devoured, the clothes he wore, the bed he lay upon; without feeling himself troubled in mind or conscience that she bore the burden that the laws of God and man laid upon his shoulders; that she, not he, toiled for the bread of the family; and risked life and limb that he might not work, nor they want. Perhaps he was like this. Perhaps he reasoned, if he reasoned at all, upon the anomaly that the wife worked and the husband idled-"She likes rope-dancing; she's been always used to it; ever since she was three year-an'-a-half old she's been at it; she's clever, that she is; never fell but once, and that at Woolwich; took to the high-rope like a kitten to play; looks a lady, an' no mistake, in them muslin and spangles, and earns lots of tin. Lor! what could I do for her and the younkers? nothing to be compared to her; she's a wonder, she is; a mint o' money; and Blondin ant fit to hold a candle to her." Perhaps he so reasoned over his quiet pipe; and ready to come and go, to buy the rope, appraise her performances, make the engagements, fix the guy-lines, chalk her boots, hand the balancing-pole, chain and blindfold her; ready to look on and applaud, and take the price of her perilous "feats," the husband of the female Blondin, peaceable at home, fond of the babies, and thinking himself very kind to his "missis," may have been cited among his neighbours as a model for married men. Whether our portrait be like the man, and whether his brain ever exercised itself in the way here indicated, of course we know not; he may be "a gentleman" in white kids and a bushy moustache; he may dream poetically, and handle the Queen's English as daintily as a fine lady her lap-dog; but certain it is, that when the "rotten rope " made him suddenly a widower, the sympathy of his sex was not lacking. For seventeen years he had been welcome to the meals which a wife's generous self-sacrifice provided,