THE tendency of history to repeat itself is proverbial; and doubtless, as historical philosophy rises to the dignity of a fixed science, some law or laws will be discovered, in obedience to which events recur in cycles. Revolutions may one day be calculated as easily as eclipses-and that not after the present Old-Moore hieroglyphical fashion, or with the cautious and oracular predictions of the weather prophets, but with such precision as to enable the potentate to look ahead for the coming storm as surely as the sailor can when the drum is hoisted on our coasts. Very likely the potentate will heed the warning as little as the foolhardy fisherman does the storm-drum, or the miner his Davy's lamp; but that has nothing to do with the possibility of the prognostication. At present, however, the merest elements of such possibility occur to us in what we call historical parallels. Plutarch's work is one that need not have died with him, but would have been advantageously continued down through the centuries, and moreover might have been judiciously extended from men to events-from biography, that is, to history.

Some short time ago, as will doubtless be recollected, a remarkable meeting took place at St. George's Hall, under the presidency of Dr. Lyon Playfair. It It was convened by what are technically termed strong-minded ladies to protest against the failure of the Female Franchise Bill, and was so largely attended that it had to resolve itself into two meetings, and

some of the principal speakers had great difficulty in making their way to the platform, from which they were to ventilate their peculiar views. This numerous attendance was probably due rather to the novelty of the idea than to any great public interest in the question; and it was pretty generally felt that these Progressive Ladies committed a somewhat suicidal act in placing one of the male sex in the chair. It was really very much the same as though the advocates of the Permissive Bill should displace Sir Wilfrid Lawson from his accustomed presidency at one of their gatherings, and substitute Mr. Buckstone.

The great feature of the meeting, however, and that which makes it curious as an historic parallel, was that it revived to a certain extent the licence of the old Attic comedy. Each lady speaker selected as the theme of her discourse the oration of one of the speakers against the Bill in the House of Commons. What the ladies could not yet—by the law of the land-do from the benches at St. Stephen's, they did from the stage of St. George's Hall; feeling, no doubt, that they were only rehearsing their parts for futuremaiden' efforts on the floor of the House. Perhaps the mere mention of the Attic comedy, and of a rehearsal, will serve to suggest the intended parallel to those who have not quite allowed their classics to grow rusty. Two thousand two hundred and sixty-four years ago (let the philosophers of history make what use they can of the figures) there was placed on the stage

of the great Dionysiac Theatre, at Athens, a comedy of Aristophanes, called the Ecclesiazusa, the nearest translation of which somewhat portentous title is, The Female Members of Parliament. Its object was to burlesque those ideal polities of the philosophers, in which there was to be a community of goods and women. The ladies of Athens get these measures carried, by assuming the attire of their lords and masters, taking their places in the public Assembly, and so obtaining a majority of votes for these two revolutionary measures. The gist of the comedy is, of course, to show the complications that would arise from their adoption; and the matter, especially of community of wives, is treated, as might be expected from Aristophanes, but in a way that is utterly untranslatable; and indeed, as the newspapers say, 'quite unfit for publication.' Into the details of the Aristophanic Agapemone or the Athenian Utah, as it existed in his lively imagination, there is no need to enter. The opening portion of the comedy, which is by far the most vivacious as well as the most decent, is devoted to the elaboration of her plan by Praxagora, the strongminded heroine, and the night-rehearsal, by herself and colleagues, of the parts they are to play in the early sitting of the Ecclesia on the following morning.

Now here it is, of course, that the 'situation' exactly corresponds with that of St. George's Hall. The comedy of the spouting Athenian ladies, and what some persons still regard as the farce of the franchiseseeking English maids and matrons, are absolutely identical. It would be possible, but too personal, to find among Praxagora and her colleagues the exact types of Miss Lydia Becker, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Emily Faithfull, &c. It will also, no doubt, as has been said, one

day be possible to calculate exactly those laws and forces at work which made the Ecclesiazusæ a possible burlesque at Athens so many years ago, and which charged the air of Britain with those explosive forces whose results were seen not only on the platform of St. George's Hall, but also in the servants' strike at Dundee and the anti-butcher'smeat demonstration of the ladies in the colliery districts.

Philosophising apart, however, it may not be amiss to submit, for the edification of non-classical readers, and possibly for that of the ladies themselves, a very free-andeasy version indeed of those portions of the Ecclesiazusa which come most closely into contact with the position of our would-be female M.P.'s at present. A version, let it be distinctly understood, not a translation. Not only is Aristophanes practically untranslatable, but what is aimed at is to bring the two events into juxtaposition, the midnight gathering of Praxagora with her male-costumed friends and the meeting of the ladies at St. George's Hall beneath the shadow of Dr. Lyon Playfair's wing. Under these circumstances, the very widest liberty, even of a modern burlesque writer, will be taken with the original text; indeed it may not be out of place to mention that the experiment has been tried by Mr. Planché of putting a version of the Birds of Aristophanes on the English stage, and with the most complete success.

The comedy opens, of course, with a burlesque of Euripides. Aristophanes never could resist that temptation. Praxagora enters in male attire before the house of her husband Blepyrus. A lamp is suspended over the door; and, after the manner of Mr. Richard Swiveller, Praxagora makes it a peg for a soliloquy. Despairing of the attempt to convey at this distance