While Margaret Fuller was yet a little girl, in her father's house, an elegant English lady came to pass a few weeks in Cambridge. Her beauty, with her repose and softness of manner, wrought like a strange spell on the idealizing spirit of the lonely and passionate girl. She found the first angel of her life: heaven was opened; and the image of the fair stranger, who soon vanished beyond the sea, was an intoxicating vision in her brain, full of light and perfume, for many a year. In her later life, Margaret formed impassioned connections with a great many superior girls, who were drawn to her by an affinity for her overflowing powers of intellect, feeling, and aspiration. The last on the list of her friendships was the noble Marchioness Arconati, in Italy. The entire intercourse of these two women forms a chapter of devoted warmth and frankness. Through all her life, Margaret felt the necessity for intense relations of affection with the worthiest persons she met. One of her biographers says, "Her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism. Yet, in fact, Truth at all cost was her ruling maxim. Her earnestness to read the hidden history of others was the gauge of her own emotion."

This prayer was found among the papers written in her earlier life: "Father, I am weary. Re-assume me for a while, I pray thee. Oh, let me rest awhile in thee, thou only Love! In the depth of my prayer, I suffer much. Take me only awhile. No fellow-being will receive me. I cannot pause: they will not detain me by their love. Take me awhile, and again I will go forth on a renewed service. I sink from want of rest; and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in thy Love." Emerson says of her, "Her friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman with women, were not unmingled with passion, and had passages of romantic sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have heard with the ear, but could not trust my profane pen to report." At the close of her life, amidst the ruins of Rome, she wrote, "I have been the object of great love, from the noble and the humble: I have felt it towards both. Yet I am tired out, tired of thinking and hoping, tired of seeing men err and bleed. Coward and foot-sore, gladly would I creep into some green recess, where I might see a few not unfriendly faces, and where not more wretches should come than I could relieve. I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing good of me is left, except, at the bottom of the heart, a melting tenderness."

The Duchess of Orleans, that Helen of Mecklenburg who married the eldest son of Louis Philippe, was one of those women whose exalted charms of person, character, and manners glorify their sex, fascinate all beholders, and win the enthusiastic devotion of their associates. She was the worthy grand-daughter of that noble Duchess Louise of Saxe-Weimar, wife of Carl August, the friend of Goethe and Schiller, of whom Napoleon said, "Behold a woman whom all my cannon cannot frighten." Through the checkered scenes of her brilliant and melancholy lot, her happy childhood; her dazzling nuptials; her enviable married life; the terrible shock of her sudden widowhood; the frightful scenes of the revolution, when, with her infant son by her side, she confronted the levelled muskets of the infuriated mob, and looked massacre in the face, without the ruffle of a feature; the dismal days of exile, decline, and death, she bore herself with that sweet dignity, that spotless purity, that ineffable and sublime grace of wisdom and goodness which sometimes appear to lift the perfection of womanhood so nearly to the prerogatives of an angel. She had many friends of her own sex, who cherished an idolatrous affection for her. One of these, the inseparable companion of her existence, has anonymously written a sketch of her life and character, a most charming and impressive tribute. This modest memoir instructively suggests far more than it betrays. The writer says of her adorable friend, "Life was interesting by her side. She captivated the imagination of every one. I know no other woman with whom I could converse for twelve hours together, without for an instant feeling void or weariness. I feel as if I had always something to say to her; for her interest never flags." It is singular that, of all the multitude who desire to enchain their friends, so few ever learn to practise the deep secret contained in this italicized clause, the innocent secret of a self-abnegating heart of love.

Sarah Austin, one of the wisest and noblest women of England, formed a reverential and ardent friendship for this matchless lady, in her adversity. How profound, how sacred this attachment was, is proved by the notice which, on the day the duchess died, Mrs. Austin wrote, and sent to the press, blotted with tears; and also by the fuller sketch she afterwards prefixed to her English translation of the life of the duchess from its French original. "Her character was always presenting itself in new and harmonious lights; her manners were indescribably refined and winning; her conversation never flagged, was never trifling, never pedantic, never harsh; it always kept you at an elevation which at once soothed and invigorated the mind. There was not in her nature the slightest tinge of the cynical skepticism or sarcastic contempt which chill the soul, and annihilate hope and courage. These are the weapons which vulgar minds oppose to misfortune, the bitter and poisonous plants which wrongs and calamities produce in poor and barren hearts; but her tender and magnanimous nature could bring forth nothing which was not good and generous. It was most affecting to watch the working of her transparent mind through its faithful index, her countenance, during conversation.

"The interest her great qualities inspired was raised, by pity for her cruel misfortunes, to a height which might almost be called a passion. A veil of sadness overspread her sweet face; but behind this veil there was always such a beaming benignity, so lovely a concern for the welfare of mankind, such a high-hearted courage, that you left her cheered rather than depressed. It is to the extraordinary power she had of giving a high tone to the minds of others, joined to the unalterable sweetness of her daily intercourse, that I attribute the discouraged feeling common to those who mourn her loss. If her misfortunes were august, solemn, and terrible as a Greek tragedy, her heart was large, high, and strong enough to meet them. With all her gentleness, Christian and womanly patience, the most striking feature in her character was its moral grandeur.

"Greatness of mind and nobleness Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed."

Such a woman is the highest exemplar and benefactor of her sex. A religious quality is evoked in the soul that contemplates her. Every impure feeling is struck dead with awe before her. The angelic serenity of her face is as if the smiles which others wear outwardly, with her had retreated inward, and hovered in perpetual play about the heart. By spiritual contact with her, other persons become angelic also. She teaches, by example, what a divine exaltation is sometimes reached through adversity and pain. The head, discrowned of earthly glory, is crowned with celestial beauty. When sufferings stimulate virtues, the thorn-wreath blossoms on our brow: when sacrifices feed faith, the cross which we clasp puts on wings and lifts us heavenward.

I have reserved, to close this chapter, a singularly romantic example of a pair of female friends, set forth by old Thomas Heywoode, in his "Nine Books of Various History concerning Women," published at London in 1624. A certain sinless maiden, called Bona, "who lived a retired life in a house of religious Nunnes, had a bedfellow, unto whom, above all others, she was tied, lying on her death-bed, and no help to be devised for her recovery." This Bona, being herself in perfect health, besought the Almighty, that she might not survive her friend; but, as they had lived together in all sanctity and sisterly love, so their chaste bodies might not be separated in death. As she prayed, so it happened. Both died on the same day, and were buried in the same sepulchre, being fellows in one house, one bed, and one grave; and now, no question, joyful and joint inheritors of one kingdom.

NEEDS AND DUTIES OF WOMAN IN THIS AGE.

IF one-tenth of the efforts which women now make to fill their time with amusements, or to gratify outward ambition, were devoted to personal improvement, and to the cultivation of high-toned friendships with each other, it would do more than any thing else to enrich and embellish their lives, and to crown them with contentment. Their characters would thus be elevated, their hearts warmed, their minds stored, their manners refined, and kindness and courtesy infused into their intercourse.

Nothing else will ever add to society the freshness, variety, and stimulant charm, the noble truths and aspirations, the ingenuous, co-operating affections, whose absence at present makes it often so deceitful and repulsive, so barren and wearisome. The relish of existence is destroyed, the glory of the universe darkened, to multitudes of tender and highsouled persons, by the loathsome insincerity and treachery, the frivolous fickleness, the petty suspicions and envies, and the incompetent judgments, which they are constantly meeting. These superficial and miserable vices of common society disenchant the soul, and dry up the springs of love and hope. They are fatal to that magnanimous wisdom and that trustful sympathy which compose at once the brightest ornaments of our nature, and the costliest treasures of experience. Ah, if, in place of them, we could everywhere meet the honest hand, the open heart, the serious mind, the frank voice, the upward eye, the emulous and helpful soul largely endowed with knowledge and reverence! Then one would never be troubled with that frightfully depressing feeling—the feeling that there is nothing worth living for. Verily, the most dismal of all deaths is to die from lack of a sufficient motive for living. And is it not to be feared that many in our age die this death?

The true remedy for the fierce, shallow war of society, or its faded and jaded hollowness, is to be found in generous friendships, begotten by a common pursuit of the holiest ends of existence. In the nurture of these relations, by every law of fitness and want, it belongs to women to take the lead. The realm of the affections, with its imperious exactions and its imperial largesses, is theirs. Certainly no right or privilege should be withheld from women; but they ought to be careful not to mistake dangers or defects or vices for rights and privileges. It is simple blindness to fail to see that the distinctively feminine sphere of action is domestic life, and the inner life—not the brawling mart and caucus. The freedom and education of woman should be so enlarged that she can include, in intelligence and sympathy, all the interests of mankind. But, in action, we would rather coax men to withdraw from the gladiatorial strifes and shows of the world, than goad women to enter them.

And yet this statement needs qualification. There is much to be said on the other side. Woman is still generally regarded, on account of the transmitted opinions and usages of the past, as a mere appendage to man. The truth of the greatest importance to be considered is, that the element of humanity, not the element of sex, is the supreme fact by which the question should be determined. Seen from the point of view of absolute morality, man is no more a child of God and an heir of the eternal universe, than woman. She has a personal destiny of her own to fulfil, irrespective of him, just as much as he has one, irrespective of her "The most important duty of woman," it has been said, "is to perfect man." Why so? No one would say that the most important duty of man is to perfect woman. And yet, why is it not just as much his duty to be her servant, as it is her duty to be his servant? It is a remnant of barbaric prejudice, preserved from the ages of brute force, which makes the difference in the estimate. The first duty of every human being is self-perfection. The ideal of marriage is the mutual perfection of both parties. In its truest idea, marriage is an institution for the perfecting of the race, by the perfecting of individual men and women through their co-operating intelligence and affection. To limit its end to the perfecting of the man alone, is the highest stretch of masculine arrogance. Is it not a just inference, that, if woman is as completely a human unit as man, she has an equal right with him to the use of every means of self- development in the fulfilment of her destiny? The foremost claim to be made in behalf of women, therefore, is liberty, as untrammelled a choice of occupation and mode of life, as free a range of individuality and spiritual fruition, as is granted to men. But would this really be an advance, or a retrogression? Many maintain that it would be subversive of the genuine progress of civilization, to abandon the prejudices and throw down the bars which have hitherto restrained women from a full share in the chosen avocations and ambitions of men. All improvement is marked, they say, by an increase of differences, greater separation and complexity of offices. Therefore, to efface or lessen the social distinctions between the sexes would be to reverse the order of development. Auguste Comte, who felt a strong interest in this subject, and had a deep insight into some of its data, says, "All history assures us, that, with the growth of society, the peculiar features of each sex have become not less but more distinct. Woman may persuade, advise, judge; but she should not command. By rivalry in the selfish pursuits of life, mutual affection between the sexes would be corrupted at its source. There is a visible tendency towards the removal of women, wherever it is possible, from all industrial occupations. Christianity has taken from them the priestly functions they held under Polytheism. With the decline of the principle of caste, they are more rigidly excluded from royalty and every kind of political authority. Thus their life, instead of becoming independent of the Family, is becoming more concentrated in it. That Man should provide for Woman is a law of the human race—a law connected with the essentially domestic character of female life." There is a larger admixture of error in the foregoing representation, than is usual with this deep and original thinker on social ethics. It is true that differences increase with the progress of society; it is also true that similarity increases. There is both a minuter subdivision of functions, and a wider freedom of choice in the selection of their functions by individuals. In the rudest state, the relative condition and mode of life of whole classes are rigidly fixed by their birth or by arbitrary violence. As science and art are developed, and wealth accumulated, the varieties of industry and of social rank are largely multiplied; liberty of choice is extended, and facility of change is increased. Once there was a royal caste, a priestly caste, a warrior caste, a servile caste; determined by blood, and unalterable. These invidious castes are now, for the most part, broken down, and their several functions comparatively open to all who, observing the conditions, choose to fulfil them. The most prevalent and obstinate of caste distinctions is that of sex; the monopoly by man of public action, power, and honor; the exclusion of one-half of our race from what men regard as the highest social prerogatives, an exclusion which was no deliberate act, but a natural result of historic causes. Dr. Hedge says, with the clear vigor characteristic of his admirable mind, "As to the charge of exclusion, I think it would be quite as correct to say that women have combined to exclude men from the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery, as that men have combined to exclude women from the army or the navy, or the bar or the pulpit, or the broker's board. I suppose the assignment of either sex to the class of occupations which society, as now constituted, respectively devolves upon them came about in the beginning as naturally as the difference in costume which has always divided male and female. A sense of fitness, of natural affinity, determined each in its several way. There was no compulsion of the weaker by the stronger, and no formal allotment. Each following its own instincts arrived where it is. A tacit agreement settled this point as it has so many others of the social economy. Nor would any discontent with the present arrangement have arisen; had the family life kept pace with the growth of society." This exclusive usurpation of the public life by man—or rather, as we should say, this natural development and division—so organized by immemorial usage as to have become a second nature in both parties, is at last beginning to reveal its injustice, and to give way. In savage life, woman is little more than a bearer of burdens, a slave, and a drudge; as coarse as man, and lower in rank and treatment. The man fishes, hunts, fights, plays, rests; putting every repulsive task exclusively on the woman. It is the brute right of the stronger, which very slowly yields to the refining influence of reflective sympathy.

With each successive advance of society, it is not true that the distinction of sex becomes more definite and more important; but it is true that the distinctive feeling of men towards women becomes less a feeling of scorn and authority—more a feeling of deference and homage. Woman is as distinct from man in the grossest barbarism as in the finest civility: only, in that, she is the degraded servant of his senses; in this, the honored companion of his soul. If, with the progress of society, the sphere of feminine life becomes more domestic, inward, individual, so also does that of man. His ideal life constantly encroaches more on his active life; his physical energies become less predominant, and his moral sympathies stronger. Woman begins by being totally distinct from man in personality and estate, totally subjected to him in service. She goes on, with the improvement of civilization, to be ever freer from his authority, nearer his equal in status, more closely blended with him in personality and moral pursuits. They are not master and servant; but equals, responsible to one another for mutual perfection, each responsible to God for personal perfection. While, therefore, to efface the intrinsic characteristics of the sexes would undoubtedly be a retrograde step, it is an impossible step, which no one proposes to take. It is proposed merely to efface those factitious characteristics, whose removal will clear away barriers and secure the more rapid improvement of all, by blending their culture, their liberty, and their worship—showing us men and women as equal units of humanity in its personal ends, but dependent co-adjutors in its social means.

The common destiny of a woman, as a representative of humanity, is the same as that of a man; namely, the perfect development of her being in the knowledge of truth, and in the practice of virtue and piety. Her peculiar destiny is wifehood and maternity. But if she declines this peculiar destiny of her sex, or it is denied her, still her common human destiny remains unforfeited; and she has as clear a right to the unrestricted use of every means of fulfilling it as she could have if she were a man.

The good wife and mother fulfils a beautiful and a sublime office—the fittest and the happiest office she can fulfil. If her domestic cares occupy and satisfy her faculties, it is a fortunate adjustment; and it is right that her husband should relieve her of the duty of providing for her subsistence. But what shall be said of those millions of women who are not wives and mothers; who have no adequate domestic life—no genial private occupation or support?

Multitudes of women have too much self respect to be desirous of being supported in idleness by men; too much genius and ambition to be content with spending their lives in trifles; and too much devotedness not to burn to be doing their share in the relief of humanity, the work and progress of the world. If these were all happy wives and mothers, that might be best. But denied that function, and being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefullness, which they are capable of occupying, be freely open to them? What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse? If a woman have a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, instruction, trade, or honorable handicraft, it is hard to see any reason why she should not have a fair chance of pursuing it.

Of course, such must ever be the exceptional callings of women; but in proportion as those not otherwise more satisfactorily employed enter into them, we must believe that the burden on men, instead of being aggravated by the new competition, will be shared, and thus lightened, and the best interests of society receive impulse. Is it not, then, a sound claim which demands for women a full initiation into all the noble realms and interests of humanity? Slavery and ignorance engender worse vices and more hopeless degradation than can result from the exposures of freedom and knowledge. Besides, freedom and knowledge are the guides to every form of nobleness. They alone can fit women truly to exert their most sacred prerogatives. Those who have enjoyed the best means of knowing the truth say, that the Harems of the East are the hot-beds of every wicked quality whose seeds slumber in the heart of woman. Surrounded by rivals; incessantly watched by those cunning and merciless monsters, the eunuchs; knowing nothing of science, art, literature, or industry— they must be devoured by animal passion, by love of intrigue and deception, by jealousy, envy, and hatred. The true remedy for the melancholy stagnation or the frightful effervescence of their existence is not indeed to call them forth into a contest with men for the notice of society and the prizes of the world; but to give them their liberty, remanding them to their own consciences and the social sanctions of the great laws of right and wrong, to educate them to the highest point in every department of knowledge and sentiment, and to throw open to them the boundless field of private and public moral influence, with a fair chance for the achievement of happiness.

Therefore, while as perfect an education, and as absolute a liberty, are claimed for women as for men, they are to be adjured to remember that their conscious aims should be wisdom, goodness, spiritual force, delicacy, and harmony, with the consequent moral influence and contentment; and not the trophies of power, or the publicities of fame. And precisely the same duty holds with regard to men.

The effort to attain the highest graces of character, instead of plunging recklessly into the selfish ways of the world, is as truly obligatory for man as for woman.

Brazen impudence, unprincipled greed, ignorance, cruelty, are vices in him too; modesty, patience, obedience, cleanliness, and aspiration, are virtues in him too. If those vices were to receive a new development, these virtues a new check, by setting before women the higher industries and prizes of society, it would be an immense evil. But is it not probable that such a course will do more to elevate than to degrade, by a larger diffusion of the moral stimulants and restraints of life more closely assimilating the sexes in their diversity, interchanging their respective traits for mutual advantage, and speeding them forward in the common race? The two most pronounced feminine characteristics are tenderness and purity; masculine, courage and knowledge. Humanity will not be perfected, either in individual character or social destiny, by the greater separate enhancement of these in the sexes, but only by their balanced diffusion in both, making the women wise and courageous, the men tender and pure.

It is necessary to see more clearly the grounds on which women, as a class, have hitherto been excluded from public activity and authority, in order properly to understand the justice or the injustice of that exclusion. And, in studying the origin of customs and opinions now prevalent, it is as much our right to do it with freedom, as it is our duty to do it with reverence. Many persons forget that the highest question is, what ought to be? and not, What has been or is? Usages frequently endure after their utility has ceased, after their propriety has gone. The true ideal of human conduct is not to be seen in the imperfections of the past, but to be constructed from the perfections of the future. The fact that a thing has always been, is an historic justification of it for bygone time, but not a moral justification of it for coming time. This requires intrinsic and enduring reasons—reasons of right and use. While the exclusion of women from public life has been natural in the ages behind us, it is a distinct inquiry whether such an exclusion be either obligatory or expedient now.

History demonstrates that the male sex has greater muscular strength, with its natural accompaniments, than the female. The more differentiated and largely supplied nervous structure, connected with the offices of maternity, detracts so much from the amount of force furnished for the muscles and the will. In the rudeness of the primitive state, it is an unavoidable result of the superior muscular power of man that woman is his subject. But the more pronounced nervous system of woman gives her certain spiritual advantages. Her greater sensibility, her greater seclusion, with its relative stimulus of solitude and meditation; the closer endearments of maternity—develop her affections in a higher degree than his. Hence arises a tendency to refinement, elevation, influence, on her part—a tendency, to which, in proportion to his moral susceptibility, he responds with sympathy, respect, and veneration. Every step of social progress has been marked by a softening of the tyranny of man and a lifting of the position of woman—an approximation towards an equal companionship. First the tool of his will, next the toy of his pleasure, then the minister of his vanity, she is at last to become the free sharer of his life, the friend of his mind and heart. In the first of these stages, no question of right was consciously raised: the brute preponderance of strength decided all. In the last stage, there will be no question in debate, no exercise of executive authority on either side; all being settled by a spontaneous harmony of privileges and renunciations on both sides. But in the intermediate stages, covering the whole historic period thus far, man has sought to justify himself in monopolizing authority.

The first argument of the master was the argument, prompted by the unneutralized selfish instincts, that the mere possession of power to rule, gives the right to rule. Muscular superiority is, by intrinsic fitness and necessity, divinely installed to reign. Woman, as "the weaker vessel," must obey. Such a mode of thought was unavoidable, and had its legitimate ages of sway. But no moralist would dream of adopting it, after the conscience has advanced to the stage of general principles, has risen into the region of disinterested sympathy or justice. No one would now consciously employ this argument to maintain the subjection of women; yet in multitudes, below the stratum of their conscious thoughts, it blindly upholds that subjection. A single consideration is enough to show the logical absurdity of the assumption. If men are entitled to the exclusive enjoyment of political privileges, simply because they have more physical might, then, by the same principle, among men themselves, the weak should be subject to the strong. But the very purpose of law, the moral essence of civilization, is to rectify the natural domination of strength, and bring all before a common standard.

The argument from intellectual inferiority is as vacant as that from muscular inferiority. In the first place, it is an open question whether women, as a whole, are inferior in mind to men. Many intelligent judges firmly believe, that, taken as a whole, they are superior. Cornelius Agrippa wrote a book in 1509, entitled "The Nobility of the Female Sex, and the Superiority of Woman over Man." Lucretia Marinella published a book at Venice, in 1601, undertaking to prove the superiority of her sex to the other. A book entitled "La Femme Genereuse," an attempt to demonstrate "that the women are more noble, more polite, more courageous, more knowing, more virtuous, and better managers than the men," was published at Paris, in 1643. Madame Guillaume also published at Paris, in 1665, a work called "Les Dames Illustres," devoted to the proof of the proposition that the female sex surpasses the masculine in all kinds of valuable qualifications. Mrs. Farnham devotes her book "Woman and her Era," published in New York in 1864, to the support of the same thesis, with new arguments and illustrations. That woman is intellectually superior to man, was likewise the opinion of Schopenhauer, an exceedingly strong and independent thinker. The supreme examples of genius have indeed been furnished by men; but this is no disproof of the opinion, that the average height and quickness of feminine mentality are above the masculine average.

Granting, however, that women have less spiritual force than men, they certainly have greater fineness. Their smaller volume of power is compensated by their greater delicacy and tact, their more sensitive moral capacity: the power of self-sacrifice is surely higher than the power of self-assertion. The examples of queens, from Semiramis to Domna, from Zenobia to Catherine; of philosophers and scholars, like Theano, Hypatia, and Olympia Morata; of founders of orders and institutions, organizers and leaders of great enterprises, like Clara and Chantal; of actresses, like Siddons; of singers, like Malibran; of scientists, like Somerville; of heroines, like Charlotte Corday and Joan of Arc; of mystic prophetesses, like Kriidener; of religious thinkers, like Sarah Hennell; of novelists, like Madame Dudevant and Marian Evans; of artists, teachers, martyrs, saints—a host whose faces shine on us out of history, have abundantly vindicated for their sex, so far as force of will, intellect, imagination, and passion is concerned, the right of eminent domain in the whole empire of human experience. Besides, admitting the courage, knowledge, skill, and energy of average men to be greater than those of average women, the difference in their respective opportunities and training would go far towards explaining it. Women, as a class, have been excluded from a thousand lists and stimulants, under whose influences men have been sedulously educated. And, finally, even if we confess the hopeless inferiority of woman to man in some of the highest departments of action, that is no reason for denying her the chance to go as far as she can. If her mental victories must be lower and narrower than his, still she should enjoy the stimulus of the struggle, as one means of aiding the fulfilment of her human destiny. Because one can do more than another, shall he compel the other to do nothing?

When the untenableness of muscular or mental power, as a ground for holding women in an inferior position, becomes obvious, the next support man conceives for his exclusive appropriation of authority, is the belief that he is exclusively the representative and vicegerent of God on earth; that woman is placed in subordination to him by the direct command of God. In the Hindu law we read, "The husband of a woman is her deity;" and in the Ramayana, "A husband is the god of his consort." The New Testament says, "Man is the head of the woman, but the head of the man is God;" "Man is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." The Apostle likewise declares, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This position of the Apostle was based on the Hebrew account of the creation of the first woman from the rib of the first man, and of the sentence of God upon her in consequence of her sin in eating the apple: "Thou shalt be subject to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Few persons have a conception of the extent to which this representation has moulded the opinions and feelings of the Christian world. The origin of the view is obvious: the desire of the stronger for homage, and the willingness of the weaker to reflect that desire in their conduct. Is it a sound view? or is it a fallacy and a superstition? or is it a mixture of truth and error?

For those who believe in the infallibility of every word of Scripture, the subject is taken out of the province of natural reason, conscience, and expediency; and there is nothing to be said. They hold by the current tradition as the explicit will of God. But, at the present day, there is an increasing proportion of persons who look on the Hebrew narrative of the origin and earliest experience of our race in the garden of Eden, as a legend, similar to kindred narratives in other literatures. They are led, by teachings of philosophy and science which they cannot resist, to the conclusion, that the Almighty did not produce the human species by an arbitrary and wholly exceptional interposition; but created them just as he did the other species—through a law of development. It seems to them incredible, that man and woman were made separately, in succession, the latter exclusively for the former. They are obliged to suppose that man and woman were created simultaneously—the differentiation of sex having gone on in the lower types for incomputable ages, causing humanity to appear in its earliest rise as male and female. So, instead of saying, "The man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man," they would affirm, "The man and the woman were equally made for each other, to advance hand in hand to perfection." Those who assume this scientific point of view, will see that the question of the rights of woman, and her true relation to man, is to be decided purely by a philosophical mastery of the expediency and inexpediency, the essential right and wrong, in the facts of the case. The question of the eligibility of woman to public life and political prerogatives has nothing to do with her comparative personal weakness; nothing to do with any supposed rule, given in an ancient revelation; nothing to do with any supposition that man was the first to be created and the second to sin, woman the second to be created and the first to sin. Did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals; for they were made before he was. Even Apostolic logic sometimes limps. The question can be understood only by a correct perception of the will of God, as indicated in the nature and destiny of progressive humanity composed of male and female.

What, then, is the will of God, so indicated? Regarded as the two halves of humanity, men and women are alike and equal. Their unlikeness, when regarded as male and female, cannot destroy this primary and fundamental equality, or vitiate any of the rights it involves. Consequently, whatever belongs to humanity proper, belongs equally to men and to women. Woman has an equal claim with man to every thing permanently connected with the fulfilment of the human destiny; that is, the full and harmonious exercise of the faculties of human nature. The division into male and female, affecting not their equality of rights, merely gives special fitnesses and duties to each. Unquestionably, the higher nervous development and maternal offices of woman relatively fit her for tenderness and domesticity: the coarser muscular development and adventurousness of man relatively fit him for hardihood and publicity. But this can furnish no ground for subjecting one, and enthroning the other. It is a reason for their equal co-operation in assimilating each other's best qualities for their mutual and common perfection. Every thing that is good should be granted to both: whatever is evil should not be sought by either.

The true social desideratum at last is, not that women, equally with men, assume the exercise of authority; but that men, equally with women, forego the exercise of authority. The genuine perfection of humanity, instead of being the enforced obedience of one half to the other half, is the spontaneous obedience of both halves to the law of God. The incomplete statement of Paul, "I suffer not a woman to usurp authority," is supplemented by the far deeper word of Christ, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." This is the ideal of the future—that man shall no more have authority to command than woman, everybody doing right voluntarily, under the intrinsic sway of morality. Politics is the reign of force by legislative sanctions: morality is the reign of affection by social sanctions. The latter is pre-eminently the sphere of woman. Is it her sole sphere, or is she also called to enter the other sphere?

One thing is clear; namely, that it is unjust for the laws to discriminate against women on account of their actual exclusion from political power. They ought to have the same legal rights as men to earn, hold, and control property. Since they have the same interest as man in the laws they live under, they are entitled, in some way, either by their own voice or through others, to the same consideration in the framing and execution of those laws.

Shall we go still further, and say that they ought to take an equal part with men in the caucus, at the ballot-box, in the senate, at the bar, on the bench, and elsewhere? If universal suffrage be the true theory of government, then, logically, women are entitled to vote; because they, equally with men, represent humanity. Every asserted disqualification, on the ground of ignorance or preoccupation, is sophistical; because the same plea would disqualify four-fifths of the men too. If a government of all by all be the true theory, it is a wrong to exclude women. If they are not fully qualified, they ought to become qualified; and the only way to qualify them is to confess their claim and begin their education. Either all should vote, or merely those who are fitted: if merely those who are fitted, then thousands of men would be shut out, thousands of women admitted.

The plea for the admission of women to political activity is often met by the assertion, that they do not themselves wish it; that the best women revolt with profound distaste from every thing of the sort. But is this distaste a veracious instinct? or is it a prejudice, owing to the ideal of feminine character and life, which they have been educated to admire? Men have coveted a monopoly of executive power, and held up passive obedience as the fittest type of womanliness. Women, as a general rule, partake the prejudices, and like to flatter the vanity, of the stronger sex. The question is not, What do women desire? but, What ought they to desire? What is right and best for them? The question must not be decided by any thing extrinsic or accidental, any prejudices or fortuitous associations.

Every measure of intrinsic justice should be sustained despite of the incidental evils which may be feared. The opinion that women would be demoralized by voting, is no reason for withholding that right from them, if it be a right. To become egotistic, clamorous, corrupt, and brazen, is not a necessary accompaniment of political life; but is the personal fault of those who become so, and just as much a vice in men as in women, just as good a reason for recalling those from the ballot-box, as for withholding these. There is no incompatibility between the different realms of duty or of privilege.

What would be the effect of female voting? The physical womanliness of woman essentially consists in wifehood and maternity. This, of course, cannot be changed by any enlargement of her domain of interests and activities. Her moral womanliness consists in modesty and self-denial, the preponderance of disinterestedness over egotism. Now, is there any real likelihood that the assumption by women of the elective franchise, with its accompaniments, will destroy this type of womanhood, universally acknowledged as the ideal of womanly beauty and excellence? Is it not too well established in the authority of the most cultivated souls, to be so easily shaken? It is the true type, which, developed out of the historic progress in social conditions, cannot be lost, but must be more confirmed and glorified by the continued action, in the future, of the same causes which have already produced it. Not the destruction of the most exalted moral type of feminine character, rather its extension to masculine character, is what is to be looked for in the changes of the future. The greater the number of types of character exhibited to the public, and the greater the facility of comparison between them, the more sharply defined, and the more clearly recognized, will the best one be. Will not a pure and noble woman, eminently fitted by her wisdom and virtues for social influence, entering the political arena, set an example there, adapted to make men revere her, assimilate to her, and become themselves more modest, self-sacrificing, and incorruptible? On the other hand, when she is unfitted and unworthy, will not the reflection, in her, of their own vices of exasperated rivalry, pride, and tyranny, appear doubly detestable? Then the ideal, so far from being injured, would rather be improved—manly responsibilities making the women less timid and foolish, contact with womanly sentiment making the men less coarse and reckless. How well this conclusion is sustained by sound probabilities, deserves to be carefully weighed. No one should dogmatize on it.

In determining how far, if at all, women had best enter into the sphere of public life, and take part in the functions of government, there remains another consideration, which will be decisive with many minds. It is drawn from the difference between those things which are in themselves good, and therefore enduring parts of human life, and those things which are merely provisional means to good—means necessitated by existing evils, but destined gradually to lessen, and finally to pass away. Were political government an intrinsic and permanent end, an essential good of humanity, all, or at least all who are qualified, should share in it; because every human being has a right to a portion in every thing which is indispensable to the completion of the human destiny. Liberty, culture, and work are intrinsic and eternal elements of the human lot: women, therefore, have as clear a claim to these as men. But government is not a good in itself, is not an end. It is an evil attendant on human wickedness, a means devised to prevent severer evils; an element of decreasing proportions and of temporary duration. It is an artifice which we wish to see lessen as fast as is safe, and to disappear as soon as is possible.

Take the example of war. War is an evil, a transient incident in the fortunes of humanity; therefore the fewer who take part in it, the better. Women, being out of it, had best keep out of it. No one desires to have women become soldiers. Mental and physical labor will, as long as the world lasts, be a necessary part of the experience of humanity; therefore men and women properly have a joint heritage in its exactions and its privileges. But government is a passing phase in the evolution of the social system: when men are perfected, it will vanish in spontaneous obedience. War or crude violence universally governed in the primitive society. Little by little, this barbaric reign of force was encroached upon and superseded by politics, the forms of statesmanship and legislation. Then, little by little, the realm and rule of politics began to shrink before the increasing sway of conscience, reason, and sympathy, the personal law of justice and love, the intrinsic motives appropriated by the private heart from society and religion. As war has been narrowing and receding before politics, politics in turn must narrow and recede before morality. The less need a nation has of governmental interference for the securing of justice, the better off that nation is. The smaller the number of persons engaged in working that political mechanism, which is never productive, but merely regulative, the better it would seem to be for the people. We do not desire ever to see a woman occupy the office of a hangman, nor of a prosecuting attorney, nor yet of an electioneering politician; because, these being transient accompaniments of an imperfect society, the desideratum is to have concentrated on them the interest and energy of the smallest number competent to secure the needful results of order. He who believes that a universal devotion to politics would most speedily achieve the end of politics, namely, the supersedure of its whole machinery by the arrival at a self- rectifying observance of the conditions of private and public welfare—must advocate the bestowment of legislative and other public functions on women. Let all take part in voting and governing, for the sake of more quickly reaching the time when none shall vote or govern, but every one be a law unto himself. On the contrary, he who believes that a universal rush into public life, forensic controversy, party and personal rivalry, would exasperate the interest, and prolong the dominion, of politics, must earnestly recommend women to abstain from the struggle. Whatever logical right they may have, he will think it best that they abandon that right, and devote their zeal to the sphere of morality, whose elements are the eternal concern of all humankind. A wider outbreak of plots and cabals, an enlargement of the chase for notoriety and the scramble for office, a more virulent division of neighbors and of families, a new lease for the spirit of ambition and partisanship, would be an evil of the deadliest fatality. Being out of politics, which is the transient sphere of some, is it not best that woman keep out of it, and devote herself to morality, which is the permanent sphere of all? Here is furnished an honorable ground on which she may be, not shut out of, but excused from, the province of government.

What is the ideal of perfect society? Is it a state where there is a universal contention for notice, power, and honor? Then let women enter that contest now. Is it a state where each is content with the personal fruition of his own powers, in harmony with the same enjoyment by all others? Then let women, by setting such an example of abstinence from the public realm of politics, draw men also to their true happiness, in "the realm of home and morals."

Turning from the authority of history to the authority of moral science, there is no reason for the enslavement of woman to man. This is not yet fully seen, because the historic type of woman as pure subject, of man as pure sovereign, has sunk so deeply into the imagination of both sexes. The Gentoo Code declared, "A woman ought to burn herself alive on the funeral pyre of her husband." Body and soul, she was a mere appendage to him. The Mosaic Code declared a woman unclean eighty days after bearing a female child, but only forty days after bearing a male child. One of the laws of Solon forbade the Greek fathers and brothers from selling their daughters and sisters as slaves; showing that such an infamous custom had been prevalent. The passage of thousands of years had brought a degree of physical emancipation to woman; but she still remained mentally servile, when Catharine Parr said to her husband, Henry VII, "Your majesty doth know right well, neither I myself am ignorant, what great imperfection, by our first creation, is allotted to us women, to be appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head; and that, as God made man in his own likeness, even so hath he made woman of man, by whom she is to be governed." This type of unquestioning subjection and obedience is depicted by Chaucer, after Boccaccio, in his "Griselda," and by Tennyson in his "Enid." The husbands of these most lovely and womanly of women try their temper, and their subjectedness, by the most capricious, and the most cruel, tests. They submit to every thing with unmurmuring sweetness and humility. The true lesson of these charming stories is, that an inexhaustible self-abnegation and obedience forms the most heavenly trait and power of human nature. But it is a perversion to limit the application to woman. Moral excellence is the same in man as in woman. It is an outrage to make that meek submission to wrong, which shows so divinely in her, a duty; and it is equally an outrage to make that autocratic authority of man over woman, which he so complacently assumes, a right. The progressive emancipation of woman, revealed in history, will go on until she ceases to be, in any sense, "a mere appendage of man," and they become mutually as independent as they are mutually dependent.

It is very curious to study the extremes of dishonor and of honor, in which women, as such, have been held, at different periods, under various social conditions. In the Oriental world, in consequence of the character fostered in them by despotism, they have always been regarded by men with complacent condescension as toys, or with distrust and scorn as vicious inferiors. In the Classic world, they were always treated as far inferior to the other sex, and held up in literature in the most odious light. Euripides was surnamed the woman-hater, from the scorn with which he depicts the sex. The comedies of Aristophanes are mercilessly sarcastic, in their portrayals of women: his "Ecclesia" might be taken for a freshly painted ironical picture of the "Woman's-rights Movement" of to-day. And what a frightful picture of the Roman women Juvenal paints in his "Sixth Satire "! In the Christian world, the pagan type of woman, thought of as lower and wickeder than man, bore, for a long period, an aggravated form, imparted by an intense theological dogma. The theologians taught that woman—by the seduction of Adam and the introduction of original sin, which led to the crucifixion of Christ— was the guiltiest and worst of human beings, the Temptress of Man and the Murderess of God. Hear how Tertullian raged against her: "She should always be veiled, clothed in mourning and in rags; that the eye may see in her a penitent, drowned in tears, and atoning for the sin of having ruined the human race. Woman! thou art the gateway of Satan."

The condition of women in the East has been unfavorably affected by polygamy, despotism, stagnant ignorance, their close confinement, and the profound sensual element in their religion. Yet there are exceptions to the rule there as well as elsewhere. It was a woman who recited the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" to the Sultan. Oriental literature boasts many shining names of women. We have a pleasing introduction to some of them in Garcia de Tassy's essay on "The Female Poets of India." Ruckert's "Hamiisa," a collection of Arabic poetry, contains specimens from fifty-five female poets of Arabia. The genius of the Mohammedan saint, Rabia, has been given to fame by her wonderful sayings, translated into many modern tongues. In spite of these examples, however, the superiority of the condition of Western women over Eastern is not only incontestable, but, as a whole, incomparable.

The difference of the character of Jesus from that of Mohammed, and the difference of the spirit which they showed in their personal relations with women, would legitimate just the difference now existing in the condition of women, respectively in Christian and Mohammedan lands. Passing over other more notorious incidents, one anecdote will illustrate this statement. After the battle of Bedr, a Jewess of Medina, named Asma, wrote some satirical couplets against Mohammed. Omeir, at dead of night, instigated by the prophet, crept into the apartment where Asma, surrounded by her children, lay asleep. Feeling stealthily with his hand, he removed her infant from her breast, and plunged his sword into her bosom with such force that it went through her back. The next morning, at prayers in the Mosque, Mohammed said, "Hast thou slain the daughter of Marwan?" "Yes; but is there cause of fear for what I have done?" The implacable prophet replied, "None whatever: two goats will not knock their heads together for it."

Lamartine says of the Armenians, with whom he was intimate at Damascus, "I could not turn my eyes from these beautiful and graceful women. Our visits and conversations were everywhere prolonged; and I found them as amiable as they were lovely. The customs of Europe, the dress and ways of the women of the West, were our chief topics. They did not seem to envy the lives of our women; and, on observing the grace, the amiability, the simplicity, the serenity of mind and heart which they preserved in the seclusion of their domestic life, it would be difficult to say what they could envy in our women of the world, who, in the turmoil of society, waste in a few years their beauty, their minds, and their health." And yet, allowing the utmost for this greater calm and contentment, our women would lose a boon, standing quite alone in its immense value, if they were to give up that liberty which is so fast gaining them a full share in every real privilege enjoyed by men. Christian women mingle on equal terms in our social, literary, patriotic, and religious festivals. Hindu or Mohammedan ladies are condemned merely to look in, through windows grated with bamboo slats, on the preaching of the priests, and on the banquets of their husbands. Perhaps our ignorance as to the facts, and our prejudices as to the principle, exaggerate the actual evils of polygamy in Asia. The most trustworthy travellers there testify that not one man in ten can afford to maintain more than one wife; and that not one in ten, of those who can afford it, will venture on the trial, if they have a child by the first. Besides, the dreadful mortality of wives in many parts of America—owing to excessive worry, household drudgery, and rapid child-bearing—amounts to polygamy, only it is successive instead of simultaneous.

But one privilege European and American women have, which they cannot easily over-estimate; namely, their exemption from the irresponsible despotism still exercised over a majority of their sisters. The whole force of public opinion and of civil law is pledged for their protection. In his travels in Khasmir, published in 1844, Vigne relates this horrid incident, which happened within his own knowledge. Mihan Singh, governor of Kabul, had a favorite wife, the mother of his only son, who was accused of an intrigue. Her son, fearing the worst, dashed his turban on the ground before his father— the most imploring act an Oriental can use—and knelt, bareheaded, at his feet. But the enraged husband was inexorable, and caused his hapless wife to be baked alive. What a breadth of progress separates us from the state of society in which such a deed could be done openly, and without illegality, by a ruler! Can any woman be too grateful that she stands on this side of that breadth instead of on the other side? It is to be feared that her sex is not always mindful enough of the duty of those who are free to be bravely sincere and true. Deceit is proper to the slave. Liberty imposes frankness. The Asiatic woman carefully covers her face, but leaves her legs naked, and considers her European sister shameless in reversing this custom, There are, however, more impenetrable veils than those outwardly put on. When we compare the simplicity of the primitive ages of the East with the guileful art and hardened worldliness of the fashionable society of the West, we are tempted to think, that the more woman has bared her face, the more she has masked her mind.

Truth requires us to qualify the view of the social condition of women which we derive from the comic poets, from the later Greek writers in general, and from the biting epigrams on women preserved in the Greek Anthology. That qualification may be drawn from the history of Sappho. The consenting conclusions of the best critical scholars of recent times—as may be seen in such works as Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography" and Miller's "Literature of Ancient Greece,"—have cleared her name from the foul aspersions thrown on it by the authors of a subsequent age, who interpreted her life and works by the unclean standards of their own. "Not a line in her fragments, rightly understood, can cast a cloud on her fair fame." In her time, sensual and sentimental love were not distinctly separated; and she expressed her passionate but pure sentiments with a simple freedom and fervor afterwards grossly misconceived. It is to a friend of her own sex that Sappho writes, "Equal to the gods seems to me the man who sits opposite to thee, and watches thy sweet mouth and charming smile. While I look at thee, my heart loses its force, my tongue ceases to speak, a subtile fire glides through my veins, and a rushing sound fills my ears." This mixture of feelings, this carrying on of friendships between men, or between women, in the language of passionate love, without the implication of any thing corrupt, was a feature of the Greek character, unknown to nations of a poorer and colder temperament. It seems, as is set forth by Miller, in the fourth book of his "Dorians," that, in Lesbos, and some other parts of Greece, female societies were formed, each under the lead of some woman of distinguished genius, for the cultivation of poesy, music, refinement and grace of manners, and the other elegant arts. Girls were sent from distant cities, and even from foreign lands, to be educated in these societies. Sappho was the head of one of them. She calls her house, "The House of the Servant of the Muses." She formed ardent friendships with many of her pupils. It is these friendships which she celebrates in most of her poems. They reveal the varied, affectionate intercourse sometimes known by the women of classic Greece in their private apartments. The fragments which have reached our day preserve, as the names of the choicest friends of Sappho, Telesilla, Megara, Athis, Mnasidica; Anactoria, of Miletus; Gongyla, of Colophon; Eunica, of Salamis; and Damophila, of Pamphylia. The animosity of her allusions to her rivals, Gorgo and Andromeda, shows that she could hate as vigorously as she loved, and reminds us of the title of Middleton's tragedy, "Women, beware Women!"

In the world of modern civilization, the tendency is in the opposite direction from that of the Oriental, Classic, and early Christian worlds. It expresses reverence for woman as a moral superior. But the chivalrous impulse to exalt woman above man is as mistaken as the impulse to degrade her beneath him. Humanity is worshipful only as it exhibits worshipful attributes; and these attributes have the same rank, wherever they appear. A woman deserves to be honored above a man only as she has more than he of the highest qualities of humanity. The moment she demands precedence, the crown crumbles from her brows in fragments of dark decay. This lesson is finely taught in the ancient Hindu epic, the "Mahilbhiirata." As Radhika walked with Krishna, her soul was elated with pride, and she thought herself better than he; and she said, "O my beloved! I am weary, and I pray you to carry me upon your shoulders." Krishna sat down and smiled, and beckoned to her to mount. But, when she stretched forth her hand, he vanished from her sight; and she remained alone, with outstretched hand. Then Radhika wept bitterly.

The superiority ascribed to woman by fine minds in our era—a trait conspicuous, when we look from Tibullus to Frauenlob, from Pindar to Patmore—is often supposed to be her due, on account of some quality inherent in her mere femineity. It should be seen to be a consequence of the purer representation of goodness in her, by virtue of her personal renunciation of the struggle for precedence. Her mission is to set the example, and diffuse the spirit, of contented goodness— goodness contenting itself with the universal growth of goodness. In what way can she ever fulfil this mission, except by attracting man likewise to withdraw from the selfish battle for social distinction, and devote himself to the private attainment of personal perfection, and the public benefaction of his race? The chivalric transference of authority from man to woman is a striking instance of the propensity of human nature to oscillate from one extreme to the other.

Some of the champions of the "rights of women," in our day, apparently commit the error of inverting the real desideratum, which is, to make men renounce and love like the finest women—not to make women exact and fight like the coarsest men. They act as if they thought men were both better and better off than women, and were to be taken as models by them. But our hope lies in the saint, not in the amazon. Woman, as seen in the Mary who sat at the feet of Christ, brings a heavenly ministration to rescue man from every thing discordant: woman, as seen in the Penthesilea who fought Achilles, offers man but a perverted reflection of himself.

The common belief, that human life began in a paradisal state, is a sentimental and mischievous error. The cradles of civilization are full of murder. First, for a period of unknown duration, raged the strife for precedence in physical power and its grossest symbols. In civilized nations, this strife is now, for the most part, reduced to boys and pugilists, who are always eager to try each other's strength, and to crow above a thrown antagonist. Next came the strife for precedence in social power, and its finer symbols of rank, wealth, position, and fame. This strife may be traced in every record of the past and present; is far more extensive, seductive, and tenacious than the former; and has been left behind, as yet, only by the saintliest exemplars of our race. The third period, the ideal period which we now await, is one in which there shall be no strife among mankind for comparative superiority over each other; but, in place of it, a universal co-operating struggle for intrinsic personal worth, a constant advancement in gaining the real prizes of being. Then the wretched experiences of hate and jealousy, with their thousandfold sins and pains, will rapidly lessen. There will be no motives for envy and opposition, since the aims of men will be alike; and the gain of each, so far from being a loss to the rest, will be a gain to all. Let there be no strife for precedence, and all society must be the wiser, purer, and happier for every spiritual gain made by any member of it. Ambitious rivalry is wretchedness, and sure to end in sickening disappointment. Disinterested aspiration, equally to women and to men, is the benign mother of happiness.

We read in the Norse mythology, that the gods tied Loki, the impersonation of the evil principle, to three sharp rocks, and hung a snake over him in such a way, that its venom should drip on his face. But, in this dreadful case, there was one who did not forsake him. His wife Sigyn sat close by his head, and held a bowl to catch the torturing drops. As often as the bowl was full, she emptied it with the utmost haste; because, during that time, the drops struck on his face, and made him scream with agony. Her patience in holding the bowl, and her speed in emptying it, never failed. It is a forcible emblem of the ministration of woman to man. But, for man to impose a service of this nature on woman as her duty, is a cruel arrogance and wrong. The voluntary spirit of such a service teaches the one lesson which man himself needs to learn for his own salvation.

The laborious life of a statesman, a merchant, a banker, or a mechanic, is not rewarded by tender emotions, but by power, applause, or money. The heart of such a man, too often, gradually ossifies, becomes insensible to those fine and noble fruitions which imperatively demand leisure, and a steady lucid sensibility. The hard devotions of an external utility devour the riches of the imagination, and destroy the overflow of the affections. But the woman, who, shielded from the harsh frictions of the world, makes her soul a pure and still mirror of every form of celestial truth and good, may well be an inspiring prophetess for those who reverence and love her. Such a woman is, in some degree, a living representative of that star-girt face of the Virgin Mary which the medieval Church lifted into the night, and floated above the boiling nationalities of Europe. A Poppiea drawn by mules shod with gold, five hundred asses kept to supply her with baths of milk for the softening of her skin— is the enemy—and disgrace of both sexes. The true type and glory of the one sex, the admiration and salvation of the other, are displayed in such an example as that of the last hours of Madame Roland, who, riding in the death-cart to the guillotine, with an infirm and aged man who was broken down with terror and grief, devoted herself with heroic benevolence to comfort and sustain him. In order to spare him the double agony of seeing her execution previous to his own, with a sublime abnegation she refused the offered privilege of being the first victim, soothed and supported the trembling old man, saw him perish, then calmly bared her neck to the knife.

In one of De Tocqueville's letters to the illustrious Madame Swetchine occurs a passage marked by rare insight and weight. The noble writer urges that the clergy, without teaching special political doctrines, ought to instill into their hearers certain grand sentiments and loyalties, such as the feeling that every man belongs more to collective humanity than he does to himself. He then adds this impressive testimony: "During my somewhat long experience of public life, nothing has struck me more than the influence of women in developing public spirit—an influence the greater because indirect. I do not hesitate to say, that they give to every nation a moral temperament, which is shown in its politics. A hundred times I have seen weak men becoming of real political value, because they had by their side women who supported them, not by advice as to particulars, but by fortifying their feelings, and directing their ambition. More frequently, I must confess, I have seen the domestic influence gradually transforming a man, naturally noble and generous, into a cowardly, commonplace, selfish office-seeker, thinking of public affairs merely as a means of making himself comfortable; and this, simply by daily contact with a well-conducted woman, a faithful wife, an excellent mother, from whose mind the grand notion of public duty was entirely absent."

The hardening exposures, the gnawing jealousies, of overmuch fashionable society, with its shallow and bitter emulations, do far more to contract and sour the spirit of woman, to falsify and deprave her heart, to belittle and spoil her mind, to degrade and veneer her character, than any professional career can well be supposed to do. It cannot be doubted, that many a woman, who displays herself, as good as naked, in brilliant drawing-room assemblies, spends half her existence in the frivolity of crowded dinners, suppers, and balls, is more corrupted and bronzed than she could be by studying medicine, theology, jurisprudence, or political economy, and taking a zealous part in the affairs of her country. Let not the greater and nearer evil be neglected in a prejudiced imagination of a lesser and remoter one. Where do you find an exterior of politeness covering an interior of indifference or guile? a flaming demonstrativeness in front of a soul of ice? a beautiful show of nobleness and happiness, with a haggard reality of weariness and woe underneath? In the glare and fuss of society. And where do you find, purely shielded behind manners all frost, a heart all celestial fire? under conditions of unpretending simplicity, an experience ever fresh and serene, full of joy and dignity, and endlessly progressive? In those who lead lives of quiet sincerity and humility, consecrated to choice studies and chosen friends. What sweet charm or commanding grandeur or satisfying worth can be looked for in persons, the highest palpitations of whose hearts are raised by the touches of pride, money, and vanity? More patience, sincerity, studious seclusion, meditative consecration, and steady sympathy are the foremost want of our age.

The two arts of letter-writing and conversation, invaluable both as instruments of pleasure and of culture, seem to be dying out before the encroachment of innumerable trifles, absorbing amusements, tyrannical egotisms, and that pernicious flood of ephemeral literature, whose varieties are daily spawned upon all tables. The long, careful letters, full of thought, full of true personal interest and earnest general sentiment, so common two or three generations ago, are all but unknown now. There is no time left for them.

Conversation, too, has become the ghost of what it was. Where are the famous talkers now? Where are the circles in which conversation is carried on as the loftiest and richest of the social arts? The sustained comparison of views, interchange and discussion of opinions, accumulation of knowledge, argument, wit, sympathy, on themes of intense interest and solemn import, once so common in cultivated society, where all listened while each successively spoke, have given way before the telegraph, the newspaper, the pamphlet, the book, the platform, the swift diffusion of all information and the incessant hurry of everybody. Letter-writing is an indirect exchange of thoughts. Conversation is a personal exchange of life. The obvious decline of the former is a great loss; the notorious decline of the latter is a greater loss.

There is no way in which those women who are able to give the tone and set the fashion in society, can do so much good as by endeavoring to reinstate conversation, and to teach in every company the nobleness of leisure and attention, that each one who speaks shall be inspired to the fullest training of his best powers by the listening expectation of the rest. No one can talk well amidst a rude jabber of voices, or a perpetual succession of interruptions. Subtile thought, sacred sentiment, eloquent emotion, and artistic speech, are coy: they must have the encouragement of respectful audience. Conversation becomes the crowning art and luxury of life, the most completely satisfying of all employments, when groups of friends regularly meet, under the rules of gracious breeding, with leisure, with confidence in each other, with no jealous ambitions, no intolerant partisanship, but with catholic purposes of improvement. Instead of such meetings of choice friends, we now have mobs of people, drawn together by every sort of factitious motive—crowds who crush each other's dresses, desperately bow and smirk at each other; exchange intolerable commonplaces, with unmeaning conventionality; affect to listen to music, which no one can hear or would care for if he could hear; mix all their buzzing voices in one oceanic roar; or, when there is room, break up into whispering knots; then charge together upon the supper-table, as if it were a fortress to be taken by storm, and are unspeakably relieved when the assembly is over. As company is held in fashionable society now, the talk is not tenaciously kept to important themes, for ends of conviction, culture, light, or joy, but is a hodge-podge of trifles, an incoherent succession of unconsidered remarks. Each one speaks with his neighbor, regardless of all the rest of the guests, as if it were an evil to be silent, or an absurdity to expect that anybody could say any thing worth being listened to by all. Some one has said, with much piquancy, "Lectures are soliloquies reared on the ruins of conversation." Madame Mole suggestively remarks, "At the Hotel Rambouillet conversation was the all-sufficient amusement: we hear of neither cards nor music; for, wizen the habit of changing all thoughts and sentiments into words has become natural and easy, it offers so great a variety in itself that society needs no other. That form of talk alone can be called conversation in which what we really think and feel is called out, and flows the quicker from the pleasure of seeing it excite thoughts and feelings in others."

Those who, now-a-days, have a reputation as good talkers are rather declaimers, haranguers, orators, than conversers. True conversationalists seem to be nearly obsolete; because our social gatherings, whether in the drawing-room or at the table, do not furnish the needed conditions. To shine as a talker, one must override others by sheer vociferation and monopoly, treading his way amidst insincere applause and general dislike, over the injured self- love of every one present, to the throne of monologue. Such a condition is equally incompatible with what is best in character, in manners, and in personal communion.

For the revival of conversation, an improvement of character is necessary—a purification and deepening of the interior life. It grows out of friendship and the fervor of noble interests. And to these the fickleness and thinness of soul attendant on ignorance and selfishness, as well as on miscellaneous dissipation, are fatal.

For sparks electric only strike On souls electrical alike; The flash of intellect expires Unless it meet congenial fires.

There can be no deep and enduring union of human beings without truthfullness, earnestness, aspiration. It is glorious for people to meet who ascend to meet. For social conquests, as well as for private content, the aggrandizement of individual character and experience is the mightiest talisman. As with the increase of esteem and confidence the spiritual veils are lifted, one by one, the person itself charms because the soul is seen, and seen to be divine. Even in those examples where beauty is the hook, grace is the bait, and virtue the line, with which hearts are caught. When we see wisdom and goodness the guests of another's eyes, love becomes the guest of our own. The great evil of an excessive devotion to society and fashion is the mechanical hollowness and insincerity it breeds—an evil as fatal to happiness as it is to virtue. Economy of force is the governing standard with those who are too constantly in contact with the world, too much given to the spirit of crowded company and fashion. Conscientious truthfullness, earnest discrimination, and a behavior honestly adapted to the facts of feeling and duty, are too expensive, would quickly drain to death the fop, the self-seeker, and the coquette. Accordingly, indifference is the shield of polite society, and affectation is the valve of artificial characters; but sincerity of soul is the first charm of manners, and extent of sympathy is the proper measure of happiness. The soul, dried and hardened by the heat and wear of crowds, or exhausted by dissipation, measures its success by how much it can exclude, how much it despises, how much it can save; but the glory of youth, the joy of genius, the height and charm of life, is the exuberance of the expenditure of force they can afford. Their standard of success is how much their sympathies can include, how much they can revere and love and serve. It is littleness and misery to make a private hoard of the good of the universe. The amount it lavishes measures the wealth of the rich and happy soul. That will be a blessed day when we make our social parties not for the purpose of ostentation or luxury, not to give dinners or suppers in return for those to which we have been invited, not to secure acquaintances who will aid in gratifying our external ambition, but simply to enjoy the society of friends whom we honor and love, to enhance our interior life by sincere spiritual intercourse, the reflection of minds and hearts. Wherever human beings meet, the bazaar of Fate stands open.

Another duty, closely allied with the foregoing, and especially incumbent on the finest and highest women, is to improve the common standard of good manners. This is a region of influence of momentous importance, and for which the most honored and beloved women have a pre-eminent adaptation by their beauty, grace, docility, and sympathetic ease of self-sacrifice. To associate with a quick-witted woman is an education. The last words of Madame Pompadour, addressed to her withdrawing confessor, just before her final breath, were, "Wait a moment, father; and we will go out together." In a democratic age and country like ours, many causes are at work to lower the average standard of manners by generating universal self-assertion, arrogance, and irreverence. As compared with the gracious type of chivalric manners exhibited in the best specimens of three or four centuries ago, it must be confessed that sweetness of dignity, abundance of courtesy, gentleness, magnanimity, have suffered badly. No gentle and lofty mind can turn from the reading of Digby's "Broad Stone of Honor" to that of Thackeray's "Book of Snobs," without deep pain. Here is a field of influence superlatively fitted for the activity of women, and worthy of the aspirations of the most favored and admirable representatives of the sex. Opinions may ascend; but manners descend.

The chief source of complacency to petty natures is in contemplating the weaknesses of their superiors. Pride nourishes itself by gazing on inferiors, and heightening the contrast. But the true habit of virtue is to stoop graciously, to lift inferiors towards itself, and to look reverentially on the merits of superiors, lifting itself with aspiring docility towards them.

Among the people of the present age, there is no need of teaching the lessons of social scorn or envy; but there is need of teaching the lessons of disinterested reverence and aspiration. It must therefore be a profitable service to hold up for the contemplation and study of women the examples of the noble sway, the delightful charm exerted by such women as the grand Duchess Louise of Weimar, Madame Recamier, Madame Swetchine, or the Duchess of Orleans. Each one of these deserves the homage of being patterned after:

For she was of that better clay That treads not oft this earthly stage: Such charmed spirits lose their way, But once or twice into an age.

They seemed to shed dignity, wisdom, virtue, repose, and bliss around them wherever they moved, and to put all persons in their debt by the boons unconsciously emitted from their being and their manners. We cannot hold too constant or too worshipful communion with such characters: it is equally a culture and an enjoyment. The secret of their divine skill is not flattery, but deferential treatment. They take for granted, that their friends have noble qualities and admirable aims, and treat them accordingly, with a respectful attention which heightens the self-respect of its recipients. Neglect is insolent, and contempt is injurious. He who suffers them is hurt and lowered. One blessed magic there is, as guileless as it is supreme. This charm, this witchcraft, is a sincere and honoring attention.

Woman can more keenly than man "taste the pure enjoyment that results from the mere growth and exercise of good feelings." Who so well as she knows how much more true pleasure there is in one peaceful moment of modest goodness than in all the excitement that waits on the gaudy game of ambition? She is never so happy, as when doing most and asking least.

The Duchess de Duras wrote to a friend, "Madame de Montcalm has been sick: she is eaten up by politics: they are her vulture." To man, genius is an instrument, which he must use to achieve triumphs: to woman, it is a load, which she must transmute into blessings. Thus far in human history, it has been much easier for the most gifted of our race to be unhappy than to be happy; because happiness is an equilibrium of inner powers and outer conditions, and the most extraordinary gifts are surest to destroy or prevent that adjustment. The divine remedy is self-sacrifice, self-detachment, and the attuning of the soul by the laws of the ideal world, the perfect state of society.

Poor and feeble souls exact most from the world. Rich and soaring souls have a self-sufficing modesty, which, in its own exuberance, asks but little from others. The lark, when, at sunrise, she rises, singing, above our sight, shows that it was not from lack of power to climb, that she made the humble choice to build her nest in the grass. Here lies the most elect office of woman—to attract and train men to the sober and blissful ends of wisdom and love, and withdraw their passions from the wretched ends of folly, on which so many waste their lives, in ploughing the air, sowing the sea, and trying to catch the wind with a net. The redemption of the worst men will be effected when they make voluntary acquisition of what the best women possess by instinct, and spontaneously exhibit; namely, that disinterested love of goodness, which is willing to give all and ask nothing. Happy is he, and he alone safely happy, who gives affection to his fellows, as the sun gives light to the creation. It receives not directly back from single objects what it gives them; but, from the whole, all that it radiates is returned. It is so with the good man and his race. Persons may not return the reverence and love he lavishes, but humanity will. For what is his total feeling towards the collective individuals that constitute his race, except the glorified reverberation from humanity, back into his experience, of what his own soul has sent forth?

The call of woman, in this age, then, is not to be a brawling politician, clamoring for her share in the authorities and honors of the world, launching jokes, sarcasms, and sneers to the right and the left. Clearly, her genuine work, beyond the family circle, is to set an example of modest devotion to personal improvement and the social weal. Sir Philip Sidney describes a horseman who "stirred the bridle so gently, that it did rather distil virtue than use violence." That is, in some sense, a type of the proper power of woman. It is her heavenly mission to influence by yielding, rule by obeying, conquer by surrender, and put the crowning grace of joy and glory on her sex by ministering to the hurts and wants of humanity. Kindled by her example, and compensated by her smile, man will aspire to complete his highest destiny. Her destiny will be fulfilled with his, and in it; his in hers, and with it. They cannot be really separated; since woman as the inspirer and rewarder of man, in the most intense action at the top of society, moulds him by her ideal of him reflected in his imagination. Womanhood is by no means to be personified in the exclusive aspect of a nurse; but as artist, teacher, law-giver, queen, as well. The just personification of womanhood must include the total aspects and offices of humanity. She has as good a claim as man to them all. But let no hasty advocate insist on adding to the totality of true and permanent features in that personification, any of those vicious, accidental, and temporary features incident to the imperfect stages through which humanity has been passing, and is still passing, in its progressive evolution.

There is one respect, not often thought of, in which the various ethnic pantheons, from those of the rawest barbarism to those of the most intellectual civilization, possess deep interest and instructiveness. Their leading personages, gods and goddesses, reveal to us the chief types of human character from which they were created. The heavens and hells of mythology are the higher and lower reflections, or upward and downward echoes, of the earth; and the supernatural beings who people them are idealizations of men and women, more or less richly draped with attributes suggested by the phenomena of the universe. The groups of feminine figures furnished by mythology, therefore, afford a most striking exhibition of the typical groups of women which must have been known in the mythological ages of the world. Conceived in this way, with what thoughtfullness we should contemplate the Graces, the Muses, the Furies, the Fates, Nemesis, Vesta, Fortuna, Diana, Eris, Ceres, the majestic port of Juno, the frosty splendor of Minerva, the melting charm of Venus, the snaky horror of Medusa, Egvptian Isis, throned among the stars, and Scandinavian Hela, crouching in her grisly house!

It is a characteristic of satirists, in every age, that they class women together, as if they were all alike. Every fair view of the subject shows how false such a conclusion is. There is more freshness, subtilty, spontaneity, variety, in womanly characters than in manly. Their range, between the extremes of the demure and the hoydenish, is greater. The feminine types, Helen and Penelope, or Clytemnestra and Antigone, are as distinct as the masculine types, Agamemnon and Ulysses, or OEdipus and Philoctetes. The injustice of the vulgar saying, "It is just like a woman," implying that there are no differences among women, makes one indignant. Have we not seen women to whom death seems an indignity—looking, in every feature and glance, as immortal as Pallas Athene? And have we not seen women whose hideous shape and fiendish spirit suggested an alliance with antediluvian monsters? Is there not a Volumnia, as chaste as that star seen in winter dawns shivering on the cold forehead of the morning? And is there not a Messalina, who would receive embraces in a bath of blood? Is there not a Fulvia, who takes the head of the murdered Cicero in her hands, and tears his dumb tongue with her bodkin? And are there not a Saint Elizabeth and a Lady Godiva, capable of supernal deeds of self-denial and heroism for the sake of blessing the poor? The personality of any one of the best representatives of womanhood is as vivid and delicate as though moulded from a sensitive leaf instead of clay; yet of such strength as to be rich in frankness and courage, and sublime in patience. In fact, the distinction of woman is as much greater than that of men psychologically as it is physiologically. But her choicest vocation must always lie in the domestic range of the personal relations, and throughout the heights and depths of the spiritual life. Let her become there all that the capacities of human nature prophesy, and man will rapidly be perfected everywhere else.

The number of claimants contending for the prizes of society increases. The facility of a shallow and momentary success become greater; but the difficulty and rareness of a substantial and enduring triumph grow in a higher ratio. The arena is crowded; the battle is vulgar; the sufferings of the contestants are extreme; the rewards sought are uncertain and disappointing. How quickly, in our day, notoriety ends; and what a poor cheat it is! The passionate aspirant for fame, as described so finely by Michelet, stands beside the unknown sea of futurity, picks up a shell, lifts it to his ear, and listens to a slight noise, in which he fancies he hears the murmur of his own name! For solid dignity or pure contentment, no life can compare with the one devoted to intrinsic personal ends, the achievement of knowledge, harmony, and piety. Not the warrior, Ambition, not the giant, Legislation, but the little child, Love, is to lead in the golden age. She is the best woman who does most to hasten the inauguration of that divine Child.

Thoughtful observers agree, that the most ominous characteristic of the present age is, its complication of interests, its doubts, its weariness, its frittering multiplicity of indulgences, cares, and obligations. The best individual remedy for this evil is friendship. Affectionate communion with a trusted and confiding friend, more than any other experience, appeases the misgivings of conscience, satisfies the vague searches of the mind, and gives peace to the eternal cravings of our gregarious nature.

If ever the cry of the horse-leech shall cease to be the painful language of the heart, it will be when, the longings of the heart no longer baffled by the vacancies or the irritating rivalries of a vapid and jealous society, all human beings developed enough to need, and noble enough to deserve, shall also be fortunate enough to possess, true friends with whom they may commune in unity of spirit and mirrored doubleness of life. Gratified affection is the true fruition of a spiritual existence. To hope and fear in the being of another first gives us the fulfilled consciousness of our own.

CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.

THE END