On the contrary, it would seem they were sometimes chosen to receive supernatural communications rather than men, from some superior fitness in themselves for the revelation, apparently for a simplicity of faith which preserved them from servile mortal fear. As where Manoah's wife has to encourage and strengthen her husband by arguments against which his terror had blinded him for he had said to her,

:

'We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said to him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burntoffering and a meat-offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things, nor would as at this time have showed us such things as these.'

Nor were all the godly women of old formed in one mould of soft attractive grace; they had individual characteristics as sharply defined and varied as men. They did not say to their husbands,

'God is thy law, thou mine,'

but felt personal responsibility. If needs were they put themselves forward,' as the phrase now runs, and did a man's work when called to it, wisely and effectually. But powers thus vigorously exercised and acknowledged on all hands, never inspired them with any ambition permanently to change or even enlarge their sphere. They did not despise their appropriate work because they could succeed, and were even occasionally divinely appointed to labour beyond it. Under the Gospel dispensation, however, there may not unlikely have been dawnings of another spirit. S. Paul's sharp admonitions to the Corinthian women seem to indicate this. Born in the bondage and subservience of heathenism, and suddenly admitted to the liberty of Christ, it would appear the female converts in the first rapture of emancipation were disposed, as all enthusiasts are, to disregard the teaching of nature, and to assume permanently and as a right a place in the Church for which their sex unfitted them: and by this assumption gave cause for the stringent and repressive enactments which have since guided the Church, as the most direct legislation on the subject which the Bible furnishes. It was when the gifts of the Spirit were most freely poured out, and sex and condition seemed alike disregarded in these miraculous dispensations, that men needed to be taught anew the sacredness of the primary laws of our being, and that the moral teaching of nature was as much the will of God, and as such to be our rule and standard, as the visible workings of His power; that the new dispensation was to be interpreted by the old, and that, whatever might appear to those dazzled by the present glories, there was no real contradiction possible between the two.

And here we seem brought down to the question of the

practical use of the present inquiry, which, as far as we are concerned, is simply to ascertain how far these primary laws and subsequent dispensations, how far the teaching of nature and grace, are followed out in the present social condition of one half of the human race, seeking to confine the subject to our own country, as being the scene of our especial interest and knowledge. The complainants appeal to certain rights which they consider themselves to have as possessing certain faculties and aspirations; they acknowledge no natural subordination and no laws of sex, only the dictates of unassisted reason, and, what is termed, the law of each separate person's being an expression too often in its application interpretable into a privilege inherent in every individual to obey the instincts of a fallen nature whatever they may be; a theory, of course, subversive of all morality, and striking at the root of social order. We, on the contrary, as believers in God's Word, acknowledge an external law, approved, it is true, by our highest reason, but not subject to its decisions, a law which we are bound to obey because it is written with the finger of God upon our consciences, and because our nature is so created that true happiness depends on the obedience; and we believe in a Revelation which not only instructs us in the history of our human nature, but dictates the spirit in which we are to receive its communication, not allowing cavil or question. To us so believing, the word 'rights,' as belonging to any human being, is apt to sound arrogant; not, of course, that we would deny that men have rights relatively to one another—no truth is more certain or more important; the denial of it is the basis of all tyranny. But in the sense in which the word is used, it is carried beyond this social idea, and seems to constitute a claim not only upon man, but upon God, to whom we owe duties, but can make no demands. And, in fact, the persons who adopt the word as their cry, do as a body refuse the appeal to the written word and divine ordinances, except that which they hold most divine and alone unanswerable-the conclusions of their own reason. Thus, before we know what the rights claimed are we are disposed to suspect them, from the spirit of defiance to all authority, human and divine, with which they are started; and the conduct of the inquiry does little to allay our suspicions. It is heady and highminded, disparaging woman's more obvious sphere, despising and even vituperating such of the sex as will not join the ranks of the disaffected, and the whole tone in violent contradiction of that spirit which men have agreed to reverence and admire as their ideal of feminine goodness.

But when we see persons acting against their nature, and in opposition to what we have hitherto supposed their characteristics when we thus, for instance, find women departing from their

ordinary rules of conduct, and exchanging that conservative practical good sense which we have always thought a feminine attribute, for the new, untried ground of theory, for extravagant assumption, and argument founded on abstract reasoning, it becomes necessary to inquire into the causes of the phenomenon, and to ascertain, before we apply indiscriminate blame, whether there may not be some social injustice pressing hard on certain tempers-some fault of position giving reasonable ground of dissatisfaction, and perhaps at the root of these discontents. That such social injustice does exist in America, depriving woman of her natural weight and influence, we have endeavoured to show while adducing local causes for the evil; may there not be errors in our social economy, producing, though in a less degree, unfavourable results?

The party in England have published (as furnishing arguments for their cause) a brief summary of the English laws concerning women,' showing especially the loss of all independent rights of person or property suffered by the wife. It is the married woman who, according to this view, is the victim of injustice. She ceases to exist, and great point is laid on this legal disappearance from the human family, this absorption into another stronger being, as though a degradation of which the victim must be always conscious. We are far from denying that where the husband grossly fails in his duty, and casts aside all respects, he is enabled to play the tyrant to terrible purpose, and yet keep within the limits of the law. Something has been done to protect women of the lowest class from a husband's brutality; something has no doubt still to be done to relieve women in a higher position from this worst of all oppressions. But no man can ill-use his wife and retain his place in public estimation; he cannot make his wife miserable without, at the same time, himself being held contemptible or odious. Public opinion is dead against him. No impartial observer of English society can say that the position of the English wife is affected. by these exceptional cases, or show that anything is wanting as a general rule to her dignity, honour, or happiness. No other country can be pointed out, where woman, including in herself the offices of wife, mother, mistress, and director of social intercourse, has a nobler sphere for the exercise of her faculties, or stands higher in the respect of mankind.

According, however, to those legal tests of woman's position, that of the unmarried woman is the most satisfactory. A woman of twenty-one becomes an independent human creature, capable ' of holding and administering property to any amount; or if she ⚫ can earn money, she may appropriate her earnings freely to any purpose she thinks good. Her father has no power over her or

'her property. But if she unites herself to a man, the law im'mediately steps in, and she finds herself legislated for, and her 'condition of life suddenly and entirely changed. Whatever age she may be of, she is again considered an infant-she is again ' under reasonable restraint. She loses her separate existence,

and is merged in that of her husband.' All this is true enough, but there are laws of feeling prior to laws of the land; and it is by those natural estimates that the question of the most aggrieved is truly decided; and we believe, whatever quarrel may be found against certain laws, that the real blame of what is amiss rests with public opinion, and that the sufferers are not the married, on whom our enactments are supposed to press so hard, but these same independent and comparatively free single women. Women always have been, and, it is no bold prophecy to say, they always will be, more dependent on public opinion than men; and this great power does certainly interfere to depress single women as a class, and withhold them from a free, natural development into usefulness and honour. The term applied to them is one of disparagement, from which too many women have shrunk, and sacrificed all that was best worth living for, from dread of being called an old maid. This is an old tale, and a very trite complaint; but a name would not have the influence it is acknowledged on all hands to have, did not public opinion contribute to the formation of the character it holds up to derision, by condemning women of mature age, if they would keep their station to a life of indolence.

A

One difference between male and female nature is a natural love in women for occupation: we do not say hard or repulsive labour, but work. The curse upon labour was not spoken to them, and this immunity-if we may call it so-is typified in the different uses by the two sexes of this very word. woman's 'work' is her pleasure, her refreshment, without which her most unrestrained hours would miss some of their charm. She applies it to light, easy, manual occupation. A man's' work' is his duty, the sweat of his brow. His repose comes after it is over. Thus, even an industrious man spends some hours of every day doing nothing; his wife finds something for her hands to do all the day long. In youth and girlhood this necessity finds ample indulgence in light, graceful employments; in the cultivation of accomplishments-even, it may be, in what so disgusted the high-minded American young lady, making pretty things' for herself and her friends to wear. Then commonly comes marriage, and the more responsible occupations of mature life succeed naturally, leaving no void. But if a woman does not marry, the time comes when accomplishments are acquired, or given up, when they cease to be a pursuit filling much time,

when light employments lose some of their grace, when 'pretty things to wear' should not occupy the mind of the wearer, when graver cares and weightier occupations would become her well; and from these public opinion, with one or two exceptions, debars her. She is expected and required to tend the sick and feeble amongst her own relations; the task to smoothe the pillow of declining age' is hers, and she may devote her energies to the poor, and she is happy and honoured in both these occupations; but beyond them she cannot employ herself in practical absorbing employment, without losing caste. Even if she be comparatively poor, in narrow circumstances, her family would rather she continued the prey of little cares, and be forced all her life to small shifts, than that by any occupation, even that of tuition, she enlarged her income. Any occupation, in trade or official service, such as her brothers pursue, would sink her in the social scale. If she would stand well with her acquaintance, and be acknowledged by them, she must not attempt to earn money. Whatever her energies or capabilities, she would better please her relations, those on whom her comfort depends and her affections rest, by remaining inactive, than by turning them to any profitable account. Literature may be held an exception; but it can neither be regarded seriously as a paying occupation, nor thought of simply as something to do without more express qualifications. Thus, that industry which we have spoken of as a feminine characteristic, is denied free action, or left to prey upon itself. And all personal peculiarities, which a busy life would keep under just as the cares of married life keep them under, are left to develop, and become unpleasing exaggerations in uncongenial leisure. This is an evil-if it be granted to be an evil-which no laws can remove. Any change must be gradual. It is difficult even to those most alive to it to propose a remedy; for society is so complicated a body, every detail of it so depending on every other, that changes in it always seem practical impossibilities. Yet the fact of a class of intelligent human beings condemned to inactivity in a busy community-not because their nature chooses idleness, nor because society fosters and respects them for it, but because gentility requires this self-immolation-is at least a just subject for speculation and inquiry. The question of nunneries, sisterhoods, and the like, is not relevant here. These imply a vocation which few can be supposed to have, and society would indeed be a loser if its best, most self-devoted, able, genial single women, were withdrawn from their natural sphere, and collected into compact organized bodies. Nor does what we say apply to rich persons. Money always secures respect enough, and, what is better for this argument, it gives some