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the right to give it suck. Such power she may indeed receive as a delegation from the father, but only by his direction or sufferance can it be exercised. That she has a natural right to her offspring, none who regard the analogies of nature can deny. All nature proclaims it. With few and faint exceptions, the care and nature of the offspring is in every branch of the animal kingdom thrown upon the female. To ensure the performance of this duty, she is endued with an instinct of love strong, burning, intense; active alike in the bird who follows its nestlings into captivity, and the human mother who, drowning, sinks, holding her infant at arms length over her head; warming the tigress to tenderness, and inflaming the dove with fierceness. There is not a female thing of earth, air or sea, that will not die to defend its young. This duty, the object of the woman's existence, as a sex, and the great function of her life, well and faithfully does she perform it! All the years of her youth and the prime of her life are devoted to her children; caring for their weakness, suffering and toiling for their sustenance; with watching and tears sitting beside the cradle to guard the young life that flickers there from the more than two serpents which disease sends to destroy it. Hard is it that such devotion has not availed to purchase for her some little, some slight property in this issue of her being, the fruit of her anguish, the thing of her strong love. But so it is, that the veriest animal in the husband's household has as much right in this respect, as she. At the pleasure of another it may be torn from her arms, to be reared and educated as he shall please, and in what creed he shall prescribe. Of all the surrenders of natural right which we are told are made by man upon entering into society-of all the abandonments of right made by woman upon coming under the yoke of matrimony-behold the greatest! Unless clearly called for by inevitable necessity, resulting from the marital relation, we might well call it the most unnatural-the most magnificent wrong within the scope of finite power to inflict.

The public relations of wives as of slaves, are all on one side; their duty is to obey, not govern. No more than the blackest slave of the ultimate south of slavedom, has the wife with us any

the slightest share in making or administering laws. In monarchical countries, women have often held the sovereign sway, and wielded it well. In our republic, however, it is not thought proper to entrust her, whether married or single, with the least degree of power. It is considered inconsistent with feminine delicacy to admit women to the ballot box or the legislative bench. Perhaps if she had been admitted there her interests would have received more attention than they have; the reforms in the law of husband and wife might have kept pace more nearly with the meliorations in other branches which have so rapidly progressed within the last century, and the resemblance between wifedom in the nineteenth century, and serfdom in the twelfth would not have been so marvellously close. But perhaps, too, she would have lost a valuable portion of that retiring delicacy which n.en are so fond of cultivating in others, and acquired a portion of that hardness and rudeness which they so love to keep all to themselves. it be woman's consolation under this restraint, that what she loses in freedom she gains in delicacy, as the eastern odalisque finds the softness and fairness of her complexion improved by the protection her prison curtains afford against the rude wind and scorching sun, or as celery is made white and tender to the tooth of man by removal from the free light and air of the open garden to the seclusion and darkness of the cellar. Disinterested and considerate man! Mark, that I do not blame him for excluding women from the legislative hall, but only for taking advantage of her absence. But for this, she might have good reason to thank him for denying her any political rights; for saving her the disagreeable task of selfgovernment which men themselves so much delight in, and for taxing her without representation. for which we once thought it worth freemen's while to shed so much blood.

Let

I have now gone through every right recognized by law, and shown how far the two subjects of my parallel are respectively admitted to each of them. A very small remnant have they of any. This remnant is of no value unless properly vindicated in the administration of justice. The slave cannot testify at all, nor can the other testify against her husband. Neither of them can control

money, the sinews of justice, as it has been since Magna Charta first covenanted that justice should not be sold. With mute lips and empty purses the slave and wife cut but sorry figures before a court composed of our "free white male citizen" sitting as a judge, and twelve other free white male citizens who occupy the jury benches, to knock together their block-heads for the evolving of truth and right; a tribunal where masters arbitrate between themselves and their slaves; and husbands between themselves and wives. Can we wonder, then, that our court records show so few cases wherein the law of the marriage relation has been adjudicated? Troublesome suitors, I opine, would these wives prove, were not the bar of justice to them a bar indeed. Seldom are our courts disturbed by their clamors; and silence, the silence of death, broods over the grave of their rights.

Is it said that marriage is not slavery so long as women are not forced to marry? They are forced to marry. We all very well understand the means whereby society drives them to it; among which are the scoffings, hissings, hootings and peltings inflicted on those so unfortunate as to remain unmarried and virtuous, and the ruin, temporal and eternal, visited upon such as commit the sin of Magdalen. Matrimony, as man has ordained it, is the only condition allowed by society in which woman can fulfil the destiny of her being. Into that state, impelled by a moral necessity, she must enter.

The negro slave is broken to the yoke from his youth; kept in ignorance; and spirit and body subdued and calloused to his condition. The white wife is reared in freedom, educated, refined, high-spirited, and sensitive. Each wife is a new-made slave. Do the years of her childhood and youth, redeemed from servitude, soften the hardship of her future lot?

Do I find fault with the marriage relation? Do I recommend its abolition? Do I propose any melioration of the wife's condition? Do I claim that this would be practicable as society exists? Do I declare the equality of woman with man? It is not necessary I should answer these questions. The only question to be answered is for others to answer. "Is there any essential difference between the legal condition of the married woman and that of the slave?" And without indulging in further reflections, or drawing any further conclusions, I leave the matters and things in this article contained, to the consideration of the Abolitionists as-" a bone for them to pick." W. J. F.

NOTE. In assuming my legal positions, I have had reference mainly to the laws of my own State, (Connecticut;) certainly as far advanced as any, except Louisiana, in the law bearing upon my subject. But the principles I have laid down are so general as not to be inconsistent with the framework of the jurisprudence of any State.

SONNET.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

I was alone as the last solemn chime
Of the old year rose on the wintry air;
And seemed to feel the rushing wing of Time
Pause with his burden of delight and care;
A sense of unattained and most-desired good,
Cravings for sympathy my life ne'er brought,
An inward longing to be understood,
Cherished and loved-upon my spirit wrought
Until my brain grew wild with vast regret,
Hopes that dilate the heart and fears that blast,
With quivering lips and eyes lovo's pleadings wel
I prayed the future might redeem the past:
With calmer mind into the world I went,
And meeting thee, grew suddenly content.
18

VOL. XVII.-NO. LXXXVIII.

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An island of red sand-stone in the Magdalen group..

"Our next harbor was Little Meccatina. There the mountains were more lofty, and the moss less beautiful. Near us was a rock two thousand feet high, which we ascended, and saw from the summit a chain of mountains and an interminable series of lakes a wild and impressive place."-Notes of Audubon's Voyage to Labrador, 1833.

Where the Caribou's tall antlers

O'er the dwarf wood freely toss,
And the footstep of the Mickmac
Has no sound upon the moss!

There we'll drop our lines, and gather
Old Ocean's treasures in,
Where'er the mottled mackerel

Turns up a steel-dark fin;
Where'er the brown cod glideth
Amidst his scaly clan,

We will reap the North-land's harvest
As her reapers only can,

Our wet hands spread the carpet
And light the hearth of home;
From our fish, as in the old time,
The silver coin shall come.
As the demon fled the chamber
Where the fish of Tobit lay,*
So ours from all our dwellings
Shall frighten Want away.

Though the mist upon our jackets
In the bitter air congeals,
And our lines wind stiff and slowly
From off the frozen reel;

Though the fog be dark around us,
And the storm blow high and loud,
We will whistle down the wild wind
And laugh beneath the cloud!

In the darkness as in daylight,
On the water as on land,
God's eye is looking on us,
And beneath us is His hand!
Death will find us soon or later,
On the deck or in the cot;
And we cannot meet him better
Than in working out our lot.

Hurrah!-hurrah!-the west wind
Comes creeping down the bay,
The rising sails are filling-

Give way, my lads, give way! Leave the coward landsman clinging To the dull earth like a weedThe stars of Heayen shall guide us, The breath of Heaven shall speed!

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LA VENDETTA, OR THE FEUD.

BY MRS. F. A. BUTLER,

(From the French of Balzac.)

CONTINUED FROM OUR LAST.

"So young a man proscribed!

Who can he be?-for he certainly is not Marshal Ney!"

These two sentences are the simplest form of all the ideas upon which Ginevra dwelt incessantly for the next two days. On the next drawing day, in spite of the utmost endeavor on her part to be first at the gallery, she found Mademoiselle de Montsaurin before her, the latter having come in her carriage. Ginevra and her enemy observed each other attentively, but they contrived to assume countenances that were mutually impenetrable. Mademoiselle de Montsaurin had seen the charming features of the stranger, but as both good and ill luck would have it, the uniform, with its embroidered eagles, was so placed as not to be detected through the aperture; when she looked through it, she was therefore lost in conjectures. Suddenly Monsieur Servin made his appearance, much earlier than usual.

"Mademoiselle Ginevra," said he, after having glanced round the assembly, "why have you put yourself there? You are in a bad light; come nearer to these young ladies, and lower your shade.'

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He then sat down beside the young girl named Laura, and began correcting her work.

"Well done! very well indeed!" he exclaimed; "this head is admirably executed. Why, you will be a second Ginevra!"

He next went from from easel to easel, scolding, praising, joking, and always making his jests more formidable than his reprimands. The Italian girl in the meantime had not obeyed the professor's directions; she remained at her post, and with the most determined resolution not to leave it. She took a piece of paper and sketched upon it, in seppia, a likeness of the

prisoner in the closet. A creation suggested by vivid feeling always wears a peculiar stamp, and the faculty of impressing with the colors of truth that which we translate from external nature, or our own feelings and thoughts, constitutes genius. In Ginevra's case the sort of haunting to which she had been subject for the last forty-eight hours, and perhaps necessity, that mother of all great things, inspired her with surprising power. The officer's head was traced upon the paper with the most marvellous vividness of expression; the young artist's eyes, hand, and pencil seemed full of a divine inspiration; she experienced a nervous excitement which she attributed to fear, but in which a physiologist would have recognized only the feverish impulse of inspiration. Her glances were often directed towards her companions, in order to be prepared to hide the sketch in case of any sudden indiscretion on the part of any of them. But in spite of her vigilance, she was not aware that at one moment the eye-glass of Mademoiselle de Montsaurin was insolently fixed upon the mysterious drawing. She recognized the officer's head, and suddenly rose from behind an immense picture which had screened her while she thus played the spy, but Ginevra instantly put up the sheet of paper.

66

Why have you remained there, Mademoiselle, in spite of my advice?” gravely inquired the master.

The pupil quickly turned her easel so as to screen herself behind the canvass upon it, and placing her sketch before her, said, in a voice of deep emotion, to her instructor:

"I think you will agree with me that this light is more favorable, and that I had better remain here."

M. Servin turned pale, while a mo

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