Women are said to possess less acuteness of discern ment, less power of argument and a less extended mode of thinking than men. They are accused of a natural predilection for light & frivolous pursuits, as Poetry and Romance, and an aversion to the severer studies of Phi losophy. I shall not stop to question whether these as sertions be true, for it appears to me that it would be a miracle under the prevailing customs and system of education, if they were false. A man after having spent the first twenty or thirty years of his life, in a close application to the mathematics, the languages, the subtle ties of the ancient school men, and a continual contention with the author he reads, or some college rival who has embraced a different theory of physics, or system cf morality, enters on the business of life, prepared for the senate, the bar, or the pulpit. His ambition, his love of fame and every passion, has been raised by his devotion to a favorite Philosophy, and heated by everlasting collision of opinion: he aspires to become the leader of a party or the hero of a sect; visions of imaginary glory animate him with the hope of triumph and of fame, and even when baffled by superior skill he consoles himself with the belief that he is the champion of persecuted truth, or the martyr of ignorance and bigotry. Scenes and anticipations like these, cannot fail to rouse every energy of his soul, and to improve every faculty of the mind which can be useful, either in opposing one opinion or defending another. The melancholy contrast of education and mode of life in women has already been mentioned. Their minds are suffered to languish under the constraints of a narrow education, and to pine in the deleterious shades of a fatal custom; the natural vigor of intellect has never been strengthened by exercise, nor the germ of fancy ever been developed by a timely and judicious culture. It is then no more a matter of astonishment to me that men are more acute in argument, more subtle in detecting a false position, or more able in exposing it, than it is, that a Frenchman educated in the military school of Paris, instructed by the examples of Moreau and Bonaparte, should be a more able commander than an American Farmer who never saw a tent, or heard the sound of a cannon. We observe a similar cause among men producing a similar effect. Those who are practised in one way of thinking can with difficulty adopt any other. The Bishop of Cloyne sensible of this remark, observes of Sir Isaac Newton, who was certainly as little worthy of it as any man who ever lived, that he had so long accustomed himself to reason by

diagrams, that he was unable to reason without them and Cicero complains of one of the Athenian orators, that he came from the shades of Theophrastus' school, where he had learned to declaim very eloquently on fictitious subjects, but had no capacity for the management of real causes, What then can be more illiberal or more fallacious than to account for the same phenomenon by a different cause, only because it happens in different sexes ?

Nor after all which has been said in depreciation of the capacity of women, can it be denied, that in every age and every civilized nation individuals have appeared who in defiance of bad educations and worse customs, have given a splendid refutation to this calumny, and vindicated the natural equality of that sex in point of intellect. From the few fragments which remain of Sappho's poetry, even our adversaries must admit, thather genius was elevated and sublime. Corinna too bore off the palm from Pindar at the Olympic games, than which a higher compliment could scarcely be paid her, for she excelled a Poet whom Horace says no man should ever dare to imitate.

PINDARUM quisquis studet æmulari

Jule, ceratis ope Dædalea,

Nititur pennis, vitreo daturus

Nomina Ponto.*

But Corinna who excelled even Pindar himself did not like the presumptuous Icarus venture on waxen wings too near the solar blaze to fall a sacrifice to the waves; but like her emblem Swan, she sometimes dipt her white bosom in the tranquil lake, sometimes floated upon the rude billows of the ocean, or rising on strong wings thro the tempests which agitate its surface, soared through regions of light and air where neither the mountain wave can wash, nor the Olympian Eagle bear the bolt of Heaven. There are examples among the ancients of the same degree of excellence in Eloquence. Aspasia instructed the most renowned orators of the world in the art of speaking, which she not only inculcated by precept, but enforced by her own illustrious example. Cornelia directed the Gracchi her sons in that bold and

These lines to Julus Antonius, are thus translated by Francis:

He who to Pindar's height attempts to rise,
Like Icarus with waxen pinions tries

Ilis pathless way, and from the venturous theme,
Falling shall leave to azure seas his name.

masterly eloquence by which they swayed the Roman people as long as they lived, and left behind them the fame of unrivalled orators when they fell victims to factions which their eloquence had raised. We see from her letters, says Tully, that she did not like other mo thers merely fondle her children on her knee, but infused into their infant minds, the inspiration of her own genius. Nor are examples wanting in modern times to refute the illiberal inference which I combat, as well from the impulse of feeling, as the conviction of my understanding. Who is there who writes with more elegant ease, or a more classic purty, than Mad: de Sevigné or Lady M.W. Montagu? Who has exhibited a more striking capacity for the most abstruse branches of mathematics than Mad: de Chatelet or Maria Agnesi? O to speak of women of our own time, whose moral stories are more pleasing, more instructive, or better written, than those of Miss Edgeworth, or of Mrs. Opie?

I have now fairly brought the case within the rule laid down, that it is unphilosophical to assign more causes for the appearance of things than are both true and sufficient to account for the phenomena: for supposing our minds naturally equal, all the existing inequality might very well be produced by the causes which I have mentioned; that is, by the want of a proper education, of motive for improvement, of opportunities for distinguishing themselves; that the peculiarities of mind in the two sexes confirms this reasoning; and lastly, that women have often vindicated their original equality by displays both of understanding and imagination astonishing and sublime. But if these causes are adequate to explain the disparity between us, why should we resort to others which are unnecessary and of uncertain existence?

I cannot conclude this grateful task of writing in a cause where all my sympathies are interested, without adding a word on the superior sensibility, the moral beautyf he fair sex. We not only we to their piety our existence as a race, but I am struck with the many instances of their having preserved, after they have given life to individuals. The captive warrior has sometimes been released from his dungeon, the forlorn and forsaken traveller been cheered in the solitude of the wilderness by those touches of compassion to which they are so much more sensible than man. I cannot here forbear to mention the instance of our guardian genius, Pocahantas, who saved the life of Capt. Smith from the ferocity of a Virginian savage, after it had been previously rescu

ed by the clemency of a Turkish lady from an oriental tyrant. When Mansong, a king of the Moors, refused Mungo Park permission to enter his village, and he sat under a tree exposed to the derision of the men, the storms of Heaven, and the pangs of approaching famine, a woman, moved by the superior sensibilities of her nature, sheltered him from the rain, gave him meat to eat, and sympathised in his sorrows in an unpremeditated song. This tenderness, which has so often appeared in moments of real distress, is beautifully painted by a modern bard in the fictions of poetry. When MARMION laid gasping for his last breath on Floddes field, deserted by the Pages and Squires his hall had nursed, without a friend to close his fading eye, to bathe his gory face, or slake his dying thirst, the injured CLARE, struck with a spark of divine pity, extinguished every feeling of resentment to discharge an office which the ingratitude of man denied to a benefactor.

O woman! in hours of ease,

Uncertain, ooy and hard to please,
And variable as the shade,

By the light quivering aspen made.
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

Now my dear uncle, I have discharged my promise to you, and what I conceive to be a duty to the ladies.Whether I have done it as you expected, or they deserv ed, remains for others to decide.

Your affectionate nephew,

GALEN.

is eloquence; but I do not see why, for this reason, my own style should become unnatural. It is not necessary, I apprehend, that even a regular treatise on rhetoric should labour with the most unintermitting and painful inflation At all events, it is not my natural gait, and I am rather too old to begin, now, to learn summer-sets.

Rumber XXXI.

Aspice quæ nunc sunt Capitolia, quæque fuerunt.

Mark what our Capitols now are, and what they have been.
Ov. Ar. Am. Lib III.

115.

IT has been intimated in the preceding essay, that it is not my purpose to incumber either myself or my reade with a formal and regular treatise on the subject of eloquence. Enough has been already done, in that way, The stores of ancient criticism have been made accessibl, by translations, to the English reader, and have been, moreover, repeated, at least often enough, already, in modern compilations in our own language. The remarks which I propose to offer, have been suggested to me by what I have heard and seen of American eloquence; and although they may have been anticipated by other writers in other countries and ages, (which I shall not stop to examine) the reader may still assure himself that my purpose is not to retail after others, but to depict prevailing faults, which I have myself observed, and to "catch the manners living as they rise."

The vital error from which all our imperfections. spring, is to be found in our very defective system of education. In Rome, the education of an orator was peculiar, and began, I think, at four or five years of age; He was placed under the direction and in the family of some distinguished speaker, under the constant influence of whose example he night catch the time, the cadence, the articulation out which, eloquence cannot possiahly exist. to compare these advanleft, and combining the ma and heels, with the exercise of hi throughout, that his progress as well ed on the subject he was handling. In

first to the man, in childhood, with

as

of our public speak

In point of time,

act cohes

as to disconcer