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who were champions, judges, sheriffs, grand chamberlains, returned members to Parliament, and gloriously did what they pleased; while, in America, it is pathetically proved that their public documents forget the existence of the sex altogether. An able commentator on American institutions remarks, In the Free States, except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise. Women are 'not even a class of persons; they are fairly dropped from the human race.'

We have stigmatized democracy as a form of government opposed to the influence of women: we believe Puritanism to be not less so. Queen Elizabeth felt this, and kept it down. Knox set himself against the 'monstrous regimen of women.' Milton struck a blow, in his character of Eve, at the intellectual pretensions of the sex, and made her, even in Paradise, an inferior creature, a fair defect;' and for a hundred years and more this epithet expresses the universal sentiment; veiled in the tender monitory gallantry of the Spectator, more scornfully and openly avowed by the poets, novelists, dramatists, and humourists of that age, and borne with apathetic submission by the sex itself, content with the extravagant homage paid to their beauty, and apparently resigning themselves for this equivalent to the reproach of frivolity, vanity, lowness of aim, and weakness of purpose. As far as the literature of an age shows its spirit, never was woman's state and consequence in a Christian country at a lower ebb than in the eighteenth century. All their advisersthe moralists who devoted themselves to their amendmentthought another and inferior set of motives necessary for their very subordinate place and intellect, than were offered to men. Women were not to be influenced by a frank love of right and hatred of wrong, but by a code of lower morals, involving artifice, concealment, suppressions; and unscrupulously recommending selfish interest and a desire for conquest as motives of action. When Mary Wollstonecraft denounces this class of teachers, she carries our sympathies wholly with her. It is incredible to our ears by what low inducements the preachers and teachers of that age sought to win women to a love of virtue. Fordyce's Sermons formed part of every young woman's library. There he addresses his country women, smiling innocents,' 'beauteous innocents,' 'the British fair, the fairest of the fair,' recommending them to the practice of piety by such persuasions as these: Never, perhaps, does a fine woman strike more deeply than when, composed 'into pious recollection, and possessed with the noblest considera'tions, she assumes without knowing it, superior dignity and new graces; so that the beauties of holiness seem to radiate about her, and the bystanders are almost induced to fancy her

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already worshipping amongst her kindred angels. This same divine also tells his fair and youthful disciples-for it is evident he would own to no other-to regulate their health and physical development solely with a view to what is admired by the opposite sex. Men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features and a flowing voice, a form not robust, a demeanour ' delicate and gentle. Such passages as these reconcile us very cheerfully to the use assigned to this moralist in the Rivals,' where Lydia Languish is preparing her room for company :

'So so, now lay Mrs. Chapone in sight, and leave Fordyce's Sermons open on the table.'

Lucy. O burn it, Madam; the hair-dresser has torn away as far as Proper Pride.

Lydia. Never mind-open at Sobriety.'

Dr. Gregory, in his Legacy to his Daughters, advises them : 'Be ever cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be 'thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company. But if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound 'secret, especially from the men, who generally look with a 'jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a 'cultivated understanding.' On which we find this just comment: If men of real merit,' as he afterwards observes, are 'superior to this meanness, where is the necessity that the 'behaviour of the whole sex should be modulated to please "fools?' But this was a level to which women were deliberately condemned, though they are consoled by the assurance that the 'power of a fine woman over the hearts of men, and of men of 'the finest parts, is even beyond what she can conceive.' This 'power,' not over herself but man, is the great aim set forth; for this every art and dissimulation was to be practised, for this woman was always to seem to be something different from what it was her nature to be. Rousseau followed in the same track. The celebrated women of the day took up the strain-Mrs. Piozzi, Madame de Stael, Madame de Genlis. Maiden meditation fancy free,' 'the step of virgin liberty,' were charms not appreciated by that narrow, trifling, and artificial generation; and though, doubtless, innumerable women were doing their duty in all dignity and simplicity because it was their duty, yet the historical aspect of the women of the period was universally tinctured and lowered by these debasing motives of action.

Puritanism and the licence that succeeded it were alike opposed to the sex's just influence; but the earlier ages of Christianity were free from this jealousy. Then high motives were acknowledged, though they might be mistaken ones, and women were allowed a sphere independent of man, and were reverenced in it. Men never talked of 'woman's rights,' it is true, but

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wherever they saw zeal and power working in a sacred cause, they owned the inspiration, and submitted as willingly to a woman's guidance as to a man's, if they were satisfied only that the impulse came from on high. Their poets delighted in the embodying of courage, wisdom, strength, and power, in woman's form. In chivalry, their knights endured defeat from a feminine hand. Proud barons submitted themselves to a woman's rule, and female saints were accepted by the Church as guides and teachers.

We can well imagine a sentiment of envy amongst the Theresas and Britomarts, the great Matildas' of the new world, as they survey the position of great-minded women in the despised dark ages and its abhorred feudal system. These women by no self-assertion, only because greatness was acknowledged as a heaven-sent gift peculiar to neither sex though modified by it, attained a place which these female aspirants pant and strive for in vain. When will the Church yield them such homage? when will their decisions be received by men with such submission as we find accorded to a medieval saint?—

What dignity of rank, what eminence of genius, what pride of learning, did not yield lowly and devout homage to the meek Hildegard? Pope Anastasius writes to her, his beloved daughter in Christ, to beseech her prayers and those of her sisters on the mountain of S. Robert, near Bingen. Pope Adrian writes to her to confirm her in her good resolutions unto the end. Pope Eugene and Alexander the Third also wrote to her. Arnold, Archbishop of Mayence, writes to her, the devout virgin and abbess, not doubting the gifts of God, and asking her prayers, that by their assistance his days may pass in the fear and love of his Creator. A multitude of Bishops from all countries, even from Jerusalem, as also the innumerable monks, philosophers, and learned masters from Italy and France, wrote to her in terms of humility, begging her prayers, and desiring to have the consolation of her mystic and angelic salutations; to whom her answers breathe a solemn strain of prophetic counsel, which announce in no disguised tone the need of amendment in which some of them stood. Thus to Arnold. Archbishop of Mayence, she says: "Wherefore do you hide your face from God, as if in perturbation of your angry mind? For I do not offer mystical words from myself, but according to what I behold in that living light; so that often what I desire, and what my will does not seek, is shown to me in a manner which constrains me to see it." answers are always received in a spirit of humility and penitence. Rudolph, the Bishop of Liege, writes to her as follows: "In great distress of mind and body I have desired to write to you, because I greatly need the clemency of God, whom I acknowledge I have offended and irritated by innumerable evils. Therefore, beloved sister, since I know that God is truly with you, I beseech your sanctity by His mercy to stretch out a hand to me in this distress. Be it your care by devout prayers to withdraw me from negligence, and in answer to me write whatever has been shown to you from that unfailing and living light, to awaken my sleep. May the most merciful God grant that I may receive consolation from your writings, and that by the help of your intercession I may attain to the last mansion of eternal quiet!'-Ages of Faith, book viii. p. 63.

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Even without the higher gifts of S. Hildegard, a pious woman some thousand years ago had only to cause her confessor to brick her up in her cell in some populous place, leaving her no outlet upon the world than her small window; and to this window would flock the devout of every sex and condition, to receive her instructions, to profit by her teaching, and to emulate her example, with a deference which Dr. Antoinette Brown might hope for in vain in all her circuits of preaching. It is true that the medieval confessor in one case of this practice suffered death from the Huns, which shows at first sight an advantage on the side of the modern Doctor, till we reflect that, beyond all doubt, deriding Huns are not wanting from her congregations, vexing her spirit without procuring her the glory of canonization after her decease.

The modern school are, as a body, esprits forts; yet it is alone on the principle of faith that women can ever obtain this coveted respect and wider field. The male dictum which so offended the ladies of Syracuse, that the physical element rules the world,' will universally prevail where the higher principle is not acknowledged. But women have always been allowed an unlimited range of action; no work, no honours have been deemed unsuited for or above them, where men have recognised in them, whether rightly or wrongly, evidences of an inspiration, an express call, or even the lower inspiration of genius, in admiration of which we find the universities of the middle ages pressing their honours upon distinguished women.

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Who can enter the solemn halls of Padua,' writes Mr. Kenelm Digby, without being reminded of Helena Piscopia Cornaro, that fair, illustrious, and holy woman, clad in the 'habit of S. Benedict, who possessed a perfect knowledge of the Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic lan'guages, who was a poet, theologian, an astronomer, and who was admitted doctor in philosophy in that university? It was in obedience to the will of her father, in whose house she resided, though always wearing the monastic habit, that she 'consented to this act, which by its publicity and singularity 'wounded her exquisite sense of what belonged to the retiring 'modesty of her sex! All ordinary kinds of glory have been reaped by our family,' said her father; 'nothing remains but this surpassing honour, which shall be ours on your compliance." 'I obey you,' replied the saintly daughter, but I feel that it is 'making the sacrifice of my life.'-(Ages of Faith, vol. vi. p. 76.) Celebrated men from all parts of Italy assembled to hear the exercises attendant on these ceremonies, which Helena accomplished to the delight and astonishment of all present; but her words proved prophetic, she died after receiving the laurel crown. In our own less impulsive age it is the same; amongst those,

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at least, not tied down by either of the jealous principles we have mentioned. For Puritanism still shows its original bias in denouncing any departure in women for any purpose from the ordinary routine of domestic duty, even though it be to shield the orphan or to tend the wounded and the dying. But to men obeying their natural impulses, there is still a glory and a fascination round woman's heroism, genius, or self-devotion, as having in them something heaven-born and divine. Doubtless there are broad distinctions between this state of feeling and that recognition of equality of sphere demanded from mankind by these propagandists. It is because they are exceptional, and therefore indicative of some sacred or extraordinary influence, that men's enthusiasm is roused by unusual displays of energy and power in women; and success must crown these unusual efforts (as evidences, as it were, of a mission), to justify the effort being made. A woman who undertakes a man's office and fails in it, who gives up her own retired sphere to bungle in a public one, will have no sympathy from any class of men. Such as seem to encourage them now for their own purposes appeal to these exceptional cases, affecting to assume that they will become common ones; but impartial minds have intuitive perceptions on the subject, against which all the battery of the most elaborate theory thunders in vain.

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And this natural sentiment of mankind is supported by that appeal to the Bible,' of which the ladies of the Convention were so apprehensive. Ranging through various dispensations and modes of life, as a simple record, as legislating, instructing, admonishing; the subordination in which their physical inferiority places women, and which is universally taken for granted, is never in the Sacred Page assumed as an argument against freedom of thought, independence of action, or the highest efforts of heroic daring. Milton's Eve is certainly no embodiment of womanhood as we find it pictured in the Bible. The good wife there has claims' which she will not forego, and which the husband is divinely taught to submit himself to. In all that Sarah hath said unto thee hearken unto her voice,' are words which convince us that the wives of those patriarchal times held no timid or uncertain place in the social economy, that their rights were clearly defined and universally acknowledged. Nor do we find in the ages when angels conversed with men, that women were either excluded, or excluded themselves, from that high intercourse, after the pattern of her whom the poet of Democracy and Puritanism sets forth for the example of her sex, and who left the presence of Raphael, because

'Her husband the relater she preferr'd
Before the angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather,"

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