fixed and determinate designs of man. To woman, belong all the minor duties of life, she is therefore incapable of commanding her own time, or even her own thoughts; in her sphere of action, the trifling events of the moment, involving the principles of good and evil, which instantly strike upon her lively and acute perceptions, become of the utmost importance; and each of these duties, with its train of relative considerations, bearing directly upon the delicate fabric of her mind, so organized as to render it liable to the extremes of pain or pleasure, arising out of every occurrence, she is consequently unable so to regulate her feelings, as to leave the course of her intellectual pursuits uninterrupted.

Suppose for instance, a woman is studying Euclid when she hears the cry of her child; in an instant she plunges into the centre of her domestic cares, and Euclid is forgotten. Suppose another, (for such things have been,) deeply engaged in the dry routine of classic lore, when suddenly the fair student sees something in the eye of her tutor, or hears something in his voice, which puts to flight the Roman legions, and dismisses the Carthaginian queen to weep away her wrongs unpitied and alone. Suppose a woman admitted within the laboratory of a chymist, and listening with the mute attention of a devotee to his learned dissertations upon his favourite science, when, behold, her watchful eye is fixed upon the care-worn brow and haggard cheek of the philosopher, and she longs to lead him away from his deleterious drugs and essences, into the green fields, or home to the quiet comforts of her own fire-side, where she would rather cherish his old age with warm clothing and generous diet, than ponder upon the scientific truths he has been labouring to instil into her mind. Suppose another studying the course of the stars, when by one of those involuntary impulses by which thoughts are let into the mind we know not how, the form of her departed friend rushes back upon her memory, and suddenly, beneath that heavenly host, whose sublimity her rapt soul had been almost adoring, she stands alone, a weak and trembling woman; and asks no more of the glistening stars, than some faint revelation of her earthly destiny-some

glimmering of hope that she may yet be permitted to shelter herself beneath the canopy of domestic and social love. Suppose a woman mentally absorbed in the eventful history of past times, pondering upon the rise and fall of nations, the principles of government, and the march of civilization over the peopled globe; when suddenly there is placed in her hand a letterone of those mute messengers which sometimes change in a moment, the whole colouring of a woman's life, not only clothing in shade or sunshine the immediate aspect of nature and surrounding things, but the illimitable expanse of her imaginary future. A letter to a woman is not a mere casual thing, to be read like a newspaper. Its arrival is an event of expectancy, of hope, and fear; and often seems to arrest in a moment the natural current of her blood, sending it by a sudden revulsion, to circle in a backward course through all her palpitating veins. In the instance we have supposed, the letter may convey the sad intelligence of the sickness of a friend or relative, who requires the immediate attention of a faithful and devoted nurse. The book is closed. The quiet hours of reading, and study, are exchanged for the wearisome day, the watchful night, the soothing of fretfulness, and the ministration of comfort and kind offices; while the heroes of ancient Greece are forgotten, and the Cæsars and the Ptolemies are indiscriminately consigned to an ignominious tomb.

It is owing to circumstances such as these, daily and even hourly occurring, that women are disqualified for great literary attaininents; and every impartial judge will freely acknowledge that it is not her want of capacity to understand the fundamental truths of science and philosophy; but her utter inability from circumstance and situation, diligently to pursue the investigation of such truths, and when clearly ascertained, to store up and apply them to the highest intellectual purposes, which constitutes the difference between the mental faculties of woman and those of a nobler sex.

Nor let the pedant call this a defect in woman's nature; that alone can be a defect by which anything is hindered from answering the purpose for which it was designed.

Man is appointed to hold the reins of government, to make laws, to support systems, to penetrate with patient labour and undeviating perseverance into the mysteries of science, and to work out the great fundamental principles of truth. For such purposes he would be ill qualified, were he liable to be diverted from his object by the quickness of his perception of external things, by the ungovernable impulse of his own feelings, or by the claims of others upon his regard or sensibility; but woman's sphere being one of feeling rather than of intellect, all her peculiar characteristics are such as essentially qualify her for that station in society which she is designed to fill, and which she never voluntarily quits without a sacrifice of good taste-I might almost say, of good principle. Weak indeed is the reasoning of those who would render her dissatisfied with this allotment, by persuading her that the station, which it ought to be her pride to ornament, is one too insignificant or degraded for the full exercise of her mental powers. Can that be an unimportant vocation to which peculiarly belong the means of happiness and misery? Can that be a degraded sphere which not only admits of, but requires the full developement of moral feeling? Is it a task too trifling for an intellectual woman, to watch, and guard, and stimulate the growth of reason in the infant mind? Is it a sacrifice too small to practice the art of a laptation to all the different characters met with in ordinary life, so as to influence, and give a right direction to their tastes and pursuits? Is it a duty too easy, faithfully and constantly to hold up an example of self-government, disinterestedness, and zeal for that which constitutes our highest good-to be nothing, or anything that is not evil, as the necessities of others may require to wait with patience-to endure with fortitude-to attract by gentleness-to soothe by sympathy judiciously applied-to be quick in understanding, prompt in action, and, what is perhaps more difficult than all, pliable yet firm in will--lastly, through a life of perplexity, trial, and temptation, to maintain the calm dignity of a pure and elevated character, earthly in nothing but its suffering and weakness; refined almost to sublimity

in the seraphic ardour of its love, its faith, and its devotion.

The same causes which operate against the intellectual attainments of woman, unfit her for arbitrary rule. Queen Elizabeth, one of the most distinguished of female sovereigns, was womanly in nothing but her vanity and artifice. She was ready at any time to sacrifice her lover to her love of power; and those affairs, said to be of the heart, which rendered her despicable in old age, were nothing better than flirtations founded upon personal adulation, selfishness, and caprice. But deficient in the nobler characteristics of generous feeling, in enthusiasm, and devotedness, she was the better qualified to maintain her regal dignity, and to pursue those deep-laid schemes of policy and ambition which raised her to a level with the greatest potentates of Europe; while her ill-starred rival, Mary of Scotland, a "very, very woman!" who, with the richest endowments of head and heart, miglīt, as a wife, have proved a blessing to any man who had the good feeling to appreciate her worth, raised to the throne, became the bane of her empire; and as a queen, was eventually the most unfortunate that ever let in misrule and rebellion upon her state, or brought down disgrace and destruction upon herself.

It is only in her proper and natural sphere, that woman is poetical. Self-supported, as a sovereign or a sage, she wants all her loveliest attributes. That which stands alone, firmly, and without support, can never supply the mind with so many interesting and poetical associations, as that which has a relative existence and is linked in with the chain of creation by the sympathies or necessities of its own nature. A single barren hill, in the midst of a desert, without sunshine, without shade, without verdure, or any perceptible variety in its surface, would afford little to interest the feelings of the poet. It might serve as a landmark to the bewildered traveller; but without the light of the sun, or the shadow of intervening clouds upon its summit, without the garment of verdure, or the varieties of beetling rock, and precipice, and deep ravine around its sloping sides; and above all, without its

"mighty shadow in a weary land," it could not be an object upon which the eye would linger with delight, or the excursive faculty of imagination find food and exercise. The lightest bird that plumes its wing upon the leafy bough, or, "tuning its native wood notes wild," soars up to the clear expanse of heaven's ethereal blue; the frailest plant twining its parasitical arms around the supporting stem, lavishing its prodigal sweets upon the morning air, or scattering its faded leaves upon the gales of the wilderness; the faintest cloud that sails before the face of the moon, basking for a moment in her vestal smile, wearing her silver livery, and then wreathing her forehead in fantastic folds of mist and vapour before it floats away, formless, and void, into the dark abyss of unfathomable night, are objects in themselves, in their attributes, relations, and associations, infinitely more poetical than the single mountain: and it is precisely upon the same principle, that woman with her boundless sympathies, her weakness, her frailty, her quick perceptions, her inexhaustible energies, in all that constitutes the very essence of her character, is more poetical than man.

Yet notwithstanding all this, in the art of writing poetry, women prove themselves decidedly inferior to the other sex; for the same causes which retard their progress in the more laborious walks of science, are equally forcible here. Beyond a very limited extent woman is incapable of concentrated, fixed, and persevering attention. We have many instances that she can, as it were out of the momentary fulness of her own heart, "discourse most eloquent music," but she is unequal to any of those lasting productions of poetic genius, which continue from age to age to delight the world. I am unwilling however even in this instance to attribute to her mental inferiority, what appears to me as more probably owing to the uncontrolled influence of her imagination, the faculty most essential to the poet, which women possess in so great a degree, that its very exuberance of growth prevents the ripening of those rich fruits of which its profusion of early blossom gives deceitful promise. The imagination of woman may be compared to a quick growing plant, which shoots out so

many slender twigs and tendrils, that the main stem is weakened, and the whole plant unable to raise itself from the earth, continues to bud and blossom, and send forth innumerable shoots which altogether form a beautiful group of flowers and verdure, but nothing more; while the imagination of man resembles a stately tree, whose firm and continuous stem, exactly proportioned to the support and nourishment of the numerous branches in their subordinate place completes the majesty, the utility, and the beauty of the whole. The imagination of woman is sufficiently vivid and excursive to take in the widest range of poetical sublimity, but unfortunately it meets with so many interruptions in that range, and deviates so often from its proper object to waste itself upon others of minor importance, that it seldom attains any laudable end, or accomplishes any lasting purpose.

It is impossible for those who have merely studied the nature of woman's mind, to comprehend the rapidity of her thoughts, and the versatility of her feelings. Touch but one sensitive chord, and her imagination takes flight upon the wings of the butterfly over the garden of earth, up into mid air. beyond the lark, that sweetest intelligencer of sublunary joy, higher, still higher, through illimitable space, ascending to the regions of peace and glory, and passing through the everlasting gates into the communion of saints and blessed spirits, whose feet "sandalied with immortality," trace the green margin of the river of eternal life.

Would that the imagination of woman had always this upward tendency, but, alas! it is not satisfied even with the fruition of happiness; it cannot rest even in the bosom of repose; it is not sufficiently refreshed, even by that stream whose waters make glad the celestial city. The light of some loved countenance perchance is wanting there, and the spirit, late soaring on delighted wing, now plunges downward amongst the grosser elements of earth, while lured on by the irresistible power of sympathy, it chooses rather to follow the erring or the lost through all the mazy windings of sin and sorrow, than to rise companionless to glory.

With such an imagination, startled, ex

cited, and diverted from its object, not only by every sight or sound in earth or air, but by every impulse of the affections and the will, it is impossible that woman in her intellectual attainments should ever equal man, nor is it necessary for her usefulness, her happiness, or the perfection of her character, that she should. As she is circumstanced in the world, it is one of her greatest charms, that she is willing to trust rather than anxious to investigate. While she does this she will be feminine, and while she is feminine she must be poetical.

The power of adaptation is another quality, which, next to imagination, is strikingly conspicuous in woman, and without which she would lose half her loveliness, and half | her value. There is no possible event in human life which she is unable, not only to understand, but to understand feelingly; and no imaginable character, except the gross or the vile, with which she cannot immediately identify herself.

It is considered a mere duty, too common for observation, and too necessary for praise, when a woman forgets her own sorrows to smile with the gay, or lays aside her own secret joys to weep with the sad. But let lordly man make the experiment for one half hour, and he will then be better acquainted with this system of self-sacrifice, which woman in every station of society, from the palace to the cottage, maintains through the whole of her life, with little commendation, and with no reward, except that which is attached to every effort of disinterested virtue. It is thought much of, and blazoned forth to the world, when the victim at the stake betrays no sign of pain; but does it evince less fortitude for the victim of corroding care to give no outward evidence of the anguish of a writhing soul? -to go forth arrayed in smiles, when burning ashes are upon the heart?—to meet, as a woman can meet, with a never-failing welcome the very cause of all her suffering? -and to woo back with the sweetness of her unchangeable love, him who knows neither constancy nor truth?

It is unquestionably the exercise of this faculty of adaptation, which attaches to woman's character the stigma of artifice. She has no power to command, therefore to at

tain her purpose she can only win; and in order to win, she must in some measure adapt herself to the feelings of those who hold the object of her wishes in their keeping. But for one instance in which this is done to serve a selfish purpose, we might count a thousand where it is done for pure sympathy and love, and tens of thousands where she submits to the disappointment of her dearest hopes, without attempting, even in this humble manner, to obtain what she desires.

Women can not only adapt themselves to the habits and peculiarities of others, but they can actually feel with them-enter into their very being and penetrate the deep recesses of their souls. Thus they are no less interesting in themselves, than really interested in what they hear and see. In society they have the character of being diligent talkers, but are they not good listeners also? And where they do not actually listen, they can pretend to do so, which answers the purpose of the speaker just as well. A truly agreeable woman knows how to give a quick and delicate turn to conversation, so as to avoid an unpleasant dilemma or produce a pleasing effect; she knows how, and to whom, to address her good things, and never wastes them upon the wrong person; she discovers the secret bias of the character, and bends the same way, or opposes so gently, that resistance becomes an agreeable amusement; she reads the eye, and discourses eloquently in the language of the heart; and she allows herself caprice enough to ruffle the monotony of life, but not sufficient to create tumult or confusion. Without diving so deep as to be lost, she glides over the surface of things and makes herself acquainted with their nature, and their importance in the aggregate of life. She can enter into the different elements of human nature, and assuming every variety of form of which it is capable, can endure every change of time, and place, and circumstance, and, what is most wonderful, retain her own identity in each. All this she can do with little of the "borrowed aid of ornament." The charm is within herself, and like the great enchantress of the Nile, she imparts it to everything around her.

For want of the power which is in nature,