ter, for the refined and tender sensibilities of the gentler sex. It may be a question whether the influence of woman, in politics, and civil jurisprudence, might not have a favorable effect upon society.

But though relieved of the harsher duties of society, the influence of woman, in every civilized country is so great, that she may be considered the arbiter of our fate, and the controller of our destinies. She sets in motion and continues to direct almost every action of our lives. From boyhood to old age, almost every man is more or less governed by the influence of mother, sister, friend, mistress, or wife. It is for women that men study, and toil, embark in great enterprises, and try to win fortunes. We have no idea of home, but in connection with some beloved woman to preside over it, whose happiness is the object of our exertions.

But with all this there is much in the treatment and condition of women, even where most highly favored by civilization, of which she has a right to complain. Her education is not generally suited to the development of the strength and energy of her character. It is for the most part showy and superficial. Graces and accomplishments take the place of such solid acquirements as give strength to the intellect and dignity to the character. There are in this country institutions for female education, of a high character, but women are excluded from our colleges, and seldom admitted as members of our lyceums, and library and reading associations.

Woman justly complains that she is dishonored and disgraced beyond all possibility of redemption, by the commission of faults, which in man are excused as mere acts of gallantry. The laws of marriage are in most countries very unequal. While a man may riot with impunity in adulterous amours, if his wife takes the same liberty she can be divorced, and turned out without subsistence, to the scorn and contempt of society.

The inequalities of marriage laws in regard to divorce and property, have recently been softened in several of the states, and in New York, Pennsylvania and some others, married women have rights of property independent of their husbands.

We close this portion of our subject with the following

declaration of the wrongs of woman, in the highest civilization, made by a Female Convention, held at Seneca Falls, New York, in the year 1848. It may be of interest to the future historian.

"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

'He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws in the formation of which she has no voice.

"Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all

sides.

"He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

"He has taken from her all rights in property, even to the wages she earns.

"He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming in all intents and purposes her masterthe law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

"After depriving her of all her rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognises her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

"He has denied her the facilities of obtaining a thorough education-all colleges being closed against her.

"He has endeavored in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her selfrespect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life."

WOMA N.

PART SEVENTH.

CHARACTER AND CONDUCT.

WE come to the consideration of the most difficult and important portion of our entire subject. To treat it properly will be a matter of great delicacy, and one from which a fastidious writer, or a squeamish reader, might shrink; but it would be cowardly for us to stop short in our investigations, just when we have arrived at the point of the greatest interest and usefulness. All our researches and all we have written, are subordinate to the matter we now enter upon the character, the conduct, the virtues and the vices of woman.

The female character differs from that of the male, as the constitutions of the sexes differ. Their actions are to be judged by different standards. Actions which seem proper to a man, and which we esteem noble and heroic in him, appear coarse and brutal, if performed by a woman. We cannot fancy with pleasure a female Hercules or Samson, nor a female Alexander or Napoleon; much less can we contemplate with feelings even of toleration, a female Abraham or Solomon.

Courage, magnanimity and strength of intellect, are what we admire most in men. In women we look for affection, benevolence and truth. We have a contempt for effeminate men, and a horror of masculine women. A man may be great, with many qualities, and performing many actions which, in a woman, would seem detestablea woman may be very lovely and attractive to us, with many characteristics which we would despise in one of the other sex.

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It seems, then, according to a law of nature, that the standards of character should differ in the sexes, and that the virtues, which, in our estimate of women, we place in the foreground, and to which we give the greatest importance, are the ones that are entirely subordinate in our estimate of the character of man. With men, chastity and conjugal fidelity are scarcely considered as elements of character. They have a certain degree of estimation, but are held as quite subordinate to other qualities. But with women these are the leading and almost the only virtues we consider. The very term virtuous woman, has, in its ordinary use, no other signification than a chaste one, or one who lives according to the prescribed forms of morality.

Love, with woman, seems the absorbing passion of her soul. Honor, glory, riches and power are leading motives with men-in women we find love, friendship and maternity. We regard in men the qualities which favor these objects of their ambition, while in women we place the highest estimate upon the delicacy, purity and fidelity, which give their greatest charm to their predominant qualities.

These sentiments, however, are by no means universal. In different countries and ages, different opinions have prevailed in respect to female virtue and delicacy, and those differences form so curious a subject of inquiry, that we shall first glance briefly at them, before proceeding to the general consideration of our subject.

It is remarkable that a lack of delicacy is to be observed in the most rude and unpolished nations, and also among the most refined and cultivated. The ancient Greeks, the Romans in the early stages of their history, and the ancient Germans, had little idea of delicacy; and at the present time the inhabitants of some of the South Sea Islands, of portions of Africa, and even the north of Europe, have scarcely any inclination to conceal any natural action from public observation.

On the other hand, in France and Italy, countries where modern refinement has been carried to its highest pitch, delicacy has been laughed out of existence as a silly and unfashionable weakness, and subjects which could not be distantly alluded to in our society, are there made matters of conversation.

It is difficult, and perhaps impossible to account for the differences that exist in various countries in this respect. In New Zealand, one of the most savage countries in the South Seas, the women were ashamed to be seen naked, even at a distance, by the English navigators; while in Otaheite, where the people were more polished, dress was used as an ornament, and there did not seem to be the least consciousness of shame. They had not the idea of indecency, and gratified every appetite and passion before witnesses, with no more sense of impropriety than we should feel in satisfying our hunger at the social board.

The ladies of Japan have a sense of delicacy so exquisite, that they have been known to commit suicide from the mortification of an involuntary exposure-and the women of China are exceedingly chaste and pure in all their words and actions. Why should delicacy be an instinct of the women of New Zealand, and be utterly wanting in those of the more northern groups of islands in the same seas? Why should we find this feeling in excess in such countries as Japan and China, and almost discarded among the most polished nations of Europe? In whatever way we account for such differences a careful consideration of the subject will satisfy us, that modesty and delicacy in females are principles founded in nature, and essential to the beauty and perfection of the female character.

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Many of the ancient fables, while they portray a profligacy manners, point out the latent principle of delicacy in the female mind. Such is the fable of Actæon and Diana. Acteon, in hunting, seeing Diana and her nymphs bathing in a river, stole into a thicket to get a better view. The goddess, having discovered him, was so affronted at his audacity, that she transformed him into a stag, and he was destroyed by his own hounds.

The Lydians were by no means a virtuous people, but one of their queens, a woman of extraordinary beauty, having been exposed by her husband, so that she was seen naked by his friend, to whom he had boasted of her beauty, sent for him and demanded that he should either kill himself or the king, so that there should not be two men who had seen her in a state of nature. The king was slain, and the queen married her avenger.