tellectual interest to the female sex, was to overstep those conventional boundaries of virtue which admitted of no re

Hence, although in Attica and other parts of Greece of congenial manners, highly accomplished women existed, and held a preeminently brilliant position in society, celebrated by poetic and mimetic art, courted by philosophers, and enriched by princes-Sappho, the poetess, Leæna, famed for her constancy to the slayers of the Pisistratidæ― Aspasia, at once a Ninon de l'Enclos to Socrates, and a Maintenon to Pericles-Lais, the glory and the shame of Corinth-Phryne, who offered to rebuild Thebes at her own charge, and who could boast of a golden image erected to her honor in the temple of Apollo at Delphi-yet all these were public wantons, who usurped among the spiritual and beauty-loving Greeks that estimation which is the rightful due of purity and virtue alone, and which degraded irreparably, while it seemed the most to honor, the nicely constituted character of woman.

Proceed now to Italy, and raise the veil from the domestic sanctuary of the Romans. There is nothing more striking all through the history of the kings and of the early republic than the new aspect under which woman presents herself, so different from anything in Greece. The Roman matron possessed the patriotism of the Spartan without her cruelty and coarseness, and the purity of the Athenian without her extreme seclusion; she fell short of the modern European in that intellectual refinement and high accomplishment which, combined with virtue, belong exclusively to Christendom. Her occupations for a long period were such as to imply inferiority of condition. Thus, when the Sabines made peace with the Romans at the conclusion of the war

occasioned by the forcible abduction of the Sabine maidens, it was stipulated that no labor should be exacted of the latter except spinning.* Hence an old writer, who enumerates the qualities of a good wife, to probity, beauty, fidelity, and chastity, adds skill in spinning. Nay, the Emperor Augustus seldom wore any apparel but of the manufacture of his wife, daughter, and the ladies of his household.t

What originally gave consequence to the female sex in Rome was the necessity of seeking them, under which the infant people of Romulus labored. Thereafter we perceive, in the important part played by individual women, what was the general consequence of the sex. Hersilia, with her fellow matrons, reconciled the Sabines to the city of her forced adoption; the crime of Tarquin gave birth to the republic; the death of Virginia destroyed the tyranny of the Decemvirs; Veturia rescued Rome from the wrath of Coriolanus; when Brennus held the city at ransom, the Roman ladies stripped themselves of their gold and jewels for the service of the republic, as they did in the equally desperate crisis of the battle of Cannæ. And where such a spirit earned to women such an estimation, it is not strange that it became lawful to praise them in the tribune, to pronounce eulogies to their memory, and to draw them in chariots to the public games; nor that we see in Rome at this time, instead of the corruption of the Paphian Venus, temples to Female Fortune, and the sacred fire of the republic consigned in custody to the virgin priestess of the spotless Vesta.

In the decay of the republic, and the still deeper abase

Plutarch's Romulus.

Sueton, August. 73.

ment of the empire, as the female sex still continues an important element of society, this consequence follows. Frequent examples of eminent female excellence occur, contrasted with cases of equally eminent infamy. If Cornelia could inspire the Gracchi, and Julia sustain the fortunes of Pompey, and another Cornelia nobly share them for better and for worse, and Atia form the genius of Octavius, and Portia approve herself worthy to be the wife of Brutus, yet in the same age Metella could dishonor the household of Sylla, and Catiline and Clodius range at will among the best in blood and highest in rank of the patrician wives of Rome. So, in the next generation, we have a Julia Augusta, and a Messalina steeped in the very lees of vice, by the side of an Agrippina at the pinnacle of dignity and faith. And when the profligacy of imperial Rome had sunk to a depth of abomination which no modern tongue can express, nor any modern mind well conceive, there were two Arrias, a Paulina, and an Eponina, who recalled the ancient glory of the best matrons of the republic. But there needed a new dispensation of religion for the moral reform of society in the days of the empire; nor that only, since the whole frame of society was corrupt; and nothing less than a dispensation of blood and fire could suffice to work its physical renovation. Long before the overthrow of the empire, indeed, Christianity had begun to make its benign influences felt in the condition and character of woman; but as its operation covered a later period, and chiefly in that was active upon the present civilization of modern Europe, before entering upon it we subjoin a few words on the social standing of the female sex among the invading Germans. For, while our religion is derived from Judea, and our intel

lectual tastes from the Greeks and Romans, the basis of our manners descends to us from the Saxons, Franks, and other tribes of the German race, who overturned the Roman Empire and established themselves upon its ruins.

Our most authentic knowledge of this great primitive state of modern Europe is derived from the works of Cæsar and Tacitus. The picture which these authors present to us displays in part the usual features of savage life, in part others of a better aspect and higher promise. Among the ancient Germans, as in other like conditions of society, all agricultural as well as household labor was devolved upon their women, and the infirm or less respected male members of the community. In Gaul, the husband possessed the power of life and death over his wife. But in Britain, and especially Germany, it seems to have been otherwise; or at least, if such were the legal power of the husband, yet custom had established more of practical equality between the sexes than obtained in Palestine, in Greece, or even in Rome. The Germans, above all other barbarians, held in special regard the singleness of the connubial relation, and the purity of the female character. They married by the interchange of gifts in cattle and arms; for the wife, says Tacitus, that she may not imagine herself beyond the thought of virtue or the vicissitudes of war, is admonished, by the very auspices of incipient matrimony, that she comes to be the associate of her husband's toils and dangers, the same to suffer and the same to dare, whether in peace or in battle. But there is a still clearer manifestation, in another place, of our own modern spirit of chivalrous admiration of the sex, animating the rude hearts of these wild hunters of the north. The Germans fought their battles with their

wives and families near at hand. These, continues Tacitus, are the sacredest witnesses of martial prowess, these its loudest applauders. Each one carries his wounds to his mother, to his wife; nor do these shrink from numbering or exacting them; and they administer food and exhortation to the combatants. It is had in remembrance that their line of battle, when already bent and broken, has been restored by their women, with constancy of prayers and bared bosoms, and warnings of coming captivity, which they dread far more intolerably on account of their female connections. Wherefore, the more effectually to insure the execution of treaties, noble virgins are demanded as hostages to bind the public faith. For they think there is something holy and foreseeing in the mind of woman; for which reason they neither despise her counsels nor neglect her answers. Under Vespasian, we have seen Veleda, as formerly Aurinia and others, held by them in deep reverence, not with adulation, nor as goddesses, and yet withal as persons endued with special authority and wisdom. Is not all this finely conceived; and an omen of what woman is to be, when these uncultivated barbarians shall have been exalted, by religious and intellectual teaching, into civilized Christians?

In considering this point, of the particular influence of Christianity upon the condition of woman, there is a material distinction important to be noted. Certain effects are often described as evidently flowing from the tenets and general spirit of our religion, although not directly and specifically aimed at by express inculcation of the gospel. For instance, submission to existing political institutions is commanded, notwithstanding the corruptions of the empire would seem to have been such as to justify, nay, to require