body and general outline which it wore at the time of the discovery of America. Since that period the social position of the female sex, which it attained under the continued impulse of Christianity and chivalry, has been modified by two new facts, the progress of intellectual refinement and of the useful arts. Presupposing the original causes of woman's elevation in Christendom to have had the effects ascribed, and then to have given a right impulsion to society, it is obvious that whatever develops mind and augments its ascendancy in the world must add to the respectability of woman, who depends for her social relation upon the moral and intellectual influences she exerts over man. Accordingly, though chivalry has ceased to exist, yet the moral dignity and social equality of the female sex continue to be distinctive of Christendom. If a woman belong to the industrious walks of life she has a relative value, enhanced by civilization, in her aptitude for any trade requiring skill, rather than physical strength, for its performance. If placed by fortune in a more elevated condition of society, then she is prompted. and encouraged to the acquisition and the display of intellectual qualities, either in the intercourse of society, the duties of family, or the cultivation of science and literature. To appreciate this fact we have only to compare the intellectual cultivation of celebrated women in our age with any of the distinguished examples of it recorded in other times and other societies. No case can be found more favorable to the other side of the question than that of the Romans. Preeminent in classical history is Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, born of that Cornelian and Emilian family which seemed to have a charter of hereditary genius.

There was a like succession of distinguished females in the Lælian family, three generations of which are commemorated by Cicero. Another Roman lady, Corellia, is famed as having gained the respect and society of Cicero by her talents and knowledge. What monument of either of them remains to attest their intellectual elevation? Wherein consisted their intellectual cultivation? It is evident that they were courted and admired, first for their good sense, and then for the grace and elegance of their conversation; but they were not to be compared to any of the great female names of modern letters, as for instance the Edgeworths, the Somervilles, the Martineaus, the Hemanses of our own living vernacular literature. In fact, no Roman authoress, deserving the name, is handed down to posterity. The younger Pliny dwells applaudingly on the character of his second wife, Calpurnia; and his affectionate account of her conveys, we suppose, the best possible idea of the cultivation. of an intellectual Roman wife. "From attachment to me,” he says, "she has acquired a love of study. My books she carries with her, reads, learns by heart. What solicitude she testifies when I am about to plead in a cause, what joy when I have done! She has messengers disposed to tell her what assent, what applause I receive; and what is the event of the trial. She sings my verses to her lyre with no other art but love, the best of masters. Wherefore I entertain a confident hope that our mutual attachment will be perpetual and will grow stronger and stronger with time. For it is not my youth or my person, which fail with age, but my fame, which she loves."* Interesting as this picture

*Plin. Epist., 1. iv., ep. 19.

of connubial felicity is, they are moral not intellectual qualities which Pliny praises, and that of being an admirer of her husband's writings and talents stands preeminent in the catalogue. What inferior female cultivation does not this bespeak, compared with the times which produced such women as Vittoria Colonna, Maria de Padilla, Lady Fanshawe, Mrs. Hutchinson, Lady Rachel Russell, Madame Roland, and Madame Larochejaquelein, combining the highest excellence in the relations of wife and mother, and intellectual traits and acquirements infinitely beyond the Cornelias and the Calpurnias, those pattern wives and mothers of ancient Rome!

Before leaving the subject there is one remaining class of considerations which we can not well omit to touch. It may seem to be an anomaly of Christian institutions, that while women are admitted by inheritance to the highest of all political stations, in hereditary monarchies that of the throne, they are excluded from equal participation with men in the ordinary political privileges. They do not vote at elections; they do not sit in legislative bodies even where the right of membership is hereditary. Such women as Catharine of Russia, Elizabeth of England, Isabel of Spain, Maria Theresa of Hungary, might justify, it would seem, the imposition of any degree of political responsibility upon the female sex. True, but the only cases which countenance this idea are of woman exercising inherited sovereign power, in solitary examples, constituting exceptions to the usual destiny of the sex, and these exceptions, when analyzed, serving to confirm the general rule. They were not thrown into the vulgar strife and competition of honor, which necessarily pervade the ranks of ordi

nary life. They did not have to run the career of arms as the road to power. And the condition of a great prince in the countries of Christendom is rather that of one representing sovereignty than of one actually exercising it; since all the labor and responsibility and personal danger devolve on ministers and generals holding the delegated powers of government. Aurelius, it is said, contemplated. the establishment of a female senate. Heliogabalus actually did organize one under the presidency of his mother; but Ælius Lampridius, who tells the tale, says the members chiefly occupied themselves with points of etiquette, of regulation of dress, and other like feminine mysteries of state. And whether the story of the Amazons be authentic history, or only a cunningly devised fable, it presents at all events a poor picture of what society would become if our councils were filled and our armies manned with women, and they rather than men, or equally with men, discharged the external and political duties of society, doing so at the sacrifice of all that delicacy and maternal tenderness which are among the most appropriate and the highest charms of woman. Hers be the domain of the moral affections, the empire of the heart, the coequal sovereignty of intellect, taste, and social refinement; leave the rude commerce of camps and the soul-hardening struggles of political power to the harsher spirit of man, that he may still look up to her as a purer and brighter being, an emanation of some better world, irradiating like a rainbow of hope the stormy elements of life.

JOHN MILTON.*

THE discovery of the lost work of Milton, the treatise "Of the Christian Doctrine," in 1823, drew a sudden attention to his name. For a short time the literary journals were filled with disquisitions on his genius; new editions of his works and new compilations of his life were published. But the new-found book having in itself less attraction than any other work of Milton, the curiosity of the public as quickly subsided, and left the poet to the enjoyment of his permanent fame, or to such increase or abatement of it only as is incidental to a sublime genius, quite independent of the momentary challenge of universal attention to his claims.

But, if the new and temporary renown of the poet is silent again, it is nevertheless true that he has gained in this age some increase of permanent praise. The fame of a great man is not rigid and stony like his bust. It changes with time. It needs time to give it due perspective. It was very easy to remark an altered tone in the criticism when Milton reappeared as an author, fifteen years ago, from any that had been bestowed on the same subject be

*The Poetical Works of John Milton. Boston Hilliard, Gray & Co. 1836.

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