t which they, who have evoked it, must
ever after themselves submit to. Religion, which extends the
sanctity of the marriage vow to the husband as well as to the
wife, has rescued her from a condition in which her best and most
tender affections were the source of her bitterest misery; a
condition in which her only escape from a sense of suffering too
unremitting for nature to endure, was in that mental degradation
which produces insensibility to wrong. The instances of primitive
communities, in which such injustice has not prevailed, are too
few and far between, to form any solid objection to the truth of
this general picture. The mere increase of numbers infallibly
obliterates the fair but feeble virtues that originate in nothing
but ignorance of ill; and the first inroads of want or discord,
usually settle the doom of the weak and defenceless. In restoring
to women their domestic dignity, religion has done more than
every other cause towards shielding them from the consequences of
weakness and dependence. From the dignified affections of the
other sex, they have gradually acquired some social rights, and
some share of that freedom, without which virtue itself can
scarcely exist. Opinion, the offspring, not of resplendent
genius, whose earliest fires burned indignantly against the
tyrant and oppressor, but of a religion which preached the
equality of all before God, has given them a share of those
blessings, without which life is not worth possession. At length
it has opened to them the portals of knowledge and wisdom, the
gradual, but effective supports against degradation; and has
sanctified its gifts by withholding from them every license that
leads to vice, every knowledge that detracts from their purity,
and every profession that would expose them to insult."

Then follows a masterly sketch of the condition of woman in uncivilized
life, in which the subject is illustrated by the most apposite quotations
from the works of different travellers and historians. It is the writer's
opinion that in uncivilized life, the degradation of woman, though common,
is not universal. The celebrated passage in Tacitus is quoted in support
of this position; and among other less interesting extracts, is the
following account of Galway by Hardiman, a country which, so great is the
blessing of a paternal and judicious govern