the weak and unfilial Desdemona as an example to her sex in this
age; would never dare to hold up as "our destined end and aim," a one
love, however romantic and poetical, which might be so selfishly
sought and so unscrupulously secured.

Thank Heaven, woman herself is awaking to a perception of the causes
which have hitherto impeded her free and perfect development, which
have shut her out from the large experiences, the wealth and fullness
of the life to which she was called. She is beginning to feel, and to
cast off the bonds which oppress her--many of them, indeed,
self-imposed, and many gilded and rarely wrought, covered with flowers
and delicate tissues, but none the less bonds--bonds upon the speech,
upon the spirit, upon the life.

There surely is a great truth involved in this question of "Woman's
Rights," and agitated as it may be, with wisdom and mildness, or with
rashness and the bold, high spirit which shocks and startles at the
first, good will come out of it eventually, great good, and the women
of the next age will be the stronger and the freer, aye, and the
happier, for the few brave spirits who stood up fearlessly for
unpopular truth against the world.

I know that I expose myself to the charge of being unfeminine in
feeling, of ultraism. Well, better that than conservatism, though
conservatism were safer and more respectable. Senselessness is always
safety, and a mummy is a thoroughly respectable personage.

But to return to Mr. Saxe. Our poet satirized rather keenly literary
women, as a class, in the poem on which I remarked, but afterwards, in
his communication to the _Post_, most politely intimates that he
excepts me as one of the "women of real talent." But I will not be
excepted. I stand in the ranks, liable to all the penalties of the
calling--exposed to the hot shot of satire and the stinging arrows of
ridicule. I will not be received as an exception, where full justice
is not done to the class to which I belong.

Suppose, now, that I should write a poem to deliver before some
"Woman's Rights Convention" or "Ladies' Literary Association," on "The
Times," which should come down sharp and heavy on the literary men of
the day, for usurping the delicate employ by right and nature the
peculiar province of woman, "the weaker vessel"; for neglecting their
shops, their fields, their counting-houses, and their interesting
families, and wasting their precious time in writing love-tales,
"doleful di