of the Tragic Muse, seem reserved for the bold
adventurers of the other sex.

NOR does this assertion, it is apprehended, at all injure the
interests of the women; they have other pretensions, on which to value
themselves, and other qualities much better calculated to answer their
particular purposes. We are enamoured of the soft strains of the
Sicilian and the Mantuan Muse, while, to the sweet notes of the
pastoral reed, they sing the Contentions of the Shepherds, the
Blessings of Love, or the innocent Delights of rural Life. Has it ever
been ascribed to them as a defect, that their Eclogues do not treat of
active scenes, of busy cities, and of wasting war? No: their simplicity
is their perfection, and they are only blamed when they have too little
of it.

ON the other hand, the lofty bards who strung their bolder harps to
higher measures, and sung the _Wrath_ of _Peleus' Son_, and _Man's first
Disobedience_, have never been censured for want of sweetness and
refinement. The sublime, the nervous, and the masculine, characterise
their compositions; as the beautiful, the soft, and the delicate, mark
those of the others. Grandeur, dignity, and force, distinguish the one
species; ease, simplicity, and purity, the other. Both shine from their
native, distinct, unborrowed merits, not from those which are foreign,
adventitious, and unnatural. Yet those excellencies, which make up the
essential and constituent parts of poetry, they have in common.

WOMEN have generally quicker perceptions; men have juster
sentiments.--Women consider how things may be prettily said; men how
they may be properly said.--In women, (young ones at least) speaking
accompanies, and sometimes precedes reflection; in men, reflection is
the antecedent.--Women speak to shine or to please; men, to convince or
confute.--Women admire what is brilliant; men what is solid.--Women
prefer an extemporaneous sally of wit, or a sparkling effusion of
fancy, before the most accurate reasoning, or the most laborious
investigation of facts. In literary composition, women are pleased with
point, turn, and antithesis; men with observation, and a just deduction
of effects from their causes.--Women are fond of incident, men of
argument.--Women admire passionately, men approve cautiously.--One sex
will think it betrays a want of feeling to be moderate in their
applause, the other will be afraid of exposing a want of judgment by
being in raptures with any thing.--Men refu