h delicate and poetic
sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons
reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with
its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all
cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing
to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women.
The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women
naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered
over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way
of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish
Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but
by Roman valor.

Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by
nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women
will of course be found competent to the highest success in other
departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The
domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an
appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for
that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the
feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story
of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of
domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life,
assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find
women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and
sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of
plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or
_Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of
imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding,
Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its
kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist
Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for
eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand.

We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the
influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without
exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with
suffering. "Spec