"but," said he, "they have filled me with
indignation, too, at the repeated insults offered to women so earnestly
engaged in honest endeavors for the uplifting of mankind. I blushed for
my sex more than once in reading these volumes." We lingered long,
talking over the events connected with our great struggle for freedom.
He dwelt with tenderness on our disappointments, and entered more fully
into the humiliations suffered by women, than any man we ever met. His
views were as appreciative of the humiliation of woman, through the
degradation of sex, as those expressed by John Stuart Mill in his
wonderful work on "The Subjection of Women." He was intensely interested
in Frances Power Cobbe's efforts to suppress vivisection, and the last
time I saw him he was presiding at a parlor meeting where Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell gave an admirable address on the cause and cure of the social
evil. Mr. Channing spoke beautifully in closing, paying a warm and
merited compliment to Dr. Blackwell's clear and concise review of all
the difficulties involved in the question.

Reading so much of English reformers in our journals, of the Brights,
McLarens, the Taylors; of Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler, and Octavia
Hill, and of their great demonstrations with lords and members of
Parliament in the chair,--we had longed to compare the actors in those
scenes with our speakers on this side of the water. At last we met them
one and all in great public meetings and parlor reunions, at dinners and
receptions. We listened to their public men in Parliament, the courts,
and the pulpit; to the women in their various assemblies; and came to
the conclusion that Americans surpass them in oratory and the conduct of
their meetings. A hesitating, apologetic manner seems to be the national
custom for an exordium on all questions. Even their ablest men who have
visited this country, such as Kingsley, Stanley, Arnold, Tyndall, and
Coleridge, have all been criticised by the American public for their
elocutionary defects. They have no speakers to compare with Wendell
Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright
is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women.
The women, as a general rule, are more fluent than the men.

I reached England in time to attend the great demonstration in Glasgow,
to celebrate the extension of the municipal franchise to the women of
Scotland. It was a remarkable occasion. St. Andrew's im