ith the artistic enjoyments of
Weimar, causing the favored circle to forget all cares, and giving them
strength for those duties which make up the main business of human life.

When woman accomplishes such results she fills no ordinary sphere, she
performs no ordinary mission; she rises in dignity as she declines in
physical attractions. Like a queen of beauty at the tournament, she
bestows the rewards which distinguished excellence has won; she breaks
up the distinctions of rank; she rebukes the arrogance of wealth; she
destroys pretensions; she kills self-conceit; she even gains
consideration for her husband or brother,--for many a stupid man is
received into a select circle because of the attractions of his wife or
sister, even as many a silly woman gains consideration from the talents
or position of her husband or brother. No matter how rich a man may be,
if unpolished, ignorant, or rude, he is nobody in a party which seeks
"the feast of reason and the flow of soul." He is utterly insignificant,
rebuked, and humiliated,--even as a brainless beauty finds herself _de
trop_ in a circle of wits. Such a man may have consideration in the
circle which cannot appreciate anything lofty or refined, but none in
those upper regions where art and truth form subjects of discourse,
where the aesthetic influences of the heart go forth to purify and
exalt, where the soul is refreshed by the communion of gifted and
sympathetic companions, and where that which is most precious and
exalted in a man or woman is honored and beloved. Without this influence
which woman controls, "a learned man is in danger of becoming a pedant,
a religious man a bigot, a vain man a fool, and a self-indulgent man a
slave." No man can be truly genial unless he has been taught in the
school where his wife, or daughter, or sister, or mother presides as a
sun of radiance and beauty. It is only in this school that boorish
manners are reformed, egotisms rebuked, stupidities punished, and
cynicism exorcised.

But this exalting influence cannot exist in society without an
attractive power in those ladies who compose it. A crowd of women does
not necessarily make society, any more than do the empty, stupid, and
noisy receptions which are sometimes held in the houses of the
rich,--still less those silly, flippant, ignorant, pretentious,
unblushing, and exacting girls who have just escaped from a fashionable
school, who elbow their brothers into corners, and cover wi