countrymen, like Madame Recamier; for it was not the
beauty and grace of this queen of society which made her beloved, but
her good-nature, amiability, power of friendship, freedom from envy, and
generous soul.

In the estimation of foreigners--of those great critics of whom Jeffrey
and Mackintosh were the representatives--Madame de Stael has won the
proud fame of being the most powerful writer her country has produced
since Voltaire and Rousseau. Historically she is memorable for
inaugurating a new period of literary history. With her began a new
class of female authors, whose genius was no longer confined to letters
and memoirs and sentimental novels. I need not enumerate the long
catalogue of illustrious literary women in the nineteenth century in
France, in Germany, in England, and even in the United States. The
greatest novelist in England, since Thackeray, was a woman. One of the
greatest writers on political economy, since Adam Smith, was a woman.
One of the greatest writers in astronomical science was a woman. In
America, what single novel ever equalled the success of "Uncle Tom's
Cabin"? What schools are better kept than those by women? And this is
only the beginning, since it is generally felt that women are better
educated than men, outside of the great professions. And why not, since
they have more leisure for literary pursuits than men? Who now sneers at
the intellect of a woman? Who laughs at blue-stockings? Who denies the
insight, the superior tact, the genius of woman? What man does not
accept woman as a fellow-laborer in the field of letters? And yet there
is one profession which they are more capable of filling than men,--that
of physicians to their own sex; a profession most honorable, and
requiring great knowledge, as well as great experience and insight.

Why may not women cope with men in the proudest intellectual
tournaments? Why should they not become great linguists, and poets, and
novelists, and artists, and critics, and historians? Have they not
quickness, brilliancy, sentiment, acuteness of observation, good sense,
and even genius? Do not well-educated women speak French before their
brothers can translate the easiest lines of Virgil? I would not put such
gentle, refined, and cultivated creatures,--these flowers of Paradise,
spreading the sweet aroma of their graces in the calm retreats from toil
and sin,--I would not push them into the noisy arena of wrangling
politics, into the suffocating