and impure air of a court of justice, or
even make them professors in a college of unruly boys; but because I
would not do them this great cruelty, do I deny their intellectual
equality, or seek to dim the lustre of the light they shed, or hide
their talents under the vile bushel of envy, cynicism, or contempt? Is
it paying true respect to woman to seek to draw her from the beautiful
sphere which she adorns and vivifies and inspires,--where she is a
solace, a rest, a restraint, and a benediction,--and require of her
labors which she has not the physical strength to perform? And when it
is seen how much more attractive the wives and daughters of favored
classes have made themselves by culture, how much more capable they are
of training and educating their children, how much more dignified the
family circle may thus become,--every man who is a father will rejoice
in this great step which women have recently made, not merely in
literary attainments, but in the respect of men. Take away intellect
from woman, and what is she but a toy or a slave? For my part, I see no
more cheering signs of the progress of society than in the advancing
knowledge of favored women. And I know of no more splendid future for
them than to encircle their brows, whenever they have an opportunity,
with those proud laurels which have ever been accorded to those who have
advanced the interests of truth and the dominion of the soul,--which
laurels they have lately won, and which both reason and experience
assure us they may continue indefinitely to win.

AUTHORITIES.

Miss Luyster's Memoirs of Madame de Stael; Memoires Dix Annees d'Exil;
Alison's Essays; M. Shelly's Lives; Mrs. Thomson's Queens of Society;
Sainte-Beuve's Nouveaux Lundis; Lord Brougham on Madame de Stael; J.
Bruce's Classic Portraits; J. Kavanagh's French Women of Letters;
Biographic Universelle; North American Review, vols. x., xiv., xxxvii.;
Edinburgh Review, vols. xxi., xxxi., xxxiv., xliii.; Temple Bar, vols.
xl., lv.; Foreign Quarterly, vol. xiv.; Blackwood's Magazine, vols.
iii., vii., x.; Quarterly Review, 152; North British Review, vol. xx.;
Christian Examiner, 73; Catholic World, 18.

HANNAH MORE.

* * * * *

A. D. 1745-1833.

EDUCATION OF WOMAN.

One of the useful and grateful tasks of historians and biographers is to
bring forward to the eye of every new generation of men and women those
illustrious characters who made a great