ave a
marked impulse to female education in our modern times--were not lost on
Hannah More, who seems to have laid down the laws best adapted to
develop the mind and character of woman under a high civilization.
England seems to have been a century in advance of America, both in its
wisdom and folly; and the same things in London life were ridiculed and
condemned with unsparing boldness by Hannah More which to-day, in New
York, have called out the vigorous protests of Dr. Morgan Dix. The
educators of our age and country cannot do better than learn wisdom from
the "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education," as well as
the "Thoughts on the Manners of the Great," which appeared from the pen
of Hannah More in the latter part of the 18th century, in which she
appears as both moralist and teacher, getting inspiration not only from
her exalted labors, but from the friendship and conversation of the
great intellectual oracles of her age. I have not read of any one woman
in England for the last fifty years, I have not heard or known of any
one woman in the United States, who ever occupied the exalted position
of Hannah More, or who exercised so broad and deep an influence on the
public mind in the combined character of a woman of society, author, and
philanthropist. There have been, since her day, more brilliant queens of
fashion, greater literary geniuses, and more prominent philanthropists;
but she was enabled to exercise an influence superior to any of them, by
her friendship with people of rank, by her clear and powerful writings,
and by her lofty piety and morality, which blazed amid the vices of
fashionable society one hundred years ago.

It is well to dwell on the life and labors of so great and good a woman,
who has now become historical. But I select her especially as the
representative of the grandest moral movement of modern times,--that
which aims to develop the mind and soul of woman, and give to her the
dignity of which she has been robbed by paganism and "philistinism." I
might have selected some great woman nearer home and our own time, more
intimately connected with the profession of educating young ladies; but
I prefer to speak of one who is universally conceded to have rendered
great service to her age and country. It is doubly pleasant to present
Hannah More, because she had none of those defects and blemishes which
have often detracted from the dignity of great benefactors. She was
about as perfec