A. By a
GENTLEMAN." The first thing to be noted is, that whereas Sophia said
her say in about fifty pages, the masculine reply covers seventy-eight
in smaller print. He opens by a "Dedication to the Ladies," beginning,
"Lovely creatures"--an exordium which any woman of spirit would
resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in
those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was
to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire
is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with
Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary
of woman's character and occupations was given earlier, with more
brevity and wit, and no less truth, by Pope. To Sophia's historical
illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina,
Novilia, etc. But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous
that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and
Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style
himself "A GENTLEMAN." We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had
such a mass of filth flung at her. But that decorous personage is not
disconcerted: she does not lose her head or her temper, but opens her
mouth with a freedom of speech which was the prerogative of an honest
woman in those days, and rejoins with a second pamphlet: "_Woman's
Superior Excellence over Man_" Her first thrust is to regret, in
behalf of the other sex, that neither Achilles nor Hector appears as
their champion, but Thersites. Either her adversary was silenced, or
the publishers considered that what he said was not worthy of
preservation, for no further words of his appear, so that in any case
she had the best of it. Her first pamphlet had a second edition in the
following year. Its memory was still alive in this century, for it was
quoted with respect by the _Retrospective Review_ for 1824 in a
learned article on the "Privileges of Woman," which deserves the
attention of those interested in the subject.

S.B.W.

THE TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.

I wish to chronicle in the pages of _Lippincott's Magazine_ the record
of a scene that took place this spring in the Medicean chapel attached
to the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. It was in itself a
remarkable and memorable scene enough, but it was yet more important
as regards certain interesting points of history on which it throws a
very curious light, if it does n