ered less barbarous the passions and prejudices which themselves
shared."[105] It was they who directed the savage passions and brute
force of men to an unselfish aim, the defence of the weak, and added to
courage the only virtue then recognised--humanity. "Thus chivalry
prepared the way for law, and civilization had its source in
gallantry."[106]

At this epoch, the influence of women was decidedly beneficial; happy
for them and for society if it had continued to be so! If we attempt to
trace the source of this influence, we shall find it in the intellectual
equality of the two sexes; equally ignorant of what we call knowledge,
the respect due by men to virtue and beauty was not checked by any
disdain of real or fancied superiority on their part.

The intellectual exercises (chiefly imaginative) of the time, so far
from forming a barrier between the two sexes, were a bond of union. The
song of the minstrel was devoted to the praise of beauty, and paid by
her smile. The spirit of the age, as imbodied in these effusions, is
the best proof of the beneficial influence exercised over that age by
our sex. In them, the name of woman is not associated in the degrading
catalogue of man's pleasures, with his bottle and his horse, but is
coupled with all that is fair and pure in nature,--the fields, the
birds, the flowers; or high in virtue or sentiment,--with honour, glory,
self-sacrifice.

To the age of chivalry succeeded the revival of letters; and (strange to
say!) this revival was any thing but advantageous to the cause of women.
Men found other paths to glory than the exercise of valour afforded, and
paths into which women were forbidden to follow them. Into these
newly-discovered regions, women were not allowed to penetrate, and men
returned thence with real or affected contempt for their unintellectual
companions, without having attained true wisdom enough to know how much
they would gain by their enlightenment.

The advance of intelligence in men not being met by a corresponding
advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium in the social
balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached to the smile of beauty.
The dethroned sovereigns, from being imperious, became abject, and
sought, by paltry arts, to perpetuate the empire which was no longer
conceded as a right. Influence they still possessed, but an influence
debased in its character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead
of being the objects of devoti