on of heart,--fantastic, indeed, but
high-minded,--they became the mere playthings of the imagination, or
worse, the mere objects of sensual passion. Respect is the only sure
foundation of influence. Women had ceased to be respected: they
therefore ceased to be beneficially influential. That they retained
another and a worse kind of influence, may be inferred from the spirit,
as imbodied in the literature, of the period. Fiction no longer sought
its heroes among the lofty in mind and pure in morals--its heroines in
spotless virgins and faithful wives. The reckless voluptuary, the
faithless and successful adulteress,--these were the noble beings whose
deeds filled the pages which formed the delight of the wise and the
fair. The ultimate issues of these grievous errors were most strikingly
developed in the respective courts of Louis XIV. and Charles II., where
they reached their climax. The vicious influence of which we have spoken
was then at its height, and the degradation of women had brought on its
inevitable consequence, the degradation of men. With some few
exceptions, (such exceptions, indeed, prove rules!) we trace this evil
influence in the contempt of virtue, public and private; in the base
passions, the narrow and selfish views peculiar to degraded women, and
reflected on the equally degraded men whom such women could have power
to charm.[107]

A change of opinions and of social arrangements has long been operating,
which ought entirely to have abrogated these evils. That they have not
done so is owing to a grand mistake. Women having recovered their
rights, moral and intellectual, have resumed their importance in the eye
of reason: they have long been the ornaments of society, which from them
derives its tone, and it has become too much the main object of their
education to cultivate the accomplishments which may make them such. A
twofold injury has arisen from this mistaken aim; it has blinded women
as to the true nature and end of their existence, and has excited a
spirit of worldly ambition opposed to the devoted unselfishness
necessary for its accomplishment. This is the error of the
unthinking--the reflecting have fallen into another, but not less
serious one. The coarse, but expressive satire of Luther, "That the
human mind is like an intoxicated man on horseback,--if he is set up on
one side, he falls off on the other," was never more fully justified
than on this subject. Because it is perceived that wo