progress with that of the opposite sex, but all those moral advantages,
which are connected with mental culture, are secured to this sex. The
constitutional advantage she possesses, for attainments in virtue and
piety is thus indulged with peculiar facilities for its exercise, and
her sphere of employment, so quiet and hallowed, is not corrupted but
purified by the social atmosphere she breathes from her earliest days.

We are now prepared for a reply to that exciting inquiry alluded to in
the commencement of this work, "What is the appropriate sphere of
woman?" Having determined for what duties and occupations she is
qualified, it becomes less difficult to decide when she is acting within
her true sphere, and when she departs from it. If Nature has intimated
any class of employments, as more suitable, from their delicacy, for her
physical powers than others, then we infer, that if she forsake those
for sterner avocations, she disobeys the will of God; and that too, as
clearly and certainly, as if it were inscribed in letters of fire on the
material heavens.

It would have been surprising, however, had not many in this age, and
especially in our own country, have passed to extremes in their opinions
of the rights of woman, and of her appropriate sphere. Having escaped,
through the influence of Christianity, from the error of degrading her
to the station of a slave, it was natural that they should more and
more elevate her, until her true position in the world would be entirely
misapprehended.

The first impulse in this direction was seen in the age of Chivalry.
Then woman was the idol of man. She was served with a sickly and
sentimental devotion, through which its object became indolent,
degraded, and lost to all moral and intellectual excellence. Then came
the influence of those Political changes produced by Christianity,
which, while they somewhat elevated the mental condition of this sex,
left them still subordinate in many respects to man. At length a
republic was founded on these shores, tending, in its true uses, to
elevate all classes, but still to render each individual, when his own
best interests were perceived, content in that state, for which
Providence manifestly designed him.

But how natural that the condition for which God had created the
strongest physical frames and intellectual capacities, should be an
object of envy, and discontent, and ambition, with those to whom he had
denied these endowments.