Could it be anticipated that woman would in all
cases be true to her sex, and reply, as did the discreet Shunamite to
the prophet's interrogatories, "What is to be done for thee? Wouldst
thou be spoken for to the king? or to the captain of the host?" "I
dwell among mine own people." That is, "Where God has appointed my lot,
I am content to live and toil."

It may be objected that I assume the existence of two distinct spheres
of action, in this world. This is acknowledged, and it is, I believe,
susceptible of demonstration. In all nations there is found a division
in the character of human occupations. The savage has his hunting and
fishing grounds, which call for labors of a wholly different character
from those of the wigwam. And though woman may, and often does engage in
the sterner duties of the tribe, yet man cannot supply the earliest
wants of the infant, and he violates the plainest decrees of nature, if
he leave not some other duties exclusively to woman.

Civilization modifies this division of labor, but cannot obliterate it.
Rather must its true work be the more wide separation of the sphere of
each sex from that of the other. Christianity elevates the rank of
woman, and through civilization, gives her a new moral and intellectual
importance in society. Mental culture, again, diminishes both the taste
and the necessity for those coarser tasks, to which, in ruder ages she
must in some degree be subject. But if it qualify her for higher
intellectual employments, her progress does not surpass that of man.
They are relatively, as distant in this respect from each other, as
they were in the days of the Patriarchs. The cultivated female mind
enchants the world,

"And fills
The air around with beauty; we inhale
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality."

This leads us to say, that God must have designed woman for a peculiar
sphere of action, because it is only when she is thus situated, that the
mutual influence of the sexes, so important to earth's moral good, can
be fully exerted. The boy at school inclines to rough manners. What more
effectual restraint upon this tendency, than the delicacy and gentleness
which marks the little girl? She again, may become painfully diffident,
and a recluse in her bearing, if not subjected to the society of the
more confident sex. Encourage the boy to sit always by the fireside, and
studiously shun conversati