asserted Mrs. Duncombe, boldly
(for these were asides). "It is only that one can't recollect--and
the men have suppressed them."

"I think men praised them," said Jenny, "and that we remember the
praise, not the works. For instance, Roswitha, or Olympia Morata,
or Vittoria Colonna. Vittoria's sonnets are extant, but we only
value them as being hers, more for what she _was_ than for their
intrinsic merit."

"And," added Eleonora, "men did not suppress Hannah More, or Joanna
Baillie. You know Scott thought Miss Baillie's dramas would rank
with Shakespeare's."

Mrs. Tallboys was better read in logic and mathematics than in
history, and did not follow Jenny, but she turned her adversary's
argument to her own advantage, by exclaiming, "Are the gentlemen
present familiar with these bright lights?"

"I confess my ignorance of some of them," said Julius.

"But my youngest brother knows all that," said Rosamond at a brave
venture.

"Macaulay's school-boy," murmured Lady Tyrrell, softly.

"Let us return to the main point," said Mrs. Tallboys, a little
annoyed. "It is of the present and future that I would speak, not
of the past."

"Does not the past give the only data on which to form a
conclusion?" said Julius.

"Certainly not. The proposition is not what a woman or two in her
down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural
equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength
which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature."

"I hardly know where to meet you if you reject all arguments from
proved facts," said Julius.

"And the Bible. Why don't you say the Bible?" exclaimed his wife in
an undertone; but Mrs. Tallboys took it up and said, "The precepts
of Scripture are founded on a state of society passed away. You may
find arguments for slavery there."

"I doubt that," said Julius. "There are practical directions for an
existing state of things, which have been distorted into sanction
for its continuance. The actual precepts are broad principles,
which are for all times, and apply to the hired servant as well as
to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can
nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of
the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron.
And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the
noblest figures anywhere depicted."

"I know," said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently