HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE.

THE existing public opinion with regard to woman has been formed by the influence of heathen ages and institutions, kept up by a mistaken study of the classics,—a study so pursued, that Athens and Rome, Aristophanes and Juvenal, are more responsible for the popular views of woman, and for the popular mistakes in regard to man's position toward her, than any thing that has been written later.

This influence pervades all history; and so the study of history becomes, in its turn, the source of still greater and more specious error, except to a few rare and original minds, whose eccentricities have been pardoned to their genius, but who have never influenced the world to the extent that they have been influenced by it.

The adages or proverbs of all nations are the outgrowths of their first attempts at civilization. They began at a time which knew neither letter-paper nor the printing-press; and they perpetuate the rudest ideas, such as are every way degrading to womanly virtue. The influence of general literature is impelled by the mingled current. For many centuries, it was the outgrowth of male minds only, of such as had been drilled for seven years at least into all the heathenisms of which we speak.

Women, when they first began to work, followed the masculine idea, shared the masculine culture. As a portion of general literature, the novel, as the most popular, exerts the widest sway. No educational influence in this country compares with it; even that of the pulpit looks trivial beside it. There are thousands whom that influence never reaches; hardly one who cannot beg or buy a newspaper, with its story by some "Sylvanus Cobb."

From the first splash of the Atlantic on a Massachusetts beach to the farthest caÑon which the weary footsteps of the Mormon women at this moment press; from the shell-bound coast of Florida, hung with garlands of orange and lime, to the cold, green waters of Lake Superior, in their fretted chalice of copper and gold,—the novel holds its way. On the railroad, at the depot, in the Irish hut, in the Indian lodge, on the steamer and the canal-boat, in the Fifth-avenue palace, and the Five-Points den of infamy, its shabby livery betrays the work that it is doing.

Until very lately, it has kept faith with history and the classics; but it is passing more and more into the hands of women,—of late into the hands of noble and independent women; and there are signs which indicate that it may soon become a potent influence of redemption. It has thus far done infinite harm, by drawing false distinctions between the masculine and feminine elements of human nature, and perpetuating, through the influence of genius often intensifying, the educational power of a false theory of love.

Social customs follow in the train of literature; and sometimes in keeping with popular errors, but oftener in stern opposition to them, are the lives and labors of remarkable individuals of both sexes,—lives that show, if they show nothing else, how much the resolute endeavor of one noble heart may do towards making real and popular its own convictions.

The influence of newspapers sustains, of course, the general current derived from all these sources.

Public opinion, then, flows out of these streams,—out of classical literature, history, general reading, and the proverbial wisdom of all lands; out of social conventions, and customs and newspapers. These streams set one way. Only individual influences remain, to stem their united force.

We must treat of them more at length, and first of the classics. Until very lately, there were no proper helps to the study of Egyptian, Greek, or Roman mythology. It was studied by the letter, and made to have more or less meaning, according to the teacher who interpreted it. LempriÈre had no room for moral deductions or symbolic indications; his columns read like a criminal report in the "New-York Herald." The Egyptian mythology was, doubtless, an older off-shoot from the same stem. Many of its ceremonies, its symbols, and its idols, must be confused by the uninstructed mind with realities of the very lowest, perhaps we should not be far wrong if we said, of the most revolting stamp. The Greek classics, so far as I know them, present a singular mixture of influences; but, where woman is concerned, the lowest certainly preponderate. We should be sorry to lose Homer and Æschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, from our library; but of how many poets and dramatists, from the few fragments of Pindar and Anacreon down through the tragic poets,—down, very far down, indeed, to Aristophanes,—can we say as much?

There need be no doubt about Aristophanes. The world would be the purer, and all women grateful, if every copy of his works, and every coarse inference from them, could be swept out of existence to-morrow. When we find a noble picture in Xenophon, it had a noble original, like Panthea in Persia, as old perhaps as that fine saying in the Heetopades which all the younger Veds disown. When we find an ignoble thought, it seems to have been born out of his Greek experience. Transported by a fair ideal, Plato asks, in his "Republic," "Should not this sex, which we condemn to obscure duties, be destined to functions the most noble and elevated?" But it was only to take back the words in his "TimÆus," and in the midst of a society that refused to let the wife sit at table with the husband, and whose young wives were not "tame" enough to speak to their husbands, if we may believe the words of Xenophon, until after months of marriage. When Iscomachus, the model of an Athenian husband, and the friend of Socrates, asked his wife if she knew whether he had married her for love, "I know nothing," she replied, "but to be faithful to you, and to learn what you teach." He responded by an exhortation on "staying at home," which has come down to posterity, and left her, with a kiss, for the saloon of Aspasia! Pindar and Anacreon, even when they find no better representatives than Dr. Wolcott and Tom Moore, still continue to crown the wine-cup, and impart a certain grace to unmanly orgies. A late French writer goes so far as to call Euripides "a woman-hater, who could not pardon Zeus for having made woman an indispensable agent in the preservation of the species." In his portraits of Iphigenia and Macaria, Euripides follows his conception of heroic, not human nature. They are demi-goddesses; yet how are their white robes stained!

Iphigenia says,—

a sentiment which has prevailed ever since.

proceeds Macaria, and still farther:—

Here is the popular idea which curses society to-day,—no vocation possible to woman, if she may not be a wife, and bear children: and these are favorable specimens; they show the practical tendencies of the very best of Euripides. The heroic portions are like Miriam's song, and have nothing to do with us and our experiences.

In speaking of Aristophanes, I do not speak ignorantly. I know how much students consider themselves indebted to him for details of manners and customs, for political and social hints, for a sort of Dutch school of pen-painting.

But if a nation's life be so very vile, if crimes that we cannot name and do not understand be among its amusements, why permit the record to taint the mind and inflame the imagination of youth? Why put it with our own hands into the desks of those in no way prepared to use it? Would you have wit and humor? Sit down with Douglas Jerrold, or to the genial table spread by our Boston Autocrat, and you will have no relish left for the coarse fare of the Athenian. One of the most vulgar assaults ever made upon the movement to elevate woman in this country was made in a respectable quarterly by a Greek scholar. It was sustained by quotations from Aristophanes, and concluded by copious translations from one of his liveliest plays, offered as a specimen of the "riot and misrule" that we ambitious women were ready to inaugurate. Coarser words still our Greek scholar might have taken from the same source to illustrate his theory. He knew very well that the nineteenth century would bear hints, insinuations, sneers, any thing but plain speaking. We have limits: he observed them, and forbore. Women sometimes talk of Aristophanes as if they had read his plays with pleasure; a thing for which we can only account by supposing that they do not take the whole significance of what they read,—and this is often the case with men. But a college furnishes helps. The mysteries of the well-thumbed English key are translated afresh into what we may call "college slang," illustrated oftentimes by clever if vulgar caricatures, where a few significant lines tell in a moment what a pure mind would have pondered years without perceiving; and if, perchance, some modest woman finds her friend or lover at this work, society says only: "You should not have touched the young man's book. What harm for him to amuse himself?—only women should never find it out! Keep them pure, no matter what becomes of men. What business had you to know the meaning of those pencil marks?"

Even St. John does not hesitate to condemn Aristophanes.[7] "With an art in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient," he begins, "he opens up a more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteries of iniquity with a fearless and by no means an unreluctant hand. He ventures fearlessly on themes which few before or since have touched, despising the stern condemnation of posterity. He evidently shared in the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists, availed himself joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral character of Aristophanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found save where virtue is."

When I first took up my pen, knowing well that I should speak of Margaret Fuller's beloved Greeks in a tone somewhat different from hers, I did not know that I should have the sympathy of a single eminent scholar.

It was with no common pleasure, therefore, that, opening her Life at random, one day, I chanced upon these words from her own pen. She is speaking of a class of private pupils:—

"I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious tendency of a classical education to be 'auld wives' tales.' But the puzzles (of my pupils) about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions; and I suspect, from reminiscences of my own mental history, that, if all teachers do not think the same, it is from the want of an intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds. I really find it difficult to keep their morale steady, and am inclined to think many of my own sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such naÏvetÉ, and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings, and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their vices and failings."[8]

We may be permitted also to quote, from the competent pen of Buckle, the following words:—

"We have only to open the Greek literature," he says, in his lecture on "The Condition of Women," "to see with what airs of superiority, with what serene and lofty contempt, with what mocking and biting scorn, women were treated by that lively and ingenious people, who looked upon them merely as toys."

Alas! we need no prophet to show that what pollutes the mind of youth and lover, by polluting the ideal of society, must soon pollute the mind of maiden and mistress. Is that a Christian country which permits this style of thinking? and how many men of the world accept the stainless virginity of Christ as the world's pattern of highest manliness?

Passing from Greece to Rome, you will see that even as we owe to Roman law, before the time of Justinian, almost all that is obnoxious in the English, retaining still the strange old Latin terms which were applied to our relations in a very barbarous state of society; so we owe to the time of Augustus, to the influence of satirists like Horace and Juvenal, almost all the wide-spread heresies in regard to human nature: if we had but time to look at it, we might say Calvinism among the rest.

The views of women are still lower. CÆsar and Cicero may be abstract nullities to our young student; but what can he learn from Ovid? It is not delicate to name the "Art of Love." In simple, honest truth, it is the same to read the Metamorphoses. You cannot ventilate a gross man's atmosphere; all the Betsy Trotwoods must toss their cushions on the lawn when he leaves the room. It is the old difference between "Don Juan" and "Childe Harold," only less. In the first, the unvarnished play of passion may disgust you until it instructs; in the second, you have the despairing misanthropy, the false philosophy, the devil in Gabriel's own garment, which is always fascinating to the young, morbid with the stimulus of growth, and which you might mistake for piety if you did not know it was born of the lassitude left by excess.

Latin mythology was but the corruption of the older types. What was beauty once became here undisguised coarseness or worse. The gods who once endured sin now patronized and made money by it. These things are not without their influence. Above all, low images, witty slang, and sharp satire, have force beyond their own, when slowly studied out by the help of the lexicon. The women to whom I speak know this very well. They know that the MoliÈre, the Dante, the Schiller, studied at school, are never forgotten. They smile to hear men call them hard to read: for them they glow with clear and significant meaning. Striking passages are indelibly impressed by associations of time or place or page, which can never be forgotten. I would not put an end to classical study; I would only direct attention, through such remarks, to the dangers attendant on the present manner of study. Classical teachers should not be chosen for their learning alone. No Lord Chesterfield should teach manners, but some one whose daily "good morning" is precious. So no coarse, low-minded man should interpret Greek or Roman, but some noble soul, not indifferent to social progress, capable of discriminating, and of letting in a little Christian light upon those pagan times. Where men and women are taught together, this thing settles itself; and this is a very strong argument for institutions like Antioch and Oberlin.

Then might the period passed at the Latin school and the college become of the greatest moral and intellectual use. Then would no graduating students run the risk of hearing from their favorite doctor of divinity, instead of sound scriptural exhortation, some doctrine whisked out of Epicurus, by a clever but unconscious leger-de-plume.

Do not tell us, O excellent man! that you have gone through all this training, and come out with your soul unstained. We look at you, and see a temperament cold as ice, passions and imagination that were never at a blood-heat since you were born, that never translated the cold paper image into the warm deed of your conscious mental life; and you shall not answer for us, nor for our children.

In leaving this branch of our subject to be more fitly pursued by others, we ought to add that mental purity is not enough insisted upon for either sex. It is only by the greatest faithfulness from the beginning in this respect that we become capable of "touching pitch" at a mature age, in a way to benefit either ourselves or the community. How desirable it is to keep the young eye steadily gazing at the light till it feels all that is lost in darkness, to keep the atmosphere serene and holy till the necessary conflicts of life begin! For such a dayspring to existence no price could be too high; and, if desirable to all, it is essential to those who inherit degrading tendencies.

We must speak now of history. For the most part, it has been written by men devoid of intentional injustice to the sex; but, when a man sits in a certain light, he is penetrated by its color, as the false shades in our omnibuses strike the fairest bloom black and blue. If the positive knowledge and Christian candor of the nineteenth century cannot compel Macaulay to confess that he has libelled the name of William Penn, what may be expected of the mistakes occasioned by the ignorance, the inadvertence, or the false theories of the past? Clearly that they also will remain uncorrected.

If men start with the idea that woman is an inferior being, incapable of wide interests, and created for their pleasure alone; if they enact laws and establish customs to sustain these views; if, for the most part, they shut her into hareems, consider her so dangerous that she may not walk the streets without a veil,—they will write history in accordance with such views, and, whatever may be the facts, they will be interpreted to suit them. They will dwell upon the lives which their theories explain: they will touch lightly or ignore those that puzzle them. We shall hear a great deal of Cleopatra and Messalina, of the mother of Nero and of Lucretia Borgia, of Catharine de Medicis and Marie Stuart, of the beautiful Gabrielle and Ninon de L'Enclos. They will tell us of bloody Mary, and that royal coquette, Elizabeth; and possibly of some saints and martyrs, not too grand in stature to wear the strait-jacket of their theories.

If they think that purity is required of woman alone, and all license permitted to man, they will value female chastity for the service it does poetry and the state, but never maidenhood devoted to noble uses and conscious of an immortal destiny.

Hypatia of Alexandria, noble and queenly, so queenly that those who did not understand, dared not libel her,—Hypatia, a woman of intellect so keen and grasping, that she would have been eminent in the nineteenth century, and may be met in the circles of some future sphere, erect and calm, by the side of our own Margaret Fuller,—she, who died a stainless virgin, torn in pieces by dogs, because she tried to shelter some wretched Jews from Christian wrath, and could even hold her Neo-Platonism a holier thing than that disgraced Christianity,—what do we know of her? Only the little which the letters of Synesius preserve, only the testimony borne by a few Christians, fathers of the Church now, but outlawed then by the popular grossness! Yet, a pure and fragrant waif from the dark ocean of that past, her name was permitted to float down to us, till Kingsley caught it, and, with the unscrupulousness of the advocate, stained it to serve his purpose.[9]

It would have been no matter, had not genius set its seal on the work, and so made it doubtful whether history has any Hypatia left. We must not fail to utter constant protest against such unfairness; and to assert again and again, that not a single weakness or folly attributed to Hypatia by the novelist—neither the worship of Venus Anadyomene nor the prospective marriage with the Roman governor, neither the superstitious fears, the ominous self-conceit, nor the half conscious personal ambition—is in the least sustained by the facts of history. She was pure and stainless: let us see to it that such memories are rescued.

And there is still another name, deeply wronged by the prejudice and party spirit of the past, which it is quite possible to redeem: I mean that of Aspasia. For many centuries, the very sound of it suggested an image of all womanly grace and genius, devoid of womanly virtue; the insight of a seer, the eloquence of an orator, but the voluptuousness of a courtesan. Very lately, the manly justice of Thirlwall and Grote, and the exquisite taste and imagination of Walter Savage Landor, have striven to repair the wrong. Her reputation fell a victim to the gross puns of Aristophanes, himself the hired mouth-piece of a political party that hated her, and whose misrepresentations were so contemptible in the eyes of Pericles, that he would not interfere to prevent them.

Would you have the history of that immortal marriage written truly?

Imagine the Greek ruler married, for some years, to a woman of the noblest Athenian blood, already the mother of two children, but one who, if irreproachable in conduct, was utterly incapable of taking in the scope of his plans, or sharing his lofty, adventurous thought. After years of weariness passed in her society, with no rest for his heart and no inspiration for his genius, there came to Athens a woman and a foreigner, in whom he found his peer,—a woman who gathered round her in a moment all that there was of free and noble in that world of poetry, statesmanship, and art. She was from the islands of the Archipelago, and, like the women of her country, walked the streets with her face unveiled.

Hardly had she come, before Socrates and Plato, and Anaxagoras the pure old man, became her frequent guests, and honored her with the name of friend. In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children,—a wife whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew—Zeus and Eros—smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade a legal marriage with a foreigner? Pericles was Athens; and what he respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free maiden heart; and Pericles shows us in what light he regarded her, by divorcing his wife to consolidate their union, and subsequently forcing the courts to legitimate her child. Had he omitted these proofs of his own sincerity and her honor, not a voice would have been raised against either. What need to take these steps, if she were the woman Aristophanes would have us see?

This divorce created or strengthened the political opposition to Pericles. This opposition was headed by his two sons and their forsaken mother, joined by the pure Athenian blood to which theirs was akin, and gained all its strength and popularity from the wit and falsehood of Aristophanes and the players.

Follow the story as it goes, and see Aspasia, at last, summoned before the Areopagus. What are the charges against her? The very same that were preferred against her friends, Socrates and Anaxagoras. "She walks the streets unveiled, she sits at the table with men, she does not believe in the Greek gods, she talks about one sole Creator, she has original ideas about the motions of the sun and moon; therefore her society corrupts youth." Not a word about vice of any sort. Is it for abandoned women that the best men of any age are willing to entreat before a senate? The tears which Pericles shed then for Aspasia glitter like gems on the historic page.

When the plague came, his first thought was for her safety; and, after his death, her name shares the retirement of her widowed life. There was a rumor that she afterward married a rich grazier, whom she raised to eminence in the state. Not unlikely that such a rumor might grow in the minds of those who had not forgotten the great men she made, when they saw the success of Lysicles; but other authors assert that his wife was the Aspasia who was also known as a midwife in Athens.

It is a noble picture, it seems to me; and when we consider the prejudice of a Christian age and country, the mob that a Bloomer skirt will attract in our own cities, we need not wonder that slander followed an unveiled face in Athens.

What do we know of the women of the age of Augustus?—of the galaxy that spanned the sky of Louis XIV.?

Do you remember, as you read of those crowds of worthless women, what sort of public opinion educated them,—what sort of public opinion such histories tend to form? Do you ever ask any questions concerning the men of the same eras,—how they employed their time, and what part they took in those games of wanton folly? It is time that some one should: and I cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact, that while the word "mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out for reprobation, there is no corresponding term, which, applied to man, produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself.

In speaking of the court of Charles II., Dr. William Alexander says, in 1799: "Its tone ruined all women: they were either adored as angels, or degraded to brute beasts. The satirists, who immediately arose, despised what they had themselves created, and gave the character to every line that has since been written concerning women," down to the verses of Churchill, and that often-quoted, well-remembered line of Pope, with which we need not soil our lips.

We may quote here a criticism upon the "Cinq-Mars" of Alfred de Vigny, taken from Lady Morgan's "France." You will find it especially interesting, because it bears on what has been suggested of the influence of history, and may be compared with a portion of one of Margaret Fuller's letters, in which she criticises the same work, and makes, in her own way, parallel reflections.

"I dipped also," says Lady Morgan, "into the 'Cinq-Mars' of Alfred de Vigny, a charming production. It gives the best course of practical politics, in its exposition of the miseries and vices incidental to the institutions of the middle ages. Behold Richelieu and Louis XIII. in the plenitude of their bad passions and unquestioned power, when—

Behold, too, their victims,—Urbain, Grandier, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and the long, heart-rending list of worth, genius, and innocence immolated. With such pictures in the hands of the youth of France, it is impossible they should retrograde. How different from the works of Louis XV.'s days, when the Marivaux, Crebillons, and Le Clos wrote for the especial corruption of that society from whose profligacy they borrowed their characters, incidents, and morals! Men would not now dare to name, in the presence of virtuous women, works which were once in the hands of every female of rank in France,—works which, like the novels of Richardson, had the seduction of innocence for their story, and witty libertinism and triumphant villany for their principal features.

"With such a literature, it was almost a miracle that one virtuous woman or one honest man was left in the country to create that revolution which was to purify its pestiferous atmosphere. Admirable for its genius, this work is still more so for its honesty."

In the praise given to this new literature is implied the censure passed upon the old. Of direct educational literature, we may say, that all writers, from Rousseau to Gregory, Fordyce, and the very latest in our own country, have exercised an enervating influence over public opinion, and helped to form the popular estimate of female ability. Rousseau's influence is still powerful. Let me quote from his "Emilius:" "Researches into abstract and speculative truths, the principles and axioms of science,—in short, every thing which tends to generalize ideas,—is out of the province of woman. All her ideas should be directed to the study of men. As to works of genius, they are beyond her capacity. She has not precision enough to succeed in accurate science; and physical knowledge belongs to those who are most active and most inquisitive."

Alas for Mary Somerville, Janet Taylor, and Maria Mitchell, as well as for the popular idea that women are a curious sex! He goes on: "Woman should have the skill to incline us to do every thing which her sex will not enable her to do of herself. She should learn to penetrate the real sentiments of men, and should have the art to communicate those which are most agreeable to them, without seeming to intend it."

This sounds somewhat barefaced; but it is the model of all the advice which society is still giving. It is refreshing to catch the first gleam of something better from the author of "Sandford and Merton." "If women," says Mr. Day, "are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy. Instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts which terminate in vanity or sensuality. They are taught nothing but idle postures and foolish accomplishments." Dr. Gregory recommends dissimulation. Dr. Fordyce advises women to increase their power by reserve and coldness! When we hear of the educational restraints still exercised, of the innocent amusements forbidden, the compositions which may be written, but not read, lest the young girl might some time become the lecturer,—we cannot but feel that the step is not so very long from that time and country to this, and wonder at the folly which still refuses to trust the laws of God to a natural development. It is mortifying, too, to listen to the silly rhapsodies of Madame de StaËl. "Though Rousseau has endeavored," she says, "to prevent women from interfering in public affairs, and acting a brilliant part in political life, yet, in speaking of them, how much has he done it to their satisfaction! If he wished to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever asserted for them all those to which it has a claim! What signifies it," she continues, "that his reason disputes with them for empire, while his heart is still devotedly theirs?"

What signifies it? It signifies a great deal. It signifies all the difference between life in a solitary seraglio, and life with God's world for an inheritance; all the difference between being the worn-out toy of one sensualist, and the inspiration of an unborn age; all the difference between the butterfly and the seraph, between the imprisoned nun and Longfellow's sweet St. Philomel. When we read these words, we thank Margaret Fuller for the very criticism which once moved a girlish ire. "De StaËl's name," she wrote, "was not clear of offence; she could not forget the woman in the thought. Sentimental tears often dimmed her eagle glance." What a grateful contrast to all such sentimentalism do we find in Margaret's own sketch of the early life of Miranda!

"This child was early led to feel herself a child of the spirit. She took her place easily in the world of mind. A dignified sense of self-dependence was given as all her portion, and she found it a sure anchor. Her relations with others were fixed with equal security. With both men and women they were noble; affectionate without passion, intellectual without coldness. The world was free to her, and she lived freely in it. Outward adversity came, and inward conflict; but that self-respect had early been awakened, which must always lead at last to an outward security and an inward peace." Here is the great difficulty in the education of woman, to lead her to a point from which she shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help. Old prejudices extinguish her as an individual, oblige her to renounce the inspiration in herself, and yield to all the weaknesses and wickednesses of man. Look at Chaucer's beau-ideal of a wife in the tale of Griselda, dwindled now into the patient Grissel of modern story. In her a woman is represented as perfect, because she ardently and constantly loved a monster who gained her by guile, and brutally abused her. Put the matter into plain English, and see if you would respect such a woman now. No: and therefore is it somewhat sad, that, in Tennyson's new Idyll, he must recreate this ideal in the Enid of Geraint; and that, out of four pictures of womanly love, only one seems human and natural, and that, the guilty love of GuinevÈre. The recently awakened interest in the position of woman is flooding the country with books relating to her and her sphere. They have, their very titles have, an immense educational influence. Let me direct your attention to one published in Boston by a leading house last winter, and entitled "Remarkable Women of Different Ages and Nations." Let us read the names of the thirteen women with whose lives it seeks to entertain the public:—

Beatrice Cenci, the parricide.
Charlotte Corday, the assassin.
Joanna Southcote, the English prophetess.
Jemima Wilkinson, the American prophetess.
Madame Ursinus, the poisoner.
Madame GÖttfried, the poisoner.
Mademoiselle Clairon, the actress.
Harriet Mellon, the actress.
Madame Lenormand, the fortune-teller.
Angelica Kauffman, the artist.
Mary Baker, the impostor.
Pope Joan, the pontiff.
Joan of Arc, the warrior.

Look at the list! Assassins, parricides, and poisoners, fortune-tellers, and actresses! Let us hope they will always remain remarkable! In this list we have the name of one woman who never lived, and of four at least who in this country would owe all their celebrity to the police court; and this while history pants to be delivered of noble lives not known at all, like the women of the House of Montefeltro, or little known, like the pure and heroic wife of CondÉ, Clemence de MaillÉ. And by what black art, let us ask, are such names as Beatrice, and Charlotte Corday, sweet Joan of Arc, and dear Angelica Kauffman, a noble woman, whose happiness was wrecked upon a fiendish jest, juggled into this list? As well might you put Brutus who killed great CÆsar, and Lucretia of spotless fame, and Andrea del Sarto who loved a faithless wife, into the same category. Such association, however false, helps to educate the popular mind.

Of the power of adages, and that barbaric experience and civilization of which they are generally the exponent, we might write volumes; but the subject must be dismissed in this connection without a word. We must pass on to consider the force of social instincts and prejudices which underlie this general literature, and are as much stronger than it as the character of a man is stronger than his intellectual quality. A lecturer once said, "that the first prejudice which women have to encounter is one which exists before they are born, which leads fathers instinctively to look forward to the birth of sons, and to leave little room in their happy or ambitious schemes for the coming of a daughter." Not long since, a highly educated Englishman told me that this remark smote him to the heart. "I never expected to have any thing but a son," he declared; "and, when my little Minnie was born, I had made no preparation for her. I had neither a thought nor a scheme at her service."

Fanny Wright, in some essays published thirty years ago, says, "There are some parents who take one step in duty, and halt at the second. Our sons," they say, "will have to exercise political rights, and fill public offices. We must help them to whatever knowledge there is going, and make them as sharp-witted as their neighbors. As for our daughters, they can never be any thing; in fact, they are nothing. We give them to their mothers, who will take them to church and dancing-school, and, with the aid of fine clothes, fit them out for the market.

"But," she goes on to say, "let possibilities be what they will, no man has a right to calculate on them for his sons. He has only to consider them as human beings, and insure them a full development of all the faculties which belong to them as such. So, as respects his daughters, he has nothing to do with the injustice of law, nor the absurdities of society. His duty is plain,—to train them up as human beings, to seek for them, and with them, all just knowledge. Who among men contend best with the difficulties of life and society,—the strong-minded or the weak, the wise or the foolish? Who best control and mould opposing circumstances,—the educated or the ignorant? What is true of them is true of women also."

In the customs of nations, women find the most discouraging educational influences. While with us these customs all set one way, they are easily broken through by the untutored races, who still rely on the force of their primal instincts. When Captain Wallis went to see the Queen of Otaheite, a marsh which crossed the way proved a formidable obstacle to the puny Anglo-Saxon. No sooner did the queen perceive it, than, taking him up as if he were a meal-bag, she threw him over her shoulder, and strode along. Nobody smiled; even Captain Wallis does not appear to have felt mortified. These people were accustomed to the physical strength of their queen. It would be well if civilized nations could imitate them, far enough at least to remember, that wherever strength, whether mental or physical, is found, there it certainly belongs.

In Peru and the Formosa Isles, it is the women who choose their husbands, and not the men who choose their wives; and, from the moment of marriage, the man takes up his abode in his wife's family. Lord of creation in every other respect, he still owes to her whatever social standing and privileges he may possess. Such an exception is valueless, save that it shows us that sex does not absolutely, of itself, determine such customs.

The African kings are permitted to have many wives; but they respect the chastity of women, and require it. Dr. Livingstone tells us of an instance in which the royal succession finally lapsed upon a woman. Her counsellors forbade her to marry a single husband, telling her that it would create jealousies and divisions in the tribe. She must follow the royal custom. But pure womanly nature spoke louder than the counsellors. The poor queen renounced marriage altogether, and associated a half-brother in the government, upon whose children she settled the succession. Let this beautiful fact shame those coward souls who fear to trust to the instinctive purity of the sex.

He goes on to state, in a recent letter, that he has found nothing more remarkable, among the highly intelligent tribes of the Upper Sambesi, than the respect universally accorded to women.

"Many of the tribes are governed by a female chief. If you demand any thing of a man," remarks the intrepid explorer, "he replies, 'I will talk with my wife about it.' If the woman consents, your demand is granted. If she refuse, you will receive a negative reply. Women vote in all the public assemblies. Among the Bushwanas and Kaffirs, the men swear by their fathers; but among the veritable Africans, occupying the centre of the continent, they always swear by their mother. If a young man falls in love with a maiden of another village, he leaves his own, and takes up his dwelling in hers. He is obliged to provide in part for the maintenance of his mother-in-law, and to assume a respectful attitude, a sort of semi-kneeling, in her presence. I was so much astonished at all these marks of respect for women, that I inquired of the Portuguese if such had always been the habit of the country. They assured me that such had always been the case."

If women were unwise managers of money,—a statement frequently made, but which we may safely deny,—it would be owing to the custom which has, through long ages, put the purse in the hands of "their master;" a custom so old, that to "husband" one's resources is a phrase which expresses man's pecuniary responsibility, and is always equivalent to locking one's money up. "It will be time enough," says Mrs. Kirkland, "to expect from woman a just economy when she is permitted to distribute a portion of the family resources. Witness those proud subscription-lists where one reads, 'Mr. B., twenty dollars;' and, just below, 'Mrs. B., ten dollars,'—which ten dollars Mrs. B. never saw, and would ask for in vain to distribute for her own pleasure."

And this custom has such educational force, that very liberal men refuse the smallest pecuniary independence to their wives to their very dying day. "The Turk does not lock up his wife with more care than the Christian his strong box. To that lock there is ever but one key, and that the master carries in his pocket. The case is not altered when the wife is about to close her weary eyes in death. She may have earned or inherited or saved the greater part of their common property, but without his consent she cannot bequeath a dollar." This passage reminds us of a criticism on the marriage service attributed to Sir John Bowring. This eccentric man considers it wicked from beginning to end. "Look at it," he says: "'with this ring I thee wed,'—that's sorcery; 'with my body I thee worship,'—that's idolatry; 'and with all my worldly goods I thee endow,'—that's a lie!"

It is the long customs of mankind which stand in the way of educating women to trades and professions. These matters are mainly in woman's own hands. One is glad to see in the English Parliament certain statements made in this connection, and others also in a London pamphlet on the nature of municipal government. In reply to the common argument that women ought not to enter certain vocations, because they would ultimately find themselves incompetent, it is stated, that, in all delicate handicrafts, men do the same. Thus, of those who learn to make watches and watchmakers' tools, not one-fifth continue in the trade; and, in the decoration of that delicate ware called Bohemian glass, by far the greater portion of apprentices give it up on account of natural unfitness.

It is the customs of society which sustain the prejudice against literary women. When Dr. Aikin published his "Miscellaneous Pieces," Fox met him in the street. "I particularly admire," said the orator, complimenting him, "your essay on Inconsistency."—"That," said Aikin, "is my sister's."—"Ah! well, I like that on Monastic Institutions."—"That is also hers," replied the honest man; and, in a tumult of confusion, Fox bowed himself away. Had public feeling been right, how gracefully he might have congratulated the brother on his sister's ability, how gladly might that brother have seen her excel himself! This sister was that Mrs. Barbauld who afterward did such womanly service, that we feel tempted to forgive the early fit of sentimentality which found vent in that rhymed nonsense, concluding,—

The manners of men have their educational influence. The quiet turning-aside from women when matters of business, politics, or science are discussed; the common saying, "What have women to do with that? let them mind their knitting, or their house affairs;" the short answer when an interested question is asked, "You wouldn't understand it, if I told you,"—all these depress and enervate, and, even if not spoken, the spirit of them animates all social life. "Men are suspicious," wrote Dr. Alexander in 1790, "that a rational education would open the eyes of women, and prompt them to assert the rights of which they have always been deprived." But education could not be withheld nor eyes closed for ever; therefore the time has come to claim these rights. The Sorbonne is already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all literature and scientific opportunities, if all societies devoted to natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries the world over, were thrown open to woman?

In inferior circles, where no leading minds preside, it would be as it is now: there would be much idle prating, much foolish delay, much inconsequent discussion; but woman is quick to recognize genius, to listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of fools; but, when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm, they will never be willing to lose it. When the great door of the scholarly and scientific retreat is once thrown open, you will be surprised to see the crowd ready to enter; and, when the sexes kindle into intellectual life together, many a woman's coals will be modestly laid upon an honored altar, and the flames will rise all the higher because they have been so fed.

How can we estimate sufficiently the corrupting influence of the newspapers of the land?

We may hope your prejudices will defend woman here, and you will acknowledge that the minds cannot be kept pure before whom their details are set. Let us go farther, and say that they cannot be kept pure, coming in contact as they do with minds among men that gloat over such records. God is just, and his compensations are terrible. If you do not spare the purity of the lowest in the land, you cannot save that of your wife and daughter. If you will not protect the vulgar against themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to our respect, who is not secure in her own. How can we reach such a standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? It is not enough that much of the obscenity is pure invention. The profit of the scandal overbalances the cost of the libel. The simplest item is turned to gross account. Even the intimation that the postmaster has placed a woman at the ladies' window in New York has to be coupled with the insinuation that she would have "done better at the gentlemen's." What business have you or I with details that concern only judge and jury? What good does it do society to quote high legal authority upon "flirtation," unless, indeed, we learn thereby to estimate aright the corrupting power of the first wrong step? Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents, and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of common sense daily to his readers. When, alas! shall we have a public willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone?

A woman ought to turn like a flash of light from a foul page, a coarse and vulgar word. No wit should ever tempt her to read the one, or repeat the other; and what I say of woman, I mean of man. I have not two separate moral standards for the sexes.

Margaret Fuller speaks somewhere of certain habits of impure speech which she had heard attributed to ladies in a New-York hotel. What foundation that story had, we may never find; but all of us know some women before whom we keep the coldest reserve, and with whom we would never touch many a subject we should be willing to discuss with any pure-minded man. Ladies! Not all the gold of Pactolus, not all the beauty of Anadyomene, not all the wisdom of Minerva, could make such women ladies! We cannot redeem the poor denizens of Five Points till we have redeemed those of the Fifth Avenue.

Our own children must prattle oaths, if we will not hush the drunken brawler in the streets.

Note.—When this lecture was first delivered, in 1858, it excited more discussion than any "revolutionary notions" of which I have ever been suspected. Since then, the same ideas, as applied to other questions, have been expressed in various quarters. I think a thorough classical education necessary to a college bred man. As far as I have any opinions to express, they coincide with those recently uttered by John Stuart Mill at St. Andrew's.

I wish to sustain the remarks of the text by the following quotations:—

"Many things with the Greeks and Romans most venerable have not merely lost their sanctity in our eyes, but present contemptible and even ludicrous ideas to us. Hence, any allusion to them, or any expression of the feelings connected with them, or even a reference to the habits of thinking which those feelings have produced, must have an operation most unpropitious."—Lord Brougham.

"The fictions constituting the epic poetry of Homer, Virgil, and their imitators, so far from being consonant with the taste and sense of modern readers, are, on the contrary, often annoying, from the absence of all moral or poetical justice."—"The gods who preside in this scenic exhibition are tainted with every vice which has since degraded their supposed subordinates of the human race. Cruelty, revenge, deceit, hatred, unrelenting rancor, and unbridled lust, are the qualities which call for approval in a generation professing to feel and practise virtues of an opposite nature. An exterminating war is undertaken for the sake of a vacillating adulteress, and its heroes quarrel implacably about the possession of their female slaves. Ulysses, on his return home, winds up the 'Odyssey' by a wholesale slaughter of his disorganized subjects, hangs up a dozen censurable females in a row, and puts Melanthius to a lingering death by gradual mutilation."—"In their social relations, the Greeks were licentious and exquisitely depraved. In their domestic habits, they were primitive, destitute, and uncleanly."—Dr. Jacob Bigelow.

These words represent the re-action of Christian morality against the abuses of classical study, to which I allude in my text. But let the classics be taught properly, and morality will have no complaint to make. We cannot understand the history of the world, without an intelligent investigation of its beginnings; but we should be carefully protected against assuming, as reasonable and proper, either the habits and opinions or the sarcasms of an extinct experience.

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