An ancient example. Trials springing from Physical Constitution. Acute Feelings. Sentiment of Burns. Trials from Imagination. An affecting incident. Want of Interesting Objects. Defencelessness in Public. Sufferings through Affections. Instance of true love. Trials of Domestic Life. Bereavement. Mrs. Sigourney, on a lost Daughter. Supports should be equal to Trials. Need of Mental Culture. Moral Developement. Friendship. Piety the great Solace.

It was remarked by an observing and wise statesman, recently deceased, that “most women are either formed in the school, or tried by the test, of adversity.” In this class stood the devout Hannah of old. She was reproached and persecuted by her haughty rival, she was the subject of remonstrance with her husband, and when she went to the temple of God, to seek peace in her troubles, because she spake not aloud, but only her lips moved, she was rudely charged with the vice of intemperance. To this allegation she replied, “I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.” These words remind us of the trials of woman; and they point us, at the same time, to her only, and effectual, Solace in trouble.Human life contains much to try the spirits of all. There are many afflictions, which man must share alike with woman. But, superadded to these, are sources and occasions of sorrow peculiar to her sex. There are none, who do not sometimes descend the vale of tears. The cup of bitterness is placed in the hands of all. But woman is constrained to drink it sometimes to the very dregs.

In dilating on the Trials of woman, I commence with naming, first, those which spring from her Physical Constitution.

To man Providence has assigned severe bodily tasks, but he has given him likewise a vigorous frame. It is the lot of woman, notwithstanding her infirmities, to sustain more physical sufferings than come usually upon him. Her nervous organization is more delicate, and her sensibility to pain must, therefore, be greater. We might cite the scenes of the sick chamber, and hours, in which she needs a martyr’s fortitude. But more than this, in those sufferings incident to her sex, and almost universally experienced, she has trials of her firmness, energy, and patience, from which man is constitutionally exempt. How many secret tears are wiped from her cheek; what untold anguish does she sometimes endure. And none the lighter is this load, from her being excluded, by her silence, from the supports of sympathy. On whom shall she cast her cares? If there are motives, which forbid the disclosure to human ears, of the sword that is cutting the bare fibre of her frame, and piercing her heart, to whom shall she go for strength?

But not the outward man, alone, or chiefly, causes the severe trials of this sex. Their Feelings are acute; they are peculiarly sensitive to the circumstances, events, and influences, of this world. The winds of adversity, which to the stern spirit of man, seem but a passing breeze, prostrate her to the earth?

“To feel and to suffer,” says one of this sex, “are synonymous, with woman.” This may exaggerate the strict truth, and yet it is doubtless substantially correct. Some of the noblest virtues of her sex imply great sensibility. What gives fortitude, in her case, such illustrious merit? Her extreme susceptibility of suffering. The blow, from which the gnarled oak will rebound, shall crush the frail dahlia. Why is patience a prime grace in woman? Not only because she has such burdens laid on her spirit, but still more for the reason that she feels so keenly their weight. Whence is it that tenderness, and a reliant dependence, qualities which, in their excess, unfit man to grapple with this tough world, and are therefore censured in him, as effeminate, are her ornament and praise? Her native sensibility qualifies her for these and their kindred virtues, and without them, we deem her an apostate from her sex.

It would not be too strong an expression to say, that woman lives in the realm of feeling. Her life is not that outward thing, which it so often appears. Beneath a calm exterior she sometimes bears an heart full of disquietude and sorrow. Would you extend her the hand of gratulation? Be first sure that you can discern the interior of her being. You may else admit sunbeams to a plant already scorched with heat, and demanding the waters of sympathy. Consider, too, that as are her griefs, such is her fortitude. Hence, without question, we sometimes regard her as bowed and overwhelmed by some worldly casualty, who has in her soul a power of endurance, that gives her angelic strength.

We hear it affirmed that woman is naturally buoyant of spirit, that she is disposed to enjoy life, and look on its brighter aspects. Let this be conceded for truth; what does it show, in relation to her sufferings? That poet, who wrote from his own delicate soul, tells us that

So is it, that she who feels most keenly each pulsation of joy, is alive to corresponding tones of sorrow. The obtuse may receive less positive joy from the happy events that befall them; but let us not forget that they suffer also less than the acutely sensitive. Says one of this sex, of a powerful mind, and a sagacious remarker, “I have seldom met with a truly cheerful-minded, and contented woman.” How should this be, unless the soul often loses its harmony, and then gives forth discordant notes, proportioned to its primitive melody? We admire the Corinthian column. Its lightness and grace are replete with beauty. Yet, in the storms of this rude world, how often does it prove a fragile thing. The gayest smile on the fairest face preaches fearful susceptibilities of disappointment and grief.

Woman is tried moreover by her natural Imaginativeness. The superior force and activity of this trait in her character can hardly be denied. She anticipates, in the day of health and happiness, more coming good, than man dares expect. Fancy creates round her a world of bliss.

She dreams of golden gains, of victory, conquest, and triumph. The car of fortune bears her, amid gilded honors, with a subjugated world in her train.

Or, do gloom and despondency come over her, imagination, not content with the cloud of to-day, summons from the deep, dark piles, that are charged with storm and tempest. Let her once begin, with high credit, to borrow trouble, and the future shall be well nigh drained of its myriad sorrows. She becomes fancy-bankrupt. An incident of recent occurrence, illustrates the transition from one to the opposite of these conditions. A young lady was seen wandering by the banks of the Hudson, wailing, and wringing her hands for grief. She related to a spectator the occasion of this grief. A sister-in-law, to whose dwelling the death of her mother had compelled her to resort, had treated her so cruelly, that she had fled from her face, and had now no home or friend on earth. Touched with her troubles, a circle of generous spirits contributed a large sum to her relief. Such was the sudden ecstasy of her joy that she became actually frantic.

Another trial of this sex springs from the want of interesting Objects of pursuits. The boy is no sooner arrived at his youth, than a world of occupations opens before him. He turns from his father’s roof and gives himself to preparation for some manly calling. A thousand scenes are daily in his path. Adventure, enterprise, the collision of men, and of interests, all rush in to fill his youthful spirit. In such courses trouble stands in his way but for an hour. The agitation and turmoil of life soon sweep from his bosom even the memory of yesterday’s sorrows.

Far different is the lot of the gentle girl. Her school-day tasks completed, what great object comes in their stead? She has a bounding pulse, high hopes, and ardent purposes. But whither shall they now be directed? Will she not fancy the little sphere of home quite too contracted for her feelings and exertions? In this position of the young woman, there is much of suffering, that springs from unexhausted feeling, and is wrought into acute pain. Let her beware of a morbid self-contemplation. Let her see that she do not expend on her own thoughts, desires, and feelings, that energy, which should be given to God, and her associates in humanity. What a foe must she now guard against. How high and glorious should be that great object, that is to receive the full strength of her interest.

Woman is tried by her comparative Defencelessness in Public. She may hold opinions dear to her heart, and sound in themselves. These views may be unjustly assailed. Yet such is the sentiment of the community she inhabits, that it would degrade her, to appear as a public champion of her opinions, wrestling in the vulgar arena with man. Her character may be rudely aspersed; but who does not feel that to defend it by lifting up her voice in tumultuous assemblies, or even to enter the lists with her pen, were derogatory to her sex.

The law of the land may bear, in some instances, unjustly upon her. She may be deprived of natural rights. No one can deny that she did thus suffer, and was grievously oppressed, by the laws against Witchcraft, in the early history of New England. Nor is it impossible that taxation may wrong her; that divorces may separate her, without right, from her partner; that fines, imprisonment, and even capital punishment, may be visited iniquitously upon her. Still what evils, what a vast preponderance of harm, would accrue, on the whole, from her mingling in the affairs of legislation, and standing as an advocate at the bar. If man, through a spirit of despotism, of meanness, or from whatever motive, shall trench on her God-given and inalienable rights, she must commit herself to that Being, who ever judgeth righteously.

Another trial of this sex is one which I descant upon, in this place, with diffidence. Yet so severe are the sufferings, that spring, directly and remotely, from the exercise of her Affections, that I could not acquit myself of true fidelity, were I silent on this topic.

By an appointment of Providence, woman is so constituted as to find her bane, or her blessing, pre-eminently in the interests of her heart. Her natural ardor, and strength of feeling, prompt her to place her affections on some object, with concentration and intensity. Nor is she exempt from that credulity, which usually accompanies an ardent temperament. Hence, the depths of her heart become often a fountain of disappointments, troubles, and sorrows. Her affections may be bestowed where they shall meet no requital. Perhaps this result was wholly unanticipated; or, it may be, there was less self-control than might have been desired. Let the cause be of whatever description, the consequences are most trying to the female character. Man may throw off a grief thus occasioned by seeking new objects of interest. But woman must wear the iron round her very soul, and sometimes, only sits down, to weep, and sink in despondency. For such sorrow there is but one anodyne. No earthly solace can sustain a spirit thus stricken.

In the destiny of her affections woman is, to a great degree, passive. She has little option left her. A negative, or affirmative reply, is all that shall decide the fortunes of her happiness through life. To how many desires, crosses, and reverses of feeling, to what painful indecision, or regretted decisions, is she thus exposed. Friends may induce the receipt of attentions, where her heart cannot follow the assent of her lips. Perhaps her prospects have but assumed some certainty, when the promised hand is capriciously withdrawn. I have read the record of one, who, in the agony of a grief thus awakened, pursued the object of her regard into scenes of trouble, released him from prison, by her generous gifts, and attended him, when driven, by his guilty courses, to actual insanity. She, who thus conducts, is no summer friend. The blight of such sympathy is no ordinary calamity. Who is surprised, that untold sorrows, from this cause, should corrode the very springs of life? Disappointed affection has a melancholy tale to relate, wherever are gathered the sad subjects of mental derangement. And blessed are those noble Institutions, which, by the power of Christianity, soothe the minds, and restore the reason, of those thus unhappily afflicted.

The trials of Domestic Life impose no light burden upon woman. Those daily cares incident to the family, are a touch-stone of her patience, a test of her disposition, and an ordeal to her temper. She has petty disquietudes, and slight annoyances, singly unimportant, yet in amount not trivial. How often is her spirit borne down, and her frame attenuated by the accumulation of these minor troubles. Like the patient in the restlessness of fever, she needs some composing potion to allay, and give peace to, her soul.

Again, the character, and deportment of each inmate in her household may present to her a trial. Self-denial must be practiced by some for the enjoyment of the remainder. How often does the lot fall upon her. The reputation of each near relative is another depository of her joys, or sorrows. Should he, whose position calls him to cherish and care for all beneath his roof, prove unkind, and selfish, and demand every arrangement to conform to his ease and appetites, on whom will the burden of the service required, be imposed? Does he yield to temptation abroad, forsake the partner of his bosom, and give himself up to sensual and inebriating habits, there is one heart that must bleed over his sins. Honor and pride, it may be, forbid her disclosing his errors, and the fire must consume her spirit in solitude. Needs she no support in this exigency? What can the world give her, adequate to her fathomless wants?

But still heavier trials befall this sex in their homes. Sickness visits the loved. By the midnight lamp, the wife bathes an husband’s burning brow; or the mother administers draughts to the parched lips of a daughter. To what fears is she then and there subject? Tediously roll the long hours. Not the body alone sinks, but the spirit at length faints. For the conviction is forced on her mind that life is endangered. Suspicion yields to apprehension; that again grows into argument. The physician shows signs of doubt; friends whisper anxieties. Swayed for a season between hope and fear, at length, the dread certainty comes over her. She must part with this being, dear as her own life. The fatal stroke is near; the hour arrives. Gone forever from mortal eyes is she, in whom blent

The survivor? To whom can we commend her who thus mourns the riven tie of a mother’s love? Where is the solace for the dependent, affectionate female, who weeps over the ashes of a departed parent? A sister is at her brother’s grave. Pleasant was their love, and who can assuage these bitter tears? The husband,—deepest of all life’s bereavements,—perhaps it is he, for whom the funeral wail is now heard. What can time, and dust, and this tomb of earth, minister to her, who sits in the freshness of widowhood?

The catalogue of your trials, my friends, may seem to some already prolonged. But have I not left much unsaid? Did you guide the pen, secrets of grief could be revealed, all unknown but to your sex. But enough has been written to persuade the thoughtful, that suffering must be to woman a thing of fearful account. Our afflictions, it has been well said, never leave us as they found us. We are always either hardened, or improved, by the discipline of Providence. The question then with woman, what use she is making of her trials, is one of the deepest concern. She has peculiar griefs; whence can she gain strength to endure them?

Woman needs every support that God has placed within her reach. She requires, first, Mental Culture. This will give her strength of mind, power to discern the true relations of our nature. A narrow mind cannot comprehend the great scheme of Providence. If it submit to his will, there is still much blindness in the act. A fuller trust would come from enlarged conceptions of duty and life. She, who enjoys reading, can beguile many a sad hour, by a useful volume. How many are prostrated by domestic afflictions, for the want of that mental discipline, by which they might fix the eye of faith steadily on Heaven. The grave absorbs their thoughts; they want energy to turn from the body, and contemplate the sainted spirit.Woman needs a Moral developement, corresponding to the demands of her peculiar temperament and dispositions. Her sensitive frame, unless accompanied by great self-control, will betray her into errors, which, added to the thorns that ever beset the path of human life, will cause her continual uneasiness and pain. Let fancy be the guiding faculty of her nature, and in what sins must she inevitably be involved. Its aerial flights will bear her above the beaten, common-sense, road of duty, and make her the prey of a fatal instability and its attendant mortifications, follies, and sorrows. Her acute feelings, and tender affections need a moral counterpoise. The sudden sickness of the loved will else overwhelm her, and unfit her for the service she owes them. In this world of casualties, if her heart be not braced by the power of good judgment, she will yield to disaster and grief, with a hopeless inefficiency. Her virtues must be the result of reflection, inherent, and not incidental. There must be a Christian dignity, a calm repose, that beautiful balance of character, in which keen sensibility is sustained by a patient and firm self-possession. So fortified, let her add one grace more and

We may not omit, in this connection, the influence of Friendship, as a soother of woman’s sorrows. Always susceptible of sympathy, and alive to the voices of kindred spirits, in her trials she feels their indispensable necessity. How are her affections knit to each relative, by adversity, disappointment, and death. In bereavement a family build, as it were, a single monument, each placing its tribute in the mournful structure. They lean on one another, and, thanks be to God, next to his own strong arm, there is none so dear in our grief, as that of a friend. Thanks for human love.

“The hope of heaven,” the prospects and supports of Religion, deep piety, these I name last, because they are the greatest, indeed, the only effectual solace, for the trials of woman. “Those wells of feeling,” says a female writer, “hidden in the soul, upon whose surface the slightest smile of affection falls, like sunlight, but whose very depths are stirred by the breath of unkindness, are too often unvisited by the kindly influence of kindred sympathies, and go wearing their own channels deeper, in silence and in secrecy, and in infinite bitterness,—undermining health, happiness, the joy of life, and making existence one succession of burden-bearing days. It is in this species of blight, that that merciful and compassionate faith, whose words are, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,’ becomes a refuge and a consolation. Woman may trust to other lights, in the darkness of sorrow; but they will prove transient, the meteors of midnight. It is the Sun of righteousness alone, which can shed true peace on her troubled spirit. Jesus Christ was ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’ He only can present to her, unfailing sources of consolation. She must follow him, and with him, ‘glory in pursuing a path of steep ascent.’”

Let her set to her seal, that Religion, however received by man, is a gift which she can never, with impunity, decline. When piety presents its claims to the sterner sex, they raise doubts, and questionings, and comparisons with other goods. But woman may not hesitate for a moment. So does instinct teach us the fitness of female piety, that even the irreligious of our sex expect, and require, it in her.

I cannot but feel that the discipline of her trials was intended by Providence, to impress the first and most affecting lesson on her soul. It was designed that her pliant affections should twine round our divine Father, as a pillar of enduring strength. In almost the earliest stage of her life, and onward to its latest hour, she is upheld by a little less than visible presence. Rescued by that Power in peril, enabled to pass through what was once her chief dread, how can she turn her eye off from him? “God has ever supported and saved me. He will do it in future.” This language is a spontaneous utterance of the true woman. Thus, like Jesus, is she “made perfect through sufferings.”

In this manner does religion become, with her, the medium of continual Improvement. Mental culture is one invaluable part of female education. The social graces are a chain of pearls about her neck. But her permanent being consists of a spiritual principle. Unless that be called into action she lives but an ephemeral life. Let her pious capabilities be awakened, let the love of God become her ruling motive, let submission to his high behest, be the joy of her heart, and she enters that path, which conducts, eternally, toward holiness in perfection.

She who has a true reverence for her nature, and who comprehends the powers of her sex, will never rest content with present attainments. She will study, and unfold her intellect, because God hath endowed her with Mind, and his glory calls for her mental progress. Her domestic duties will be discharged in the love of Him, who “setteth the solitary in families.” No event will be lost on her watchful spirit. Each day’s cares and trials will nurture in her a new patience, benevolence, and active piety. Thus will she build up a character, resting, like the pyramid in the East, on a basis so broad, and of materials so solid and enduring, that the ages cannot move its foundation.