as women is destroyed. Science can never form a compensation to them for the deterioration of their vital system and their natural attractions.

Hence, says Cabanis, "woman is justly afraid of those labours of mind which cannot be executed without long and deep meditation: she chooses those which require more of tact than of science; more vivacity of conception than of force, more of imagination than of reasoning, those in which it is sufficient that an easy ability lightly raise the surface of objects." And accordingly, all the productions of women display only delicacy, spirit and grace.

Much, however, have we heard of learned, great and illustrious women-of women's capabilities to reason, philosophize and legislate.

Their learning may be sufficiently illustrated by an anecdote from one of our periodicals." Of course,' say they, "no one can have a higher opinion of the ' fair sex than ourselves, and nobody can be more unwilling than we to doubt the genuineness of those numerous and various excellencies which they exhibit; but, we confess, it has often occasioned us to open the eyes of surprise, and lift up the hands of astonishment, to see the familiarity evinced by them with the dead languages (we say nothing of their aptness at the unknown tongues,) and the facility with which they will turn an ode of Horace or a scene of Menander into English (rather blank) verse. A certain reverend canon lately deceased, has let the cat out of the bag.’ In a letter lately published in the Gentleman's Magazine, he thus writes:- Yours is a just portrait of Miss Seward, of Litchfield-her exact character. I was conducted the other day to her blue region, as

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André calls it. She was rather busy translating, or rather transposing, an ode of Horace, without understanding a word of the original. She had three dif ferent translations before her-Francis's, Smart's and Bromick's-out of which she compounds her own.'"

Moreover, no one, by her learning, ever compen. sated for that total abandonment of female character which is inseparable from the assumption of such attainments.

Neither have they sufficient attention and accuracy to attain any success in the exact sciences, as Cabanis has well shown." If they wish to astonish by feats of strength and to join the triumph of science to victories sweet and more sure, then almost all their charm vanishes; they cease to be that which they are, in making vain efforts to become that they wish to appear; and, losing the attractions without which the empire of beauty itself is uncertain and brief, they in general acquire only the pedantry and the absurdities of science. In general, learned women know nothing profoundly; they perplex and confound all objects, all ideas. Their vivid conception seizes some parts: they imagine that they understand all. Dif. ficulties repel them: their impatience bounds over these. Incapable of fixing long enough their attention on a single object, they cannot experience the intense and deep enjoyments of strong meditation: they are even incapable of it. They pass rapidly from one object to another, and they obtain by this means only some notions partial and incomplete, which form almost always in their heads the most whimsical combinations."

The chief object of female existence being such

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as it is, woman's devotion to sense and to imagination, her weakness and her artifice, were inseparable from her nature; and therefore depth of reasoning and strength of judgment are at utter variance with her physical and moral structure.

As to works of genius, they exceed the capacity of woman. She has never, therefore, by any cultivation of her mind, attained even one of those conceptions which form the highest triumphs of the mind. Cabanis, indeed, observes, that "it is perhaps worse still for the small number of those in whom a somewhat masculine organization may obtain some success in those pursuits altogether foreign to the faculties of their mind. In youth, at maturity, in old age, what shall be the place of those uncertain beings, who are not properly speaking of any sex? By what attraction can they fix the young man who seeks for a companion? What assistance can aged or infirm relatives expect of them? What pleasure can they diffuse over the life of a husband? Shall we see them descend from the height of their genius to watch over their children and their domestic affairs? All those relations so delicate, which form the charm and which ensure the happiness of woman, exist no longer then: in wishing to extend her empire, she destroys it. In a word, the nature of things and experience equally prove, that, if the feebleness of the muscles in woman forbid her to descend into the gymnasium and the hippodrome, the qualities of her mind and the part which she ought to play in life, forbid her, perhaps more imperiously still, to make a spectacle of herself in the lyceum and the portico."

A learned and philosophical lady is indeed not less out of character, nor less ridiculous, than are those beings originally of opposite sex who lose the characteristics of men to grace an Italian stage. Those are alike monstrous who possess more or less, either physically or morally, than nature prescribes.

It is, indeed, as fortunate as it is true, that women are incapable of such pretended attainments.

How much more beautiful and attractive it is to behold a woman excelling in those languages which are of easy attainment, in the general knowledge which these present, in drawing, in music, and in the dance, in scrupulous attention to personal propriety, in simple elegance of costume, and in all the lighter domestic arts. Their most charming study is the modest, the winning display of those accomplishments that increase the magic of their charms; their dearest em. ployment is gracefully to flirt through all the mazes of the labyrinth of love; and the noblest aim of their existence is to tread the footsteps of their mothers, and like them, become mothers in their turn.

In short, the employment of the mind in investiga. tions remote from life,-from procreation, gestation, delivery, nursing and care of children, cooking and clothing appears to be but limitedly allowed to woman.

So natural are these, and so unnatural are mental pursuits to woman, that Mrs. Wolstonecraft does not hesitate to say, that "If we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex." When a woman, indeed, is notorious for her mind, she is in general frightfully

ugly; and it is certain that great fecundity of the brain in women usually accompanies sterility or dis order of the matrix.

The reader is now able to appreciate Mrs. Wolstonecraft's assertion that "In tracing the causes that have degraded woman . . . it appears clear that they all spring from want of understanding. Whether this arises from a physical or accidental weakness of faculties, time alone can determine. [It has long since done so.] Denying her genius and judgment, it is scarcely possible to divine what remains to characterize intellect." The reader has seen that, in woman, the sensitive faculties are great and the reasoning ones small; that instinct moreover takes sometimes the place of both; and that on these depend the characteristics of the female mind-its acuteness, its mobility, the quickness and facility of its operations, its tact, its fickleness, its lightness, its graces,

&c.

We are boldly told, however, that these are the mere results of education-of the education which men bestow upon them. This is already answered in the surest and best way, by showing that they spring from organization. I add, however, Rousseau's admirable reply.—"Women cease not to cry out that we bring them up to be vain and coquets, that we amuse them perpetually with puerilities in order to remain more easily their masters: they tax us with their faults. What folly! Since when is it that men have interfered with the education of girls? What prevents mothers from bringing them up as they please? -There are no colleges for them: great misfortune! Oh! Would to God that there were none for boys!