LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--

      IT is not always that the subject and the object of an address can be made to harmonize. The good of the state, or the glory of God, has been the subject of many a speech; while, alas! too often the object has been the speaker's own.

      In popular addresses, my predilections are generally on the side of having the subject and the object to agree. On the present occasion, therefore, after considerable indecision, I have chosen the AMELIORATION OF THE SOCIAL STATE as the subject; and, however I may succeed in my endeavors, I do assure you that it is the object of my present address.

      There is also, I am happy to think, a congruity between my subject and the object of the association at whose solicitation I have the honor, on this occasion, to appear before you. The object of that course of lectures, of which this is but the introductory one, as it is of the gentlemen who have volunteered in this cause, is, the improvement of the social condition of man. They have very justly decided that an elevation of the standard of intellectual and moral excellence would be eminently conducive to a higher cultivation and refinement of the social feelings of our nature, and, consequently, to the amelioration of the social state. In pursuance of these views and convictions, they have instituted this series of addresses--not so much, perhaps, to enlighten your understandings, as to enlist your affections, and secure your efforts in the noblest and most benevolent of human undertakings--the positive advancement of the moral conditions of our social existence.

      But the term society is somewhat vague, and the thing itself covers an area as variegated and diverse as it is immense. Society is not the mere juxtaposition of ten, or ten thousand persons; it is, in its full comprehension, the union of a simple plurality, or of a multitude, or of [47] the human race in all common interests. It is not the local or personal nearness of those who may inhabit the same city, the same village, the same house, the same room, (for these often have as much society with their antipodes as with one another;) but it is the union, communion and copartnery of a few, or of the whole race with one another, in all that is human and divine in our nature.

      But we sometimes speak of society in a less strict and philosophic sense. We use the term as commensurate with the term community, the entire population of a given district--those united in mere local and political interests. Such masses of our species are frequently styled societies only in reference to some two or three general interests, which may be as diverse from one another as the countries and the climates which they inhabit. There is, indeed, in our nature, such a tendency to assimilation, that those societies which inhabit the same quarter of the globe, or have any the least intercourse with one another, do, in process of time, exhibit such points of common resemblance as easily to distinguish them from those who seldom or never have any intercourse with them. Hence those prominent differential attributes of Asiatic, African, European and American societies.

      Society, indeed, even in reference to these more prominent points of common interest, is continually in motion, in transition from one state to another, insomuch that in a few centuries the inhabitants of the same country differ from their ancestors in their interests, manners, customs and social rites, as much as the child differs from the sage, or the natives of Nova Zembla from those of the Cape of Good Hope. When, however, we speak of an amelioration of the social state, we have not exclusive reference to that little community of which we may happen to be a component part; but to that great community of communities which fills up the whole circle of our national intercourse. And for our encouragement in the work of amelioration, it is an exhilarating truth that no person's influence is necessarily limited to that society in which he moves. Individuals have often, through their immediate society, acted upon other societies, and have thus extended their influence from city to city, and from nation to nation, to the utmost extent of an extensive empire. In this way it came to pass that Aristotle, the philosopher of Stagira, Plato of Athens, Paul of Tarsus, and Luther of Saxony, have stamped their image not only upon their own city, their own country or generation, but upon nations and empires for an indefinite series of ages.

      But it would be necessary to the full completion of our purpose, and it would be as curious as it is necessary, to contemplate society both as [48] it was, and as it now is, in some given district, with special reference to what it ought to be in regard to the entire demands of human nature in its best attainable state in this world. This, indeed, in all its amplitude, would be a sweep by far too large for a single address. For the sake of a few facts and documents as data, we must, however, glance, very briefly indeed, at the causes that have conspired in giving to modern Europe and to these United States their present civilization, their present superiority over their more remote ancestors, and over all other portions of the human race.

      The present state of society in this commonwealth, in the United States, in England, in Europe, in the world, is the effect of a thousand causes, both co-operative and antagonist, the history of which it is impossible to trace. These causes, first hidden in the deep and unexplored recesses of human nature, work for a time, as the secret fires under the mountains, unnoticed, unobserved, till on some favorable crisis they produce a shaking, an earthquake, a revolution; then, and only then, they impress themselves upon the observation of man, excite his admiration, call forth his philosophy, and direct his energies into correspondent action. Such, indeed, have been all the primary causes, facts and events that have conspired and amalgamated in the present improvements of European and American society. But as the geographer sees not the atoms that compose the mountains which he describes, so the historian perceives not that infinity of little facts, feelings, motives, actions, which co-operated and combined in one of those grand and prominent facts or events which he records. His task it is to trace these minor agencies who would understand the mysteries of human revolutions from civilization to barbarism, and again from barbarism to civilization.

      The fall of the Roman Empire, the last of the four imperial Pagan despotisms, was indeed an awfully sublime and transcendent fact, and essentially connected with the state of society in the city of Louisville at this very moment. But who can trace with persuasive accuracy to the original fountains that memorable series of stupendous revolutions which, in little more than thirteen centuries, broke to atoms that "splendid fabric of human greatness"? Who can trace every little gill, and brook, and stream and river that swelled the current of that mighty flood which swept from the earth those colossal monuments of human genius, science, art and enterprise?

      The historian faithfully records that wonderful succession of triumphs which, in seven full centuries, raised the municipality of Rome--a single city--to be the mistress of the world. He records, with [49] admiration, the profound policy of its senate, the emulation of its consuls, the valor and heroism of its soldiers, which subjected to the imperial sceptre of Augustus that immense region reaching from the Euphrates on the east to the Atlantic on the west, and from the Rhine and the Danube on the north to the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south. He tells also of its further extension in the first century--of the conquest of Dacia, of Britain, even to the Highlands of Scotland, and of provinces beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates in the East.

      As faithfully he records the grand facts that hastened its decline and precipitated its fall; the disastrous defeats which, in rapid succession, humbled its pride and ultimately left scarce a vestige of its former strength and glory. But, in doing all this, how many occult causes are unobserved; how many secret facts are untold; how many fortuitous but concurring agencies are unnoticed; how many recondite workings of the human heart are never known, which, though not the immediate, were nevertheless the true and active sources of all that is told by the historian, or commented on by the philosopher!

      Notwithstanding these difficulties in our way to comprehend the phenomena of many of the acts in the great drama of states and empires; of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of society; he who would understand the past, or anticipate the future, by looking minutely into all that is written, examining and comparing the actors and the actions, and reasoning from the facts passing before him in his daily converse with himself and his fellows, may have a general and a correct, though not a complete, knowledge of the remote and proximate causes of the overthrow and ruin of the ancient states, as well as of the elements and forces that have given, as their natural and proper result, the present society in which we are all so deeply and so necessarily interested.

      Our American society is the result of Spanish, German, French and English civilization--that is, the result of European civilization--that is, the consequence of the downfall of the Roman Empire, itself originally composed of the most civilized and improved portions of Asia, Africa and Europe: that fall was the effect of the incursions of those immense swarms of Northern barbarians, which, like a torrent from the mountains, rolled, wave after wave, over the whole face of the Roman Empire, from the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Atlantic, and placed itself in whole nations in the finest portions of the subjugated lands of the Western Empire.

      Now, he who would possess just and comprehensive views of [50] American society--of that singular compound of race, of genius and of character which now individualizes, distinguishes and elevates the American family--must not only begin with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but he must push his inquiries to the ancient lands of the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals, the hundred tribes and nations of ancient Germany and Asiatic Scythia; he must visit the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes; he must go to Mount Caucasus, and trace the meanderings of a hundred rivers, along plains five thousand miles in length and one thousand in breadth, before he finds the germs of his own greatness--the root and origin of his own family--and the causes of the political institutions, manners and customs of his own country. This, indeed, is a work as far beyond the ambition as it is beyond the means and opportunities of a vast majority of our contemporaries.

      Monsieur Guizot, one of the ablest of the statesmen of France--one of the wisest of her philosophers--in his recent general history of the civilization of modern Europe, a work of great erudition and of thrilling interest, in tracing the immediate elements of European society, commences with the fall of the Roman Empire. He finds the rudiments of all European institutions and improvements in a few great facts, of which he speaks with great familiarity and precision. From Rome he supposes we have got the archetypes of all our municipal and imperial ideas. From the barbarians that destroyed it and located themselves within its bounds, we have got our greatest polish--our ideas of liberty, independence and loyalty.

      Modern civilization, according to this historian, was, at its origin and throughout its whole history, "diversified, agitated and confused." At the beginning of the fifth century he has found "Municipal society, Christian society, Barbarian society;" these three agonizing in the same field, and struggling for the ascendant. To use his own words: "We find these societies very differently organized, founded upon principles totally opposite, inspiring men with sentiments altogether different. We find the love of the most absolute independence by the side of the most devoted submission; military patronage by the side of ecclesiastic domination; spiritual power and temporal power everywhere together: the canons of the church--the learned legislation of the Romans--the almost unwritten customs of the barbarians--everywhere a mixture, or rather co-existence, of nations, of languages, of social institutions, of manners, of ideas, of impressions the most diversified."

      To the confusion, the tossings and jostlings of these elements, he [51] assigns the slow progress of Europe, the storms by which she has been buffeted, and the miseries to which she has often been a prey. These, however, are with him the real elements of European civilization.

      Like a mass of heterogeneous ingredients thrown into the same vessel, by their intestine motion, their antagonistic operations, the soft and more ethereal particles rarified and subtilized ascend, while the grosser and more feculent materials sink to the bottom and leave the pure liquor to be drawn off by itself; so these remains of ancient society, thrown together into the European chaldron, worked, fermented, effervesced, till, drawn off in various casks, the new wine of European civilization is found in many nations, and still greatly improved by being shipped across the Atlantic and racked off into so many sovereign and independent States.

      The ruling passion and principle of Roman society was the city corporation--the municipal mode of life. Indeed, the Roman Empire, first, midst and last, was but a confederacy of cities. Ancient Italy alone contained eleven hundred and ninety-seven cities; Gaul boasted of twelve hundred; Spain, of three hundred and sixty; three hundred African cities at one time acknowledged the authority of Carthage; and in the time of the Cæsars, Asia Minor alone counted five hundred populous cities. Here are but five members of the Roman Empire, a mere fraction of its territory, containing three thousand five hundred and fifty-seven cities. On the other hand, the conquerors of Rome came from the immense plains of Scythia, or from the deep and dense forests of ancient Germany--wandering tribes--nations in camps, whose delights were the wild mountains, the deep valleys, the extended plains, the mighty rivers, the ocean's roar, the tented fields, the forest chase, unbounded freedom, the independence of unmeasured tracts of land. In the beginning of the fifth century the Christian religion had been corrupted into a hierarchy--it had become a state engine; it had, therefore, lost its spirit, its purity, its original power; yet, as an ecclesiastic institution, it had power over the empire, conquered its conquerors, and was, beyond doubt, the most puissant element of the new compound.

      Such was the crisis of the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and such was the commencement of the new process. In Europe was then found the democratic, the aristocratic, the monarchical, the imperial, the despotic, the theocratic principle at work, in proximity, in amalgamation, in compromise and in strife, struggling for precedency. Violence ruled the day. There was no legitimacy but might! All [52] claimed something else--antiquity, priority, reason, justice, right; yet it actually was might that gave right to all.

      For some six or seven centuries the territory of the ancient Roman Empire was one immense wreck--a perfect chaos--"a universal jumble:" nothing was permanent, nothing systematic: the Koran and the sword in the East; the Roman hierarchy, legitimacy and persecution, feudalism, despotism, anarchy, mutation, in the West; freemen, fideles, freedmen, and slaves, made up the four chief masses of the new nations. But all was in motion; "no man continued long in the same rank; no rank continued long the same." Every thing triumphs in its turn: feudalism triumphs, the church triumphs, monarchy triumphs, the right of compulsion in religion triumphs, the amalgamation of spiritual and temporal power in the same hands triumphs, barbarism triumphs. Again, free cities rise, charters rise, new classes rise, central government and the centralization system rise in public esteem,--Peter the Hermit is born,--the Crusades are planned,--all Europe for the first time sympathizes--the spirit of the recovery of the holy sepulchre, the deliverance of the holy city, inspires all Europe, animates all classes, kings and beggars, church and state, savage and civilized. Millions of men and money are put in motion; immense armies are raised, commanded by kings in person; a hundred years scarce quench the fervors of this holy war. But it finally expired. The Koran and the scimetar were too strong for an imagination and a mad impulse, or rather the spirit of the age had changed; the causes, moral and social, that had thrown Europe into Asia ceased to exist; new views, new feelings, new objects, seized the European minds. During the Crusades the laity had been too often in Rome; they had seen too much of the character of their own priesthood, the nakedness of the land appeared, the selfish and worldly spirit of their own pastors in contrast with those of the Turks astonished them. Their newly acquired knowledge inspired them with a freedom of thought, a boldness hitherto unknown in Europe, their souls were enlarged, "more political freedom and more political unity characterized the subsequent age." The compass--printing and gunpowder--the Lutheran reformation and the English revolution, changed the entire aspect of society in those countries that gave the original nucleus of American society.

      "The history of European society may be thrown," says Guizot, "into three great periods: first, a period which I shall call that of origin or formation, during which the different elements of society disengage themselves from chaos, assume an existence, and show themselves in their native forms, with the principles by which they are [53] animated: this period lasted till almost the twelfth century. The second period is a period of experiments, attempts, groping: the different elements of society approach and enter into combinations, feeling each other, as it were, without producing any thing general, regular, or durable: this state of things, to say the truth, did not terminate till the sixteenth century. Then comes the period of development, in which human society in Europe takes a definite form, follows a determinate direction, proceeds rapidly and with a general movement towards a clear and precise object: this is the period which began in the sixteenth century and is now pursuing its course."

      After this general--alas! too general--sketch of the progress of social improvement, you will perhaps be curious to know the opinion of so eminent a philosopher and historian as to the present state of civilization in the most polished nations in Europe--in the world. It is an opinion in which I cordially concur--an opinion in which many of the greatest and most cultivated minds acquiesce. It is this:--

      "Society and civilization are yet in their childhood. However great the distance they have advanced, that which they have before them is incomparably, is infinitely greater." Thus speaks one who, as he imagines, lives at "the centre, at the focus of the civilization of Europe;" who has made himself intimately acquainted with its past history, and with its present condition.

      Ladies and gentlemen, after such a declaration you will, perhaps; expect from me a definition of this term; you will ask, What is meant by civilization? Our historian regards civilization as a fact; "two circumstances are necessary to its existence--it lives upon two conditions--it reveals itself by two symptoms--the progress of society--the progress of individuals--the amelioration of the social system, and the expansion of the mind and faculties of man. Wherever the exterior condition of man becomes enlarged, quickened, improved, and wherever the intellectual nature of man distinguishes itself by its energy, its brilliancy and its grandeur, wherever these two signs concur--and they often do so, notwithstanding the greatest imperfections in the social system--there man proclaims and applauds civilization." So says our philosopher.

      But, perhaps, for some minds it may be too abstruse--the definition is more unintelligible than the term itself. Well, we shall contrast civilization with barbarism. Savages of all ages, it is agreed, have a common character. Two demons divide the empire of the savage heart--selfishness and terror: lust, hatred and revenge minister to the former; while credulity, superstition and cruelty attend upon the [54] latter. The description given of our savage ancestors, the Huns, the Goths, the Scythians, the Scandinavians, that overran all Europe, from the Caspian Sea to the Thames, admirably illustrates the savage character, and demonstrates these simple but strong passions, variously combined and excited by surrounding circumstances, to be the true criteria of barbarism. Now, as we recede from these we advance in civilization.

      Civilization is not, therefore, merely intellectual culture, refinement of taste, high advances in criticism, eloquence, philosophy; nor is it eminence in the fine arts of poetry, music, painting, sculpture, architecture. The Greeks and Romans equalled, if not excelled us far, in most of these attainments; yet, compared with many of this community, they were an uncivilized and barbarous people. They lived and died under the tyranny of selfishness and terror. Their amusements, their exhibitions, their amphitheatres, their gladiator feats and pastimes were cruel, inhuman--full of lust, hatred and revenge. In fact, man, fully civilized, is wholly rescued from the tyranny of selfishness, lust, hatred, revenge, terror, cruelty, credulity and superstition. Till this is accomplished, society has not reached that intellectual, benevolent, pacific, moral and blissful goal, to which it has been advancing, with slow but steady pace, since the commencement of the sixteenth century.

      Man is fully civilized when all the powers of his animal, intellectual, moral and religious nature are fully developed in subordination to his ultimate and eternal destiny; and society is perfectly civilized when all the members of it, in their respective places, stations and conditions, fully receive and reciprocate all the genuine feelings and expressions of benevolence, brotherly-kindness and charity, dictated by a refined sensibility and guided by an enlarged and cultivated understanding.

      Thus, by a long and circuitous route, I have arrived at the main subject of my address. I now especially invite your attention to the influence of woman and of the Bible in carrying forward the begun amelioration of the social state.

      There are two facts pretermitted, two powers unappreciated, by Monsieur Guizot and by all writers on civilization known to me. These are the two superlative agencies in the amelioration of the social state; they are woman and the Bible; or if any pleases to make but one out of two, it is the Bible in the hand and heart of woman.

      I admit that the philosopher gives great power to the church, and "makes it the chief element of European civilization. But with him it has not more power than the Koran and the Mosque among the [55] Moslems; or the temples, altars and priests among the Pagans. The hallowed fanes among the Druids, the altars among the Pagans, and the Mosque among the Mohammedans, have led the way in their civilization quite as much as the church of Rome in the dark ages has led the way in ours. Nevertheless I concur with our philosophic historian in giving to the church the precedence in all that appertains to our civilization: for I am persuaded that take that element out of his own compound agencies, and we would have all been barbarians still. But I mean more than the Church as defined by him, when I speak of woman and the Bible. Permit me then to explain myself.

      Woman, with me, is to society what the spirit is to the body; for as the body without the spirit is dead, society without woman is dead also. She is then the quickening, animating, conservative element of society. If man on this terraqueous ball be the glory of God, most certainly woman is the glory of man. She is the life, the beauty, the ornament, the glory of society. What a simple, powerful and sublime preface has God written to the volume of her history! "It is not good," said he, " that man should be alone;" and instantly out of his side, and by his side, stood blooming, smiling, lovely woman. Never was any being more appropriately named than this woman. She is called Eve, which in our own language is equivalent to her being called life. And Adam called her life, because she is the mother of all living. She is then the fountain and source of society.

      Now, her intellectual and moral culture, her elevation to her own proper rank, which is not to sit at the foot, but to stand by the side, of man, is of supreme importance to the State, to the Church, to the world, and to the amelioration of the social system. But this subject has never yet taken hold of the head, the heart or the hand of man in the ratio of its importance; because, perhaps, the power of woman for good or evil, for weal or for woe, has not yet appeared in its full proportions to the mental vision of even the sages and the learned of our race. She is, indeed, in some points of view, rightly called "the weaker vessel" of the twain; but in this her weakness are found some of the main springs of her power.

      It is essential to our argument, so far as the logic of it is concerned, that we first form a clear and definite idea of the power of woman. But how shall this be done convincingly? Not by reasoning hypothetically nor speculatively, but inductively. As we find out the power of any agent in nature, so learn we the power of woman. The power of electricity, of the tempest, of the flood, is seen in their effects; the power of woman is seen and felt in her deeds--I do not say in her [56] good deeds only, but in her bad deeds also; for she, too, as well as man, has some bad deeds. Still, it is fair logic to infer the power of doing good, from her power of doing evil; and in placing this matter before you, ladies and gentlemen, you will allow me to avail myself of a fair specimen of female achievements both on the side of virtue and of vice.

      It is not necessary that we examine the whole history of the sex to be convinced of the potency of woman. The first melancholy proof, and perhaps as striking a proof as universal history affords, of the power of woman is found at the close of the first act of the great drama of human existence--she persuaded her husband to rebel against his God. Adam seems to have been so perfectly fascinated by her charms and bewitched by her blandishments, as to have lost both his reason and his loyalty at the moment that she stretched out her enchanting hand to his lips. "He was not deceived" by the serpent, as Paul affirms. May we not thence infer that he was allured and captivated by his wife? How unspeakably great, then, was that power which overcame man in the glory of his strength and prostrated his understanding and his resolution in the very presence of the pledge of inevitable ruin!

      Since that moment of triumph of Satan over woman, and of woman over man, who can tithe the spoils of history, or form even a miniature view of her power over human destiny? She never had any pretensions to physical superiority over man--to physical equality; but really some of the brightest triumphs of genius, of intellect, of contrivance, of policy, of the arts both of peace and of war, that brighten the annals of human greatness, and throw a halo of glory over our nature, are found in the memoirs of woman.

      In the first two thousand years of human history, and in all the sacred records of twenty centuries, the names of but five women, good or bad, have escaped the general wreck and oblivion of ancient times. Of these five, Eve, the mother of all living, is the first; and Sarah, the mystic mother of all the faithful, is the last. Her faith and her virtues, her conjugal affection and devotion, not only overcame the course of nature itself, and gave to her husband and the world "the child of promise," but also furnish one of the most perfect models of domestic excellence, of maternal worth and of female complaisance which sacred story affords. Why there should have been so great silence from Adam to Moses of the sayings and doings of woman, is only to be explained on the hypothesis that the dark shade which in an evil hour her folly had entailed upon herself, her husband and posterity, seems [57] to have fallen upon her own history for almost one-third the whole flight of time. The influence of woman is, indeed, a second time adduced in the annals of the antediluvian world; but there, alas! it is in unison with a second catastrophe of human kind--a second witness, but too strictly accordant with the first, that woman's power in doing evil, in congenial circumstances, is not easily exaggerated. "The sons of God," says the divine historian Moses, a heavenly style for the faithful of all ages,--"the sons of God intermixed with the daughters of men," making their beauty, without regard to moral excellence, the supreme attraction; till the world was filled with personal combat, murder and rapine, (all couched in the word violence,) and became, even to the long-suffering of Heaven, intolerably wicked. This state of things superinduced that tremendous deluge whose monuments are stereotyped in the deep valleys and on the lofty mountains that diversify the four quarters of the globe.

      Opening the postdiluvian pages of sacred and profane history, we are, indeed, occasionally furnished with a bright display of feminine power, culminating over the highest summits of masculine ambition. In ascending the stream of Assyrian history almost to its fountain, we see the memory of her greatness, engraven on the proudest trophies of human grandeur. Do we commence our inquiries with the first and most magnificent of earthly empires--the Assyrian?--we shall find her mighty deeds contemporaneous with its origin. Who laid the foundation of mighty Babylon, the city of eternal fame, the wonder of the world--the metropolis of that gigantic empire that stretched from the fountains of the Tigris and the Euphrates to the oceans of the East and of the West--that mighty empire that withstood the tossings of a thousand tempests, the swellings of angry seas, the tumults of incensed and impassioned multitudes for more than fourteen hundred years--who before the Macedonian hero led an army of three and a half millions of troops across the Indus to extend her dominions in the East, and for the long term of forty years gave laws to the fairest and best portions of the human race? I say, do we put these questions to the historians of ancient times? They give us the name of Semiramis, the widow of the founder of Nineveh, the Queen of the Queens of the East. In the life and achievements of this peerless heroine of fortunes so various and splendid, though ultimately disastrous, we discover faculties as enlarged, policies as profound, energy as unbounded, perseverance as untiring, courage as dauntless, ambition as towering, as ever distinguished an Assyrian, Persian or Grecian chief.

      But if woman have power to create and raise up families, cities, [58] states and empires, she has power to destroy them. Thus, if Babylon rose, Troy fell, by a woman. The ill fortunes and overthrow of the Trojan commonwealth are as intimately associated in fame with the beauty and perfidy of Helen, as are the rise and glory of Babylon with the intrepidity, energy and varied talents of Semiramis. I am of opinion that there never was a nation, a state or an empire--not even an administration, save that of General Jackson--that was not more or less reared or ruined, strengthened or weakened, controlled or managed, by the policy, the skill or the dexterity of woman.

      Should any one doubt this opinion, let him examine the records of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman or modern European women; he will find there were other Rebeccas; Miriams, Deborahs, Delilahs, Jaels, Jezebels, Athaliahs, Esthers, Herodiases, than those written in sacred history. Should he wish for a few samples of the dark as well as the bright side of the picture, let him contemplate the deeds of vengeance, barbarity and general inhumanity of Amestris, wife of the Persian Xerxes. Her demand at a royal banquet for the wife of Masistus, and her treatment of that woman, in more points than one, resembles that of the vengeful Herodias towards John the Harbinger. Let him consider the workings of jealousy and ambition in the bloody and horrible deeds of the queen mother of Cyrus. Let him examine the confederated strength of these evil passions in the proceedings of Queen Parysites, both sister and wife of Darius Nothus, towards the no less cruel Queen Statira, daughter of Darius II. A bear robbed of her whelps was milder far than Queen Parysites towards those who were accessory to the slaughter of Cyrus, her son. Let him read, if he can without inexpressible horror, her cruelties to a Carian soldier, to Mithridates, to Mesabates, consummated in the murder of her own daughter-in-law, the beautiful but cruel and murderous Queen Statira.

      And should he wish for a perfect sample of all this category of attributes, we would refer him to the history and fortunes of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, the ninth of that name distinguished in ancient history. This celebrated woman far excelled all her contemporaries in the rarest assemblage of extraordinary endowments and splendid crimes; possessing wit, imagination, genius, in no ordinary measures; superlative in beauty of person, in all the bewitching blandishments of elegant manners, in all the captivating arts of fascination, she was the slave of passion, vain, deceitful, ambitious, tyrannical, cruel. Under all her unrivalled charms was concealed a demoniacal heart, full of malignant passions, stratagems, plots, amours, murders, suicide. She permitted herself to be carried into the presence of Julius Cæsar [59] that she might subdue him by her charms. She did so. She also beguiled and ruined the unfortunate Anthony. Her voyage to Tarsus is one of the most pompous and glittering pageants in ancient history. It is said that the stern of her ship flamed with gold, its sails were purple, its oars inlaid with silver. Her pavilion on deck was of golden cloth, in which she sat robed like Venus, surrounded by the most beautiful virgins of her court, some representing the Nereiades, and others the Graces; instead of trumpets were heard flutes, hautboys, harps and innumerable instruments, warbling the softest airs, to which the oars kept time and completed the harmony; perfumes smoked upon the deck; while the banks of the river, lined with countless multitudes of spectators, gave to the spectacle a brilliancy and pomp never surpassed. The end of this voyage was to captivate the heart of Anthony, in which she was, for him, alas! too successful. She boasted to Anthony that she could spend a million of livres at a single supper. This, indeed, she wellnigh did, by snatching from one of her ears the costliest pearl in the world, worth about that incredible sum, and casting it into a cruse of vinegar, dissolved it, and thus drank the health of the grandson of Cicero, one of the triumvirate of Rome.

      The Romans, indeed, always acknowledged the mighty sway of woman. Faustina, daughter of the pious Antonine, celebrated for her beauty and gallantries, so ruled her husband Marcus, that he not only elevated her lovers to the highest honors, but also so influenced the Senate as to declare her a goddess, and, with the attributes of Juno, Venus and Ceres, to have divine honors paid to her in her temples.

      Julia Mæsa, by her genius and her largesses, raised her grandson, the execrable Bassianus, sometimes called Antoninias, but better known by the name of Elagabalus, a Syrian by birth, first to be the High-Priest of the Sun, and next to be the Emperor of Rome. After he had careered the dark and dismal race of every folly, and covered himself with the infamy of every monstrous deed that could disgrace humanity, murdered by his own indignant prætorians and cast into the Tiber, she still had the address to raise her second grandson by another mother to the imperial throne; and placed Alexander Severus on the list of Roman Emperors, while his mother Mamæa really empired over Rome.

      But lest we should seem to draw from the records of Pagan times too many proofs of woman's ill-fated empire over the destiny of man, before we open the annals of modern Europe we shall give another and a somewhat different picture of female greatness, in the person of [60] the Queen of Palmyra, pupil of "the Sublime Longinus," well skilled in the Latin, Greek, Syriac and Egyptian tongues.

      After avenging the murder of her husband, Zenobia herself filled the vacant throne, and, with the most manly counsel, governed Palmyra, Syria and the East for five years. The Roman Senate for a time in vain attempted to curb her power; she repulsed their general, and sent him back to Rome alike denuded of his army and his fame. Arabia, Armenia and Persia solicited her alliance. To the dominions of her husband by her prudence she added the populous and fertile kingdom of Egypt.

      But the Emperor Aurelian with an immense army invaded Asia, and decided the fortunes of the Queen of the East in two hard-fought battles. Besieged at last in her own beautiful city of Palmyra, renowned for its splendid temples, palaces and porticos of Grecian architecture, she was compelled to yield, not by capitulations, but by flight--she was carried to Rome a splendid trophy of Aurelian's good fortune and valor. On entering the city, as Gibbon relates, "the beauteous figure of Zenobia was confined by fetters of gold, a slave supported the gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the intolerable weight of jewels. She preceded on foot the magnificent chariot in which she once hoped victoriously to have entered the gates of Rome." So fades the glory of this world. She was, indeed, treated honorably by the emperor, who, because of his admiration of her splendid talents and public virtues, presented her with a beautiful villa on the bank of the Tiber, about twenty miles from Rome, where the Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a Roman matron. Her daughters married into noble families, and her race continued till the fifth century.

      But what shall I say of the illustrious women of modern Europe, whose noble deeds, whose splendid follies, whose heroic achievements, whose mighty genius or whose public virtues have thrown a lustre on almost all the principal kingdoms of Europe? Time would fail me to tell of Margaret, Queen of Denmark, the Semiramis of the North, mistress of three kingdoms--of Margaret of Valois, mother of Henry IV., an authoress, a poetess, a queen--of another Margaret, mother of Henry VII., a patroness of learning, a founder of two colleges, although allied and related to thirty kings and queens, who spent her leisure hours not in courtly pastimes, but in translating from the French such pious books as A Kempis on Imitating Christ--of Maria Theresa, Empress Queen of Hungary, daughter of Charles VI., whose brilliant achievements and whose varied fortunes astonished Europe for forty [61] years--of her daughter Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France, wife of the unfortunate Louis. Voluptuous and criminal, her prodigality and bad counsels, opposing the convocation of the States, terminated in her own ruin and in that of her husband king, and precipitated the reign of terror--the triumph of atheism in France.

      I again repeat, time would fail me to tell of the Catharines of France and Russia--the Elizabeths, the Marys, the Annes of England, and a thousand other noble and illustrious names. But I will be asked, Why enumerate so many of regal dignity, of high and elevated place, of illustrious fortune, in exemplifying the power of woman? Because, I answer, amongst these we have the best educated of the sex--those invested with the most ample means of showing off to advantage, the leading attributes of female character, and those whose deeds are best known in human history. How much more familiar to the million are Josephine, Maria Louisa, Anne Boleyn, Joan of Arc, Lady Jane Grey and the present Victoria, than females of less conspicuous station!

      To know the force of character of any individual, he must be placed in a position on a theatre where he has room to act his part fully. Few persons ever know themselves or their most intimate friends and relatives, because of the want of opportunity of developing themselves. If a prophet foretold our future exploits, more than Hazael would exclaim, "Is thy servant a dog; that he should do such a deed?" One reflection forces itself upon us while these premises are present. Had the females above named enjoyed as much moral as intellectual culture, and been as much under the government of the moral sentiments, as they were under the control of animal passions, how different from what it now is, might have been the fortunes and the character of the world at this hour!

      But there are four aspects which I shall henceforth call the four cardinal points of woman, in which she must be contemplated before her all-controlling influence in society can be duly appreciated, especially her power of doing good. There is no need now-a-days to talk of her talents, nor of her susceptibilities of the most polished intellectual and moral culture. These are no longer matters of doubtful disputation. Notwithstanding the defects in her education, (and, till recently, they were neither few nor small,) she has not merely occasionally, but in fact often, astonished, dazzled, delighted us with the rich and varied resources of her genius, the splendid efforts of her understanding, the finished productions of her taste. She has gathered laurels on Mount Parnassus and wreaths of flowers on Mount Helicon. She has sat in [62] the cells of the philosophers, and walked in the groves of the Academies, and strewed all her paths with flowers of the sweetest odors and of the most beauteous tints.

      We need not go back to the days of Aspasia, whose genius in poetry and romance Socrates himself, with all his philosophic gravity, could not but admire; nor to the time of Sappho, the poetess of Mytilene, almost coeval with Rome, whose delicious effusions and richly varied odes obtained for her the honors of the tenth muse. Nor need we call up the memory of Corinna and her fifty books of epigrams, to show what gifts Dallas, Apollo and Mercury have bestowed on woman. Our own times, alike removed from the ages of superstition and of romance, furnish clearer, more striking, richer and more varied examples, not merely of her power to attain to eminence, but of her successful competition in general literature, science, and in the fine arts of poetry, music, painting, and of living well.

      I need not speak of the celebrity of Miss Edgeworth as a writer of moral tales; of Miss Baillie as a tragedian; of Madame de Staël as a miscellaneous writer of much wit and vivacity; of Miss Martineau as a tourist; of Mrs. Bowdler as a moralist; and of Miss Sedgwick as a moral instructor. These are not our best models of female excellence even in the didactic art. Nor need I refer to the celebrity of Mrs. Hemans, now commensurate with English literature; nor to that of Mrs. Sigourney, commensurate with our own; nor to the miscellaneous and moral productions of Mrs. Hannah More, or Miss Beecher, all excellent in their kind. These are becoming as familiar in our country as weekly visitors or household words. They, indeed, are all honorable vouchers of what woman might be under a more philosophic, rational and moral system of education; and, together with a thousand names of equal renown, show that the female mind only needs the proper appliances of good education to shine with a lustre, on a general scale, transcending far the humble standards fixed for it in ages, we hope, forever past.

      But the four cardinal points in woman are quite of a different category from that of talents and susceptibilities. These are the points of mighty influence from which she radiates her powers over the world. They are those of daughter, sister, wife and mother. A woman is first a daughter--then a sister--then a wife--and then a mother; and under these potent and enchanting names she exercises all her transforming influence on human destiny.

      As a daughter, she re-acts on her parents; she opens new springs of pleasures in their hearts, new hopes, new joys, new fears, which [63] have a mystic influence over their characters; either in subduing their spirits to moral influences, or in stimulating their career in the paths of pride, avarice and ambition.

      As a sister, she either softens, subdues, mollifies and polishes the manners of her brothers; or she excites them to deeds of chivalrous daring, to bold adventures in the ways of false pride, false shame, false honor. It has been sometimes observed by those who attend more philosophically to what passes under their observation, that it is always a misfortune to a brotherhood to have no sister in the family. Such persons are generally more rude, more awkward, more unpolished; more uncivilized in their modes and manners, than, all things else being equal, those fraternities are that enjoy the communion of sisters--

      As a wife, when properly educated, her power is not to be computed. The weaker vessel though she may be, in all that appertains to mere intellectual power; yet in the department of feeling, sensitiveness, promptness, decision, tenderness of affection and self-denying devotion to her husband, she is generally his superior. Her counsels, if not uniformly infallible, are always sincere and cordial. Her motives can never be suspected, though her wisdom may; one, too, so intimately acquainted with his weak as well as his strong side, (for most husbands have two sides,) cannot fail to obtain incalculable ascendency. There is no covenant like the nuptial covenant--no copartnery like the oneness of the matrimonial contract. It is the identification of all the temporalities of two persons for life--an amalgamation of all natural interests, which places the parties in a position supremely to influence one another. But the recondite secret of a wife's power is only found in the superiority of her love. She conquers and reigns by love. Therefore, in the ratio of her affections and her good sense there must ever be her ascendency.

      As a mother, however, her power is paramount. On that throne she is supreme. The whole world is in her hands, in her arms, in her bosom, while she is intrusted with the moulding of the soft clay of humanity, and forming it after her own image. The discreet and affectionate mother lives forever in the heart of her children. They never can throw off all their allegiance to her, nor rise above her sovereign sway, if indeed she only knows how to wield that potent sceptre which the God of nature has put into her hands.

      I believe there never was a man both good and great that adorned with brilliant virtues our fallen race, that did not owe it to his mother. [64] Her wisdom, her piety, her example, led him into the straight paths of true wisdom goodness and greatness, else his feet had not found them. So true it is, that if a child be brought up in the way that he should go, he will not in advanced years desert it, that it became a proverb in Israel three thousand years ago; and who can find in the annals of ancient or modern biography an exception to it, or a person of distinguished excellence who had not an excellent mother?

      Ladies and gentlemen, this is just the point in which we can demonstrate woman's power to do good in society. I doubt not you were disappointed when I was instancing, by some names illustrious in history, her power of doing evil, that I did not at least balance the account by giving more bright examples of her power to bless and to do good. The reason, you will soon discover, is, I was not then in the proper place to find such examples. Woman was not made to found cities and empires, to command armies and navies, to enter the arena of political strife, to figure in camps, in tilts and tournaments, to mingle in the intrigues and cabals of kings and courts. She was made for other ends, to move in other circles, and to exert an influence more pure, mare powerful, more lasting. She was made to have an empire in the heart of man, and to wield a mild and gracious sceptre over the moral destinies of our race. Hence the domestic circle is the area of which she is the power, the light, the life, the glory. But though this circle be small, it has a paramount sway over every other circle which man lives and moves. Hence the family institution gives laws to the school, the college, the university, the church, the state, the world. And so it comes to pass that woman's power is confined within this narrow circle that it might be the more concentrated and rebound with more force on all the interests of humanity.

      And here, while we have the four cardinal points of woman's true and proper sphere before us, and are dwelling on the last and paramount of these, her power as a mother, it will not be difficult or tedious to demonstrate her illimitable power of doing good. The giving to the world a Moses, a Samuel, a David, a Josiah, a Luther, a Franklin, a Washington, is doing more than did all the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, the Alexanders, the Cæsars, the Gregories, the Bourbons, the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Hanoverians, the Guelphs, the Napoleons, that ever lived. There is no power in numbers nor in mathematics to compute the amount of good effected by a Luther or a Washington. Not Saxony only, but Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England, Europe, America, the world, temporally, spiritually and eternally, have been advantaged by the deeds of Luther. The annals of eternity alone [65] can unfold all the good effects of the life of that reformer. And yet a single bias given by his mother may have been, and doubtless was, the fountain, the mainspring of all this incalculable series of advantages to our race! Is not the mother of our own Washington the root and origin of all the blessings, civil and social, accruing to this country and to the human race for an indefinite series of ages? When, like the pious Hannah, a mother undertakes to train a child for the Lord and the human race, and brings him up in the tabernacles of piety, she aims at a power of doing good that reaches far beyond the landmarks of time--she may anoint the head and the heart of more kings than did the son of Hannah, and with a holier and more fragrant oil than that which from the prophet's horn was poured upon the head of Saul, or on that of the son of Jesse. There is no decree which saith to woman's sway, either as a daughter, a sister, a wife or a mother, as God hath spoken to the waves of the sea, "Hitherto shall thou come, and no farther, and here let all thy efforts be stayed." No, thank Heaven's eternal King, there is no limit set to her power. It may be temporal, spiritual, eternal. If woman has vanquished Samson the strongest of men, Solomon the wisest of men, and Adam the greatest of men, she has been made the mother of the Saviour of men, and may, through the religion of her Son and of her Lord, exert a transcendent power over the destiny of man. She may bless a family, a nation, a generation, a world--not only for a jubilee, an age, a few centuries, but forever and forever.

      But I said something of the Bible in her heart and in her hand, as next to her, or in conjunction with her, the mightiest and best means of civilizing, refining, elevating and ennobling human nature. I presume so much upon the intelligence and good taste of my audience, as not to have allotted much space or time to the elucidation of this point.

      It is certainly well known to you, ladies and gentlemen, that women are more susceptible of religious impressions than men. All classic, all Pagan, all political, all sacred history, may be appealed to in proof that female piety is larger in quantity as well as of a finer quality than that of man. Woman figures more eminently in all the walks of piety in New Testament history. Not only in the days of the Christian chief were women most ardent in their attachment to him, more devoted in all their attentions to him, waiting upon his person, ministering to his wants--"last at the cross and earliest at his grave;" but after his resurrection they rallied in greater numbers to his cause, embraced it with warmer affections, endured persecution with greater [66] constancy, often courting rather than shunning the pains of martyrdom. There is everywhere at this moment a preponderating amount of female devotion, and a very striking numerical superiority of female communicants at all the altars in our land.

      The reason of this is found in the superior sensitiveness of woman--in the delicacy of all her susceptibilities of moral influence--and in her seclusion from the corrupting influences, the collisions, the revelries and jarring interests of a commercial, political and worldly spirit. As some one has very beautifully said, "The current of female existence runs more within the embankments of home." But home is the centre and the throne of the sanctities as well as of the charities of life. The duties of a mother or of the mistress of a family all tend to piety by warming and softening the intellect and the affections. Women, therefore, are usually the appointed guardians of domestic religion. They are removed at a more salutary distance from the stirring business, from the ambitions that engross the heart of man and the passions that devour it, and the undeviating processes which fix upon it day by day a thicker and a thicker crust of icy selfishness.

      Add to this, women need more of the comforts of religion, depend more upon its aid, confide more in its protection, and derive from it more of their real charms and loveliness than from any other source whatever. A pious lady, well educated, (and none are well educated that are not pious, that do not fear God and keep his commandments,) has a power above every other female of the same circumstances, of the same personal accomplishments, not only over the good and excellent, but even over the irreligious themselves. Many irreligious, and even profane men, cannot love a woman without religion. When they think of marrying, they always think of a pure, and virtuous, and religious woman. Such only they regard as a crown of glory and honor; and only under the presidency of such a wife, and mother, and mistress of a house would they dare to commit the destinies of a family. It is, indeed, a noble testimony to religion, that not only good men, but bad men themselves, acknowledge its excellency and prefer an alliance with its friends rather than with those who are destitute of its ornaments and guardianship, or opposed to its purity and power.

      Religion is, then, the true dignity of woman. The Bible in her heart, on her lips, and in her hand, imparts to her an excellency, a majesty and a power that renders her the most efficient of all the agencies in the universe, to improve, to civilize and bless the world with the highest moral excellence, with the most refined and exalted [67] social pleasures of which our species is susceptible in this state of trial and discipline.

      I have said the Bible in her heart, and have I exaggerated the influence of that wonderful volume when inscribed upon the female heart? This I presume to be impossible. There is no hyperbole here. That book widens, deepens, enlarges, strengthens and elevates the intellectual and moral capacities of human nature, of the male and female mind, above all other books, and sciences, and arts ever taught manor woman. The fact is one thing, and the philosophy of it another. But so clear is the evidence of the fact, that the destiny of a nation might be staked upon it. Let two females of equal natural development, of equal capacity for mental and moral improvement, be selected; let one of them have the Alexandrian or London library at her command, without the Bible; and the other the Bible only; and let each of them devote for any definite number of years so many hours, daily, to reading and reflection. She who makes the Bible her choice will as certainly excel the other in all the points of which we now speak, as the Bible itself excels all other books in the world: provided only, that she reads it without prejudice, and subject to the same canons of interpretation to which all other books of distant ages and countries are to be subordinated.

      We have now no time on hand to eulogize the book of God; nor is it necessary to this audience. It is a very common theme. It is, however, a noble--a sublime one. It might well occupy the talents of an angel--the descriptive powers of a cherub. It is the book of the Divine nature; it is, indeed, the book of God--and the book of man. Other books have nations or individual men, or specific sciences or arts, for their subject; this is the 'cook of man. Human nature is here as fully revealed as the Divine. They are revealed in comparison, in contrast, in things similar, in things dissimilar. The fountains of the great deep of human thought, of human motives, of human action, are broken up; and man, inward and outward, is contemplated not in the dim taper light of time, but in the strong bright light of eternity; not merely as respects his position on the terraqueous globe, nor in human society, but as respects all his positions and attributes in a whole universe, a boundless future, a vast eternity. The speaker is God; the hearer, man; the subject, human nature, human relations, human destiny; the object, eternal life, immortal glory.

      The divine mind, the eternal Spirit, breathes through the signs of that book--through its words, its types, its figures, its principles, its precepts, its examples--upon our moral nature. It quickens, animates, [68] purifies, enlarges, elevates, and dignifies it by an assimilation of it to an incarnation of the Divinity itself; and capacitates man and woman for higher joys, purer delights, and a more efficient agency in imparting bliss to others, than all the documents, volumes, facts and events in all the other records of man, or developments of God visible to mortal eye. But I said I intended neither comment nor encomium on the Bible: I therefore hasten to the capital and closing point of my address.

      Society is not yet fully civilized. It is only beginning to be. Things are in process, in progress to another age--a golden--a millennial--a blissful period in human history. Selfishness, violence, inordinate ambition, revenge, duelling, even tyranny, oppression and cruelty, are yet exerting a pernicious influence in society. These are the real drawbacks on human happiness--the loud calls on genuine philanthropy. Woman, I believe, is destined to be the great agent in this grandest of all human enterprises--an effort to advance society to the acme of its most glorious destiny on earth.

      Already she exerts a great influence in all works of benevolence. In the visiting societies, in quest of the destitute, the sick, the wounded, the miserable--in the labors of the Sunday-school--in the active and constant charities of the Christian church, her reputation is commensurate with the institutions themselves, and her influence is universally acknowledged. These, too, are acts of eternal renown. The great Benefactor gave a fame lasting as time and the human race to the sister of Martha for such an act of love. Such ladies as Mrs. Chaupone, Mrs. Trimmer, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Hemans, &c., have an extensive fame and an extensive usefulness; but the apace which they occupy is but a speck compared with that filled with the Mary that anointed the Lord for his sepulture. The labors of Mrs. Fry, or of the Sisters of Charity, are not those of genius, poetry, imagination, but of genuine benevolence. It is not the shedding of a few sympathetic tears over some high-wrought imaginative tale of woe, found in books of fiction, in the volumes of romance, but the pouring of the oil and the wine, the genuine tears of benevolence, into the real wounds of the sons and daughters of anguish, that is inscribed in the book of Heaven's heraldry, and to be divulged in celestial ears with angelic admiration and delight.

      But we ask, because we expect, more than this. We ask for a female cordon to stretch through the whole length of this land, against the appalling progress of fashionable vices, not merely against the luxurious extravagances of costly raiment, splendid furniture and sumptuous [69] modes of living, which in themselves are great evils, and fast precipitating this nation against that fatal rock on which the proudest empires have been dashed to pieces; but against the remains of barbarism still existing amongst us--duelling, revenge, violence, oppression, &c.

      Am I interrogated on what I mean by a female cordon? I answer, that all ladies of education, of elevated standing, of moral excellence, shall, with one consent, frown from their presence those who delight in such deeds--who either perpetrate them, or take pleasure in those that do them; that they show a profound veneration for the philanthropic Author of our religion, who has peremptorily, and on pain of eternal ruin, forbidden all malice, violence, revenge, cruelty, murder and oppression.

      They can do more than all legislative enactments, than all human codes and punishments, to exterminate these horrible remains of savage paganism, so incongruous with the doctrine and principles of the Prince of Peace. Were it, for example, to be known and depended upon, as certain as death, that every one concerned in a duel was to be enrolled as a coward--as one that feared a whimsical, imaginative, unwritten, unintelligible code of honor, more than the laws of the eternal God--as one that dreaded the scorn of the wicked more than the scorn of all in the heavens, was to be debarred the company of ladies, and to be excluded from the participation of their smiles, I am confident that we should never again hear of a single rencounter of the sort, that the soil of such a community would not again be polluted by the tread of one that in time of peace had passionately, revengefully and recklessly shed the blood of his brother.

      But before such consolidated virtue can be warrantably hoped for, the standard of female education must be greatly elevated and improved. Incomparably more attention, than at present, must be paid to the training and development of the moral sentiments. The heart, rather than the head, the affections, rather than the intellect, must be the centre of the whole circle of education, on which must operate all the scholastic forces from the lessons of the nursery up to those of the sage philosopher. The dignity of human nature, its sublime origin, its godlike organization, its magnificent and glorious destiny, its mysterious and spiritual relations to an immense universe, to high orders of intelligences, to the principalities, authorities and hierarchies of the heavens, must be standing topics in the every-day bill of intellectual and moral fare, from the abecedarian up to the seniors of the highest school in the land.

      Every subject, every object of thought in all the regions of mind and [70] matter, in literature, science and art, must be laid under tribute to religion and morality. If there be design, utility, beauty, loveliness, apparent in any thing, it must be traced up to the eternal Source of all wisdom, goodness, beauty and loveliness, and made a text to show forth his infinite excellencies to the opening genius of the youthful. inquirer. Every thing must be taught and learned in all its connections with the being, perfections and designs of the Creator. The archetypes of the universe must be found in his infinite and eternal intelligence, and every beauty, melody and harmony in nature and society, must be made to engage the affections more and more to him--"Him first, him last, him midst and without end;" all nature, science, art and learning, must be made to reveal and extol. This course will, under the dews, the rains and the sunshine of heavenly and divine influence, secure the heart to all that is good, and honorable, and excellent in earth and heaven.

      Finally, ladies and gentlemen, be it remembered that it is only when woman is viewed in her first cardinal point, that she is within the circle of direct didactic influence. It is only as a daughter that she is immediately under parental education and discipline. She must, while only sustaining this position to the family, be made to comprehend all that is indicated in that very dear and interesting title. But for our consolation it ought to be distinctly and emphatically stated, that when a daughter is so trained and educated as to understand all that is implied in filling up the whole measure of the duties of a daughter, she is an accomplished sister, will make a good wife, an excellent mother. A good daughter must inevitably be a good sister, a good wife, a good mother. If, then, proper care be taken of our daughters, and their education be conducted on rational and moral principles, no person need fear to endorse for the reputation, excellency and moral worth of the sister, the wife or the mother.

      Who is it, then, who desires a deep and more thorough reformation of public manners and customs, or who is it that seeks for social pleasures of the highest earthly order, and would advance the amelioration of the social state to the highest point within the grasp of rational or religious anticipation? Let him turn his attention to more rational, scientific, liberal and moral education of woman. Let him bear in mind that she must take the precedence as the most puissant leader in every work of moral reform in society. Hers is the delightful task, as well as the sovereign power, to mould human nature after a divine model. She sows the seed, she plants the germs of human goodness and human greatness. She infixes the generous purpose, the salutary [71] and noble principles in the youthful heart. She makes the men and women of future times, and shapes the character and destinies of posterity even to the third, and to the fourth, and sometimes to the tenth generation. Ought not, then, every patriot, every philanthropist, every good citizen, every Christian in the land to rally all his forces, to summon all his energies, to co-operate in the great cause of female education? It is not the education of the daughters of the affluent and honorable only, or chiefly, of which we speak--it is the education of all--it is common, it is universal female education, and to a more liberal extent than has yet been imagined--for which we speak, when we plead for that female education indispensable to the full and proper amelioration of the social state.

      Individual, family or national wealth never can be more advantageously appropriated, than in the mental and moral education of all the sons and daughters of the States. We owe it, then, to ourselves, to our children, to our country, to the world, to bestir ourselves in this most useful, honorable and beneficent of mortal undertakings. Let us, then, awaken to our responsibilities, and to our power of blessing others, and of being blessed, and place our energies and our influence, along with our other means, on the side of woman's high advancement in all the paths of literature and science, of religion and morality. Then must we greatly enhance and sweeten the charms of home--of the social hearth--the domestic circle--the city--the church--the world. Then may we anticipate a day of richer blessings, of purer pleasures, of more lasting joys to the human race; and, on the well-fledged wings of vigorous and healthful hope, we may glide down the whole vista of time, to those eternal scenes of holier delight, of more refined ecstasy, which fill the raptured vision of the saint, in those climes of eternal peace and social bliss, where every eye is filled with uncreated light, and every heart with love. [72]

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