culiar characteristics are such as essentially qualify her for that station in society which she is designed to fill, and which she never voluntarily quits without a sacrifice of good taste-I might almost say, of good principle. Weak indeed is the reasoning of those who would render her dissatisfied with this allotment, by persuading her that the station, which it ought to be her pride to ornament, is one too insignificant or degraded for the full exercise of her mental powers. Can that be an unimportant vocation to which pecuculiarly belong the means of happiness and misery? Can that be a degraded sphere which not only admits of, but requires the full developement of moral feeling? Is it a task too trifling for an intellectual woman, to watch, and guard, and stimulate the growth of reason in the infant mind? Is it a sacrifice too small to prac tise the art of adaptation to all the different characters met with in ordinary life, so as to influence, and give a right direction to their tastes and pursuits? Is it a duty too easy, faithfully and constantly to hold up an example of self-government, disinterestedness, and zeal for that which constitutes our highest good-to be nothing, or anything that is not evil, as the necessities of others may require--to wait with patience-to endure with fortitude-to attract by gentleness-to soothe by sympathy judiciously applied-to be quick in understanding, prompt in action, and, what is perhaps more difficult than all, pliable yet firm in will-lastly, through a life of perplexity, trial, and temptation, to maintain the calm dignity of a pure and elevated character, earthly in nothing but its suffering and weakness; refined almost to sublimity in the seraphic ardour of its love, its faith, and its devotion.

The same causes which operate against the intellectual attainments of woman, unfit her for arbitrary rule. Queen Elizabeth, one of the most distinguished of female sovereigns, was womanly in nothing but her vanity and artifice. She was ready at any time

to sacrifice her lover to her love of power; and those affairs, said to be of the heart, which rendered her despicable in old age, were nothing better than flirtations founded upon personal adulation, selfishness, and caprice. But deficient in the nobler characteristics of generous feeling, in enthusiasm, and devotedness, she was the better qualified to maintain her regal dignity, and to pursue those deep-laid schemes of policy and ambition which raised her to a level with the greatest potentates of Europe; while her ill-starred rival, Mary of Scotland, a 66 very, very woman!" who, with the richest endowments of head and heart, might, as a wife, have proved a blessing to any man who had the good feeling to appreciate her worth, raised to the throne, became the bane of her empire; and as a queen, was eventually the most unfortunate that ever let in misrule and rebellion upon her state, or brought down disgrace and destruction upon herself.

That

It is only in her proper and natural sphere, that woman is poetical. Self-supported, as a sovereign or a sage, she wants all her loveliest attributes. which stands alone, firmly, and without support, can never supply the mind with so many interesting and poetical associations, as that which has a relative existence and is linked in with the chain of creation by the sympathies or necessities of its own nature. A single barren hill, in the midst of a desert, without sunshine, without shade, without verdure, or any perceptible variety in its surface, would afford little to interest the feelings of the poet. It might serve as a landmark to the bewildered traveller; but without the light of the sun, or the shadow of intervening clouds upon its summit, without the garment of verdure, or the varieties of beetling rock, and precipice, and deep ravine around its sloping sides; and above all, without its "mighty shadow in a weary land," it could not be an object upon which the eye would linger with delight, or the excursive faculty of imagi

nation find food and exercise. The lightest bird that plumes its wing upon the leafy bough, or, "tuning its native wood notes wild," soars up to the clear expanse of heaven's ethereal blue; the frailest plant twining its parasitical arms around the supporting stem, lavishing its prodigal sweets upon the morning air, or scattering its faded leaves upon the gales of the wilderness; the faintest cloud that sails before the face of the moon, basking for a moment in her vestal smile, wearing her silver livery, and then wreathing her forehead in fantastic folds of mist and vapour before it floats away, formless, and void, into the dark abyss of unfathomable night, are objects in themselves, in their attributes, relations, and associations, infinitely more poetical than the single mountain and it is precisely upon the same principle, that women, with her boundless sympathies, her weakness, her frailty, her quick perceptions, her inexhaustible energies, in all that constitutes the very essence of her character, is more poetical than man.

Yet notwithstanding all this, in the art of writing poetry, women prove themselves decidedly inferior to the other sex; for the same causes which retard their progress in the more laborious walks of science, are equally forcible here. Beyond a very limited extent woman is incapable of concentrated, fixed, and persevering attention. We have many instances that she can, as it were out of the momentary fulness of her own heart, "discourse most eloquent music," but she is unequal to any of those lasting productions of poetic genius, which continue from age to age to delight the world. I am unwilling however even in this instance to attribute to her mental inferiority, what appears to me as more probably owing to the uncontrolled influence of her imagination, the faculty most essential to the poet, which women possess in so great a degree, that its very exuberance of growth prevents the ripening of those rich fruits of which its

profusion of early blossom gives deceitful promise. The imagination of woman may be compared to a quick growing plant, which shoots out so many slender twigs and tendrils, that the main stem is weakened, and the whole plant, unable to raise itself from the earth, continues to bud and blossom, and send forth innumerable shoots which altogether form a beautiful group of flowers and verdure, but nothing more; while the imagination of man resembles a stately tree, whose firm and continuous stem, exactly proportioned to the support and nourishment of the numerous branches in their subordinate place, completes the majesty, the utility, and the beauty of the whole. The imagination of woman is sufficiently vivid and excursive to take in the widest range of poetical sublimity, but unfortunately it meets with so many interruptions in that range, and deviates so often from its proper object to waste itself upon others of minor importance, that it seldom attains any laudable end, or accomplishes any lasting purpose.

It is impossible for those who have merely studied the nature of woman's mind, to comprehend the rapidity of her thoughts, and the versatility of her feelings. Touch but one sensitive chord, and her imagination takes flight upon the wings of the butterfly over the garden of earth, up into mid air, beyond the lark, that sweetest intelligencer of sublunary joy, higher, still higher, through illimitable space, ascending to the regions of peace and glory, and passing through the everlasting gates into the communion of saints, and blessed spirits, whose feet "sandalled with immortality," trace the green margin of the river of eternal life.

Would that the imagination of woman had always this upward tendency, but, alas! it is not satisfied even with the fruition of happiness; it cannot rest even in the bosom of repose; it is not sufficiently refreshed,

even by that stream whose waters make glad the celestial city. The light of some loved countenance perchance is wanting there, and the spirit, late soaring on delighted wing, now plunges downward amongst the grosser elements of earth, while lured on by the irresistible power of sympathy, it chooses rather to follow the erring or the lost through all the mazy windings of sin and sorrow, than to rise companionless to glory.

With such an imagination, startled, excited, and di-verted from its object, not only by every sight or sound in earth or air, but by every impulse of the affections and the will, it is impossible that woman, in her intellectual attainments should ever equal man; nor is it necessary for her usefulness, her happiness, or the perfection of her character, that she should. As she is circumstanced in the world, it is one of her greatest charms, that she is willing to trust, rather than anxious to investigate. While she does this she will be feminine, and while she is feminine she must be poetical.

The power of adaptation is another quality, which, next to imagination, is strikingly conspicuous in woman, and without which she would lose half her loveliness, and half her value. There is no possible event in human life which she is unable, not only to understand, but to understand feelingly; and no imaginable character, except the gross or the vile, with which she cannot immediately identify herself.

It is considered a mere duty, too common for observation, and too necessary for praise, when a woman forgets her own sorrows to smile with the gay, or lays aside her own secret joys to weep with the sad. But let lordly man make the experiment for one half hour, and he will then be better acquainted with this system of self-sacrifice, which woman in every station of society, from the palace to the cottage, maintains through the whole of her life, with little commendation, and with no reward, except that which is attached to every effort of disinterested virtue. It is thought much of,