brow. The truth of science, the beauty of art, also refine and exalt us. The influence of music, the most subtile and spiritual of all human expressions, penetrates our inmost nature, and yet not a single woman has been a composer of music. Singular fact! when she has passion and sentiment most richly empurpling her queenly nature, when her song or her tragic pathos opens the long-hidden fountain of our tears, and the south wind of her emotions, summoned to the speed of the hurricane, sweeps us all away faint and unresisting. Yet she has never breathed through the sweetness, or wielded the divine rage, of the orchestra; and the most subtile medium of human refinement is monopolized by man. We should not expect from her the restless thought and longing, the appealing themes, the passionate modulations, the sinewy, majestic harmony of the symphony, for the womanly nature is already framed for content rather than for obstinate questionings and misgivings, and seeks the repose of love rather than the excitement of passion or the conflict of human emotions. But it is singular that she has never summoned the instruments to express themes of tender meditation or of modest and noble sentiments; that no solemn andantes embody her loyalty and touching confidence and religious awe; that the mother's yearning heart never struck the sad or hopeful keys; that the maiden never caught in tones her flattering joys and the pensive moods of her opening summer. Is it that the womanly nature is so gifted with the reality of spiritual harmony, towards which the deepest music continually presses, that she feels no necessity to seek relief or to grope for expressions in the world of sound? and is the power of the musical composer a token of his want and incompleteness? In other words, the quality of the feminine nature creates here, as elsewhere, a limitation arising from superiority, betrays it in the palpable want of musical expression, but finds in this very reserve a compensation. Woman's hopes and plans are ruled by the imagination, her disappointments flow from its obstinate ascendency; still the ideal and spiritual life preserves its meek but self-sufficient vigor. But the great artist in every sphere must be a womanly nature under masculine conditions. The thought leads us very near to a perception of the reason why God created a VOL. LVI.-4TH S. VOL. XXI. NO. I.

2

4

woman. Look a little farther, and penetrate from the reserve of the imagination to the holier reserve of purity and charity, where moral excellence and religious loyalty provide the imagination with its imperial food. She inherits potentially the redeeming power of the Truth and of the Life; and her prevailing bias must for ever control all her activities. In Jesus the utmost excellence of the spiritual disposition penetrated and subdued the manly mind; the strength and beauty of the one was perfected in conflict with the other. He contrasted the image of the earthly with the image of the heavenly, for he knew what was in man, and he brought to ambition, selfishness, and intellect the restraining grace of love and faith. In the providential fulness of his nature, man and woman became one, to display the just relations of their individual powers, to embody and reveal the Creator's original intention. If the womanly element predominated in him, it was because the human race is to be redeemed; and if, instead of the categories of philosophers, he proclaimed the beatitudes which belong to the essential woman, it was because the first man with his understanding is of the earth, earthy, and he needs the continual presence of the everlasting womanly spirit, that the new man may be formed within. Are these beatitudes slumbering in woman, as the fragrance slumbers in the fast-shut bud, or does she accept her regenerative mission, and sit at the feet of Jesus, where alone we must seek her and find her, if we wish to find her at all? This is woman's right and woman's mission, predestined in the nature of the uncreated God, out of whom came Adam first, and after, Jesus. Can we demonstrate better than by this analysis, that, if woman could direct her judgment and interest to the affairs of the masculine understanding, she would violate her sexual distinction, and disturb the radiations of her peculiar influence? We rejoice that we cannot concede to her the power to develop the statesman's intellect and manifold experience; we pay her the homage of denying that she can ever find it possible to obtain a personal estimate of the passions and motives of the masculine nature, without which narrowness and delusion would infect her public judgments. She cannot reverse God's decree, which matches her capacity with a feminine brain whose lack of masculine momentum ap

pears in every line and color of her organization. This brain, so subtile and patient amid the necessities of life, so clear and persistent in all kinds of domestic slaveries and reverses, so adroit in applying the principles of education and of spirituality, lacks the coarseness and muscular perseverance, the obstinate concentration, the combative energy, which make a man the fit minister of trade, politics, and all the arts of superficial life. Is a woman ambitious to ply a blacksmith's hammer, when she can wield so cunningly the thin, flitting sword of the spirit; or why should she, whose nerves transmit the invisible currents of the central life, become enamored of the muscles' plodding and swarthy agencies? If one of the beatitudes is better than all the world's diplomacy, then the delicate influence of a true woman is better than her judgment, however sound, upon affairs of state, or her administration, however effective, of a public office. Will she enter the ranks and bear arms, or will she sit and send the pulses of her queenly persuasion through the loyal battalions, devoting them to one faith and one idea!

But the right to vote is claimed for woman, though the fatality of nature close all the avenues of public life against her. It is singular to notice how indifferent women seem to this great privilege of the republic; even those whose property is taxed listen with provoking tranquillity to the appeals which represent them as victims of tyranny and exclusion. Have ages of servitude blunted woman's sense of her natural and inalienable rights, or is the ballot-box less fascinating than we had supposed? A friend once visiting an unworldly philosopher, whose mind, humiliating to relate, was his kingdom, expressed his surprise at the smallness of his apartment: "Why, you have not room enough here to swing a cat!" "My friend," was the serene, unappreciative answer, "I do not want to swing a cat." Indeed, it is curious to notice the general insensibility of woman to these efforts which are made to multiply her duties and enlarge her sphere. She responds with grateful warmth to words which protect her labor and vindicate her right to fair emolument, and she does not seem unconscious of the mental deficiencies which a sustained and liberal culture will repair. But she obstinately re

fuses to pick up her living in the streets. All the benevolent excursions which are planned to caucuses and the polls, for the benefit of her failing health, and those urgent invitations to come up and take a seat upon various platforms where joy and independence wait for her, are ungratefully declined. What marvellous painkillers, infallible cosmetics, irresistible elixirs of rejuvenescence, have we overheard rejected at the front door! Either our New England women are ignorant of what the house requires, or else the peddler's wares lose their virtue when they leave the cart. Municipal and State elections do not offer to woman that enlargement of her consequence and comfort which is claimed for them; a vote does not seem to have the remotest connection with love, devotedness, or moral sway. The passion, truculent misrepresentation, and partisanship of a Presidential canvass do not infect her sweet retirement with its coarse ambition. Proscription and enactment rule, whatever party gains success, however immaculate its previous rhetoric may have been. Woman feels the impotence of votes and politicians in the cause of morals, and perceives no point of her sequestered life where they could touch it to enlarge or to alleviate. A cattle-show or a ship-launch enjoys as vital a connection with her fortunes. In short, neither hilarity nor righteousness seems to be promoted at the polls.

We cannot perceive that voting succeeds in modifying the inflexible tradition of political life, which is so resolved to perpetuate and to organize the system under which we live. Each man might as well mutter his predilections into the ballot-box as leave his vote there. Compared with the profound regeneration which the country needs, and which must spring, if at all, from the love and justice of its million homes, the trivial patching and mending that votes can achieve seem hardly worth the trouble. No woman would sacrifice a single teadrinking for such advantages. But suppose the case to be altered, that woman could increase her own happiness and make some moral question more influential by her We should rejoice if votes were really valuable in this country, for we know numerous women who would vote more sensibly and righteously than their husbands, if, on a point involving so much sensitiveness and pas

vote.

sion, they could make up their minds to oppose them. But we think women in general would waive the right, if they possessed it, rather than introduce so grave an element of jealousy and discord into the estate of marriage. Doubtless all men on the eve of an election, or subsequent to a defeat, ought to preserve a magnanimous, tranquil, and conciliatory temper. Newspapers ought to assuage, instead of inflaming, the passions of their subscribers, and political meetings ought to leave the mind refreshed and clear, instead of inflamed, prejudiced, and corrupted by coarse imputations. But so long as voting perpetuates and countenances all these evils, men will be as little distinguished for Christian charity as their suffrages are for absolute equity. While the political temperament is thus depraved, a wife would sooner sacrifice a privilege than sow the seeds of domestic strife. The aggravation of all opposition increases with the warmth of relationship; and we are convinced that a woman might distract her husband's choicest projects sooner than nullify his votes. To the closeness of such a relationship add the feverish interest and personal pride of an election, when a freeman exercises his dearest right and worships the palladium in the ward-room, and you will find that the public passion is harmless and transitory compared with the bitterness in every home whose vote has been divided against itself. Let the election involve a moral issue, and the difficulty will be augmented. A theological quarrel in the house would acquire an aspect of amiability in companionship with that fatal contention of the hostile vote. Domestic love and peace are more valuable to a country, more closely implicated with its vital welfare, richer with the motives and elements of a spiritual transformation, than its best diplomacy or its most righteous votes. So long as our restless, passionate democracy at once expresses and invigorates the imperfect temper of its subjects, woman will not claim an empty privilege at the risk of the peace and confidence which are the sole condition of her private influence. Leave her to preserve the temperature which alone can slowly ripen the fruits of her spirit. Do not tempt her to increase the suspicions and perplexities of marriage: let the day be far distant when men shall be disposed to calculate the value of that union. We can