CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN THE REFORMER. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "Women of my country! Exaltados! if such there be. Women of English, old English nobleness, who understand the courage of Boadicea, the sacrifice of Godiva, the power of Queen Emma to tread the red-hot iron unharmed. Women who share the nature of Mrs. Hutchinson, Lady Russell, and the mothers of our great revolution -have you nothing to do with this? You see the men how they are willing to sell, shamelessly, the happiness of countless generations of their fellow-creatures, the honour of their country, and their immor. tal souls, for a money market and political power. Do you not feel within you that which can reprove them, which can check, which can convince them? You would not speak in vain; whether each in her own home, or banded in unison." MARGARET FULLER.-"Woman in the Nineteenth Century." "Can man be free if woman be a slave?" SHELLEY. "Would we advance our age, we must look for its improvement in the elevation of women. BENJAMIN PARSONS." Mental and Moral Dignity of Woman." CHAPTER VIII. State of Woman the Test of Civilization-Beauty of Woman in Social Relations-True Gallantry-Woman the Universal Sister-Various Modes of Reforms-Reformation by Influence The Mother-Wrongs of Woman, in Trade-Injustice in her Social Condition-Distinguished Women answer the Charge of Woman's Powerlessness-Woman's Sphere. THE hope of society is in woman! The hope of the age is in woman! On her depends mainly the righting of wrongs, the correcting of sins, and the success of all missions. During the last years it is gratifying to find that the welfare of woman has occupied a very large share of the attention, both of literary men, moralists, philanthropists, and political economists; it is felt that if the position of woman be wrong, that of man cannot be right. That we have no hope of success in the advancement of any happier condition of society, unless we are aided by woman. The state of any society is not hopeless, unless woman's feelings and woman's character are perverted. Her social position is the gauge, the thermometer of civilization. Given, the state and condition of woman, to find out that of all society. Let anarchy rage through the street, and the flames of civil discord mount high over throne and mansion, sweeping away in their dreadful course every indication of civic beauty. Let atheism and profanity unbind their harlot tresses and loosen the skirts of their robes, and fire the altar of religion, and trample on the present, and on the hope of the future. Yet if woman, amidst all these scenes of havoc, sits by the fireside and mourns over the ruin, if her heart is sound, the heart of society is sound, there is hope yet. But if woman is lost, all is lost; who shall save from perverted affections, and riot, made yet more frantic by despair. There is much, let it be said with affection, and let it be received so, in the condition of the women of England, to amend-much in their social, moral, and mental state, that may be reformed altogether. Yet gratefully must the author acknowledge and feel, that the firesides of our land are sheltered by a presiding genius of beauty, and virtue, and goodness. There is beauty in woman in our land, when in the first gushing outgoings of hope she looks forward to the future, herself the light and joy of the present, sprightly, vivacious, happy; the companion of the mother, the darling of the father. There is beauty in that girl so busily engaged in reading the title and preface to the Book of Life, to whom its leaves are yet unread, uncut, unstained. There is beauty in the matron in all grades of life, so graceful amidst her household cares and joys-" while fireside pleasures gambol at her feet;"-standing at the gate to welcome her husband from his day of toil, or his week of absence, placing the slippers before that dear, dear, old fire-place; so happy there with her work-box before her, now with the eye earnestly fixed on the stitching, and now looking up with kind smiling face at that curious paragraph from the newspaper, or that racy bit from the book. There is beauty in woman, the mother-there is sanctity: there look at her, and that little bud from her own bosom before her, praying with clasped hands -look at her bending over the pillow of her darlings before going to her own rest, and printing there that most sacred and pure of all things, a mother's kiss, upon the little slumberer. Look at her; and look at those streaming tears. There in the deep night by flickering rushlight, watching the fevered brow of the dying child, and smoothing its pillow, careless even if drinking death from its lips. And oh, what solemn tragic beauty in that wail of woe, when all was over, and the little one had to be resigned. There is beauty in woman with the hoary hairs; life's journey almost passed, life's mission almost accomplished. What more beautiful in all humanity than a venerable woman; the tresses of girlhood have not a more graceful appearance than those grey locks. locks. We listen with an intensity, subdued by awe, to the words of those lips; the girl rules us by her sensibility, but here we are ruled by a sensibility intensified by the experience of threescore years and ten. Yes, it is a duty we owe to woman every where, to love her to love her as a sister, if not by the more sacred bond of wife, or the |