To give to earth its charm, to life its zest,
One only task-to bless and to be blest.

Graham.

Oh, woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without you!
Angels are painted fair to look like you;

There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

In Infancy.

Timely blossom, infant fair,
Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn, and every night,
Their solicitous delight,

Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing without skill to please;
Little gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale;
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue.
Simple maiden, void of art,
Babbling out the very heart ;
Yet abandon'd to thy will,
Yet imagining no ill,

Yet too innocent to blush;

Like the linnet in the bush,

Otway.

To the mother linnet's note
Moduling her slender throat,
Chirping forth thy petty joys,
Wanton in the change of toys.
Like the linnet green, in May,
Flitting to each bloomy spray;
Wearied then, and glad of rest,
Like the linnet in the nest.
This thy present happy lot,
This, in time, will be forgot;
Other pleasures, other cares,
Ever busy Time prepares ;
And thou shalt in thy daughter see

This picture once resembled thee.

Ambrose Philips.

Her Influence in every Clime.

In the whole course of my life I never met a female, from the flat-nosed and ebony-coloured inhabitant of the tropics to the snow-white and sublime divinity of a Greek isle, without a touch of romance; repulsiveness could not conceal it, age could not extinguish it, vicissitude could not change it. I have found it in all times and places; like a spring of fresh waters starting up even from the flint; cheering the cheerless, softening the insensible, renovating the withered; a secret whisper in the ear of every woman alive, that, to the last, passion might flutter its rosy pinions round her brow.

Croly.

Her Inspiring Influence.

Your wife and child-those pure motives

In those strong knots of love.

Shakespeare.

I think on thee in the night,

When all beside is still,

And the moon comes out, with her pale, sad light,

To sit on the lonely hill!

When the stars are all like dreams,

And the breezes all like sighs,

And there comes a voice from the far-off streams,

Like thy spirit's low replies!

I think on thee by day,

'Mid the cold and busy crowd,

When the laughter of the young and gay

Is far too glad and loud!

I hear thy soft, sad tone,

And thy young, sweet smile I see,—

My heart, my heart were all alone,

But for its dreams of thee!

Hervey.

The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead,

And makes my labours pleasures.

Shakespeare.

Her Influence on Social Morals.

Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, the women of it decide the morals. Free or subjugated, they

reign, because they hold possession of our passions. But their influence is more or less salutary, according to the degree of esteem which is granted them. Whether they are our idols or companions, courtesans or beasts of burthen, the reaction is complete, and they make us such as they are themselves. It seems as if Nature connected our intelligence with their dignity, as we connect our morality with their virtue. This, therefore, is a law of eternal justice: man cannot degrade women without himself falling into degradation; he cannot raise them without himself becoming better. Let us cast our eyes over the globe, and observe those two great divisions of the human race, the East and the West. One half of the ancient world remains without progress or thought, and under the load of a barbarous cultivation : women there are slaves. The other half advances toward freedom and light: the women are loved and honoured.

Martin.

Her All-Pervading Influence.

May thy tender limbs

Float in the loose simplicity of dress!
And, fashion'd all to harmony, alone
Know they to seize the captivated soul,
In rapture warbled from love-breathing lips;
To teach the lute to languish; with smooth step,
Disclosing motion in its every charm,

To swim along, and swell the mazy dance;
To train the foliage o'er the snowy lawn;
To guide the pencil, turn the tuneful page;
To lend new flavour to the fruitful year,

And heighten Nature's dainties; in their race
To rear their graces into second life ;

To give society its highest taste;

Well-order'd home man's best delight to make

And by submissive wisdom, modest skill,

With every gentle, care-eluding art,

To raise the virtues, animate the bliss,

And sweeten all the toils of human life:
This be the female dignity and praise.

;

Thomson.

There is a spell in woman. No man, not utterly degraded, can listen without delight to the accents of a guileless heart. Beauty, too, has a natural power over the mind; and it is right that this should be. All that overcomes selfishness, the besetting sin of the world, is an instrument of good. Beauty is but melody of a higher kind, and both alike soften the troubled and hard nature of man. Even if we looked on lovely woman but as on a rose, an exquisite production of the summer hours of life, it would be idle to deny her influence in making even those summer hours sweeter. But, as the companion of the mind, as the very model of a friendship that no chance can shake, as the pleasant sharer of the heart of hearts, the being to whom man returns after the tumult of the day, like the worshipper to a secret shrine, to revive his nobler tastes and virtues at a source pure from the evil of the external world, and glowing with a perpetual light of sanctity and love; where shall we find her equal? Or what must be our feeling towards the Mighty Disposer of earth, and all that it inhabits, but of admiration and grati