this beautiful machine of the world, an immoveable chaotic mass throughout eternity.

Order necessarily supposes an arranger; an arranger, power; and power, subordination; we see it proved on every side of us: command is written in everlasting characters on the firmament, where the polar-star conducts the vessels of the deep, by its resistless control over the motion of the magnet. So, the heavens, "the earth, and all that are contained therein," obey an irresistible decree. Sovereignty is the prerogative of the Creator, submission, the duty of the created. Why then should the advocates of woman be offended, that she is held by an ordinance which binds the world? Why should they seek to disorder nature and unsex her loveliest work? Why bring forward claims to invest women with masculine properties; to place them at the helm of state and of war; to put the sword, or the tablet of laborious calculations into their hands; to encumber them with toils which their bodies are not able to sustain; and affiance them to duties, against which their minds. revolt? Wild enthusiasm may create a fanci

ful equality for woman; (for there never was a chimera too absurd to find a promulgator,) but the impartial eye of reason sees a radical difference in the constitution of the sexes, which for ever precludes the practicability of their filling the same stations in life.

Nature, in her mode of providing for the continuation of the human race, evinces her intention to confine women to domestic occupations. How destructive would it prove to the unborn generation, if they, who expected to be mothers, were to wear out their strength and endanger their lives, by the watchings of the camp, the senate, or the closet! How ill would it become the maternal bosom, to unbrace the warrior's steel, to give sustenance to the infant hanging to so hard a pillow; or to cradle its tender form amid volumes of jurisprudence, politics, or abstruse philosophy! Let men, whom nature hath not only endowed with adequate vigour, but left free to use it to effect, let them bear up the political sphere, and pursue scientific researches, even to the utmost stretch of human intellect: but the knowledge of virtue is woman's study. It is

comprised in few maxims; and if she seek it with sincerity, it alone will raise her soul to a pitch of sublimity not to be out-soared by

man.

The commonest observation may demonstrate that man and woman, from the first, had distinct commissions; yet such difference argues no inferiority in the essential spirit, which is the intellectual soul; that divine thing originating immediately from God, must in all beings be of the same perfect essence; but as it observes and acts through the medium of the senses, (by which it is enveloped,) it must, in a certain degree, be affected by their modifications. The soul we may liken to a musician, the body, to his instrument: accordingly as the keys are arranged and the notes set, the music will be strong, soft, good, bad, or indifferent. Man is constructed for bold and lofty harmonies; woman, composed for the gentle melodies of the heart. She was made to be beloved, not dreaded; to sooth, not disturb; to bind up wounds, not inflict them. She is the help-mate of man, the enviable distinction! (if

handmaid of God:

envy dare intrude on such holy precincts?) Gracious dispensation from the Most High, to be the partner of him who, made "a little lower than the angels, is crowned with glory and power!" To be heaven's selected agent throughout all ages, to comfort the wretched, to soften the pangs of disease, to heal a broken heart, and to lull the troubled soul of man into a peace that makes him dream of paradise! Who would barter this sacred privilege, this office of cup-bearer to the beneficent Jehovah, this power of shedding the balm of Gilead upon all that grieve, for the proudest prerogatives of command? True it is, that he who would be the master of all, must be the servant of all! Rational empire lies in ability to influence and effect the happiness of others; and this empire is not denied to woman; it is her inheritance, and she holds it by this charter,-"Whosoever will be great among ye, let them be your ministers; and whosoever will be chiefs among you, let them be your servants."

If the throne of benevolence be at the feet of the unhappy, affection owns no power that

is not devoted to the object of her vows. Love is never convinced that he reigns, till he finds that he may serve; and woman, from her constitution, is more inclined than man is, to this generous disposition. The sensitive perceptions of men are not so delicate, delightful, and innocent, as those of women; hence they are not so cherished, nor so stationary. "Man is stung with passion, woman is touched by it. In the one instance, torment makes the sufferer eager to rid himself of pain, either by satisfying desire, or extinguishing it ;" and in the other, the softness of the perception excites only a new feeling, which, by awakening a thousand tender and pleasing sensibilities, is welcomed rather than repelled: hence, from the peculiar delicacy with which the sensitive soul of woman receives all its impressions, they are retained and made subjects of frequent review; the delighted spirit descends into this cabinet of beautiful pictures, and while listening to the sweet romances which imagination tells of each, forgets to re-ascend and follow reason over the hard grounds of disagreeable probabilities and consequences.