1864.] 3Q3 [Price. 



tance of property, the two sexes were placed as nearly on a level as 

 the nature of such warlike societies would admit." (Middle Ages, 

 329.) It was a necessity of the military services to be rendered 

 under the feudal system, that the eldest son should be preferred to 

 the inheritance of lands held by military tenure. Hallam acknow- 

 ledges that " A great respect for the female sex had always been a 

 remarkable characteristic of the Northern nations. The German 

 women were high-spirited and virtuous; qualities which might be 

 causes or consequences of the veneration with which they were re- 

 garded." He should have said these qualities were both causes and 

 consequences of that veneration. He speaks of the spirit of gallantry, 

 cherished as the animating principle of chivalry, as due to the pro- 

 gressive refinement of society in the twelfth century, and he might 

 also have acknowledged it a cause to produce that refinement; for 

 by action and reaction, causes and effects for good or for evil, are of 

 perpetual reciprocal operation ; and hence the greater encouragement 

 ever to strive for the good, since effects ever become causes in a 

 ceaseless concatenation. Can we say less, when this our age rejoices 

 in the beneficent effects of a sentiment that pervaded the breasts of 

 our rude ancestors, two thousand years ago, in the forests of Germany ? 

 a sentiment then peculiar to them, and destined to become yet brighter 

 in their descendants, and to illumine more widely the world, if men 

 and women will but conceive and practise the highest excellence of 

 which they are capable. 



It is in Heeren's philosophical reflections upon Greece, that we 

 find the truest expression of the source of European superiority over 

 all other nations, howsoever much we may differ or agree as to the 

 effect of climate or physical causes. 



Similarity of climate does traverse the circumferences of the globe, 

 in all its different latitudes, though the same degree of temperature 

 follows waving geographical lines ; yet tlie habits and manners of 

 every people are diversified in degrees, much beyond all that can 

 justly be ascribed to the single cause of the presence of heat or cold, 

 clouds or sunshine ; and immeasurably beyond the single cause of 

 climate do the civilization, intelligence and power of the Europeans 

 and their American descendants surpass those of all other nations. 

 And, if all the causes of that difference be examined and considered, 

 it is believed that no single one, other than religion, can justly claim 

 an equal influence over the formation of character with that which 

 results from the European family, and woman's power in the family, 

 as there and here constituted. 



