1864.] 313 [Price. 



behests, spares her that laborious subtilizing which so often tends to 

 enmesh and obscure the truth, and enables her to see more clearly 

 through the intricate confusion of human relations, and fathom at 

 once the innermost springs of human being." This is modern German 

 testimony to an inherent quality in woman, from a highly cultivated 

 source, in a civilized age; yet in accord with that borne by Tacitus, 

 as to the ancestors of the same race, living on the same spot, nearly two 

 thousand years before, but then, by polite Rome, called " savage." 



The Baron Humboldt is evidently speaking of a woman of superior 

 intuitions and culture ; and unless the wife and mother be of an in- 

 telligence and disposition to enable her to fulfil her domestic duties 

 in a successful manner, all that is here averred to be her appropriate 

 and beneficent power and influence will be without its assumed foun- 

 dation. We see then what should be the endeavor, that woman may 

 fulfil her mission to the world ; we may also see what this should be 

 by countless examples; examples which should be made the prevail- 

 ing examples, that society may attain its highest, happiest condition. 

 Of such, we may agree, the poet is not extravagant in description 



and praise : 



" A being breathing thoughtful breath, 

 A traveller betwixt life and death ; 

 The reason fair, the temperate will. 

 Endurance, foresight, strength and skill." 



" With yet a spirit still and bright, 

 With something of an angel light." 



Wordsworth. 



And, elevating our views above the ordinary aifairs of life, it is in 

 the wife and daughter, with their higher susceptibility to a religious 

 faith, men find the most persuasive influence to believe and act as 

 they, with a purer purpose and more earnest hope ; since the fruits 

 are so surely demonstrative of the truth of their faith, in the practi- 

 cally seen beauty and happiness of holiness. Whatever may be the 

 difficulty or obstruction in the mind of the father of the family, none 

 who truly loves his children, and looks forward to their welfare 

 through life, and in its exit, but desires that they may possess the 

 pure and unhesitating faith of their mother; that they may the 

 better resist evil, and be sustained in trials, in sickness, and in death. 

 And it must be conceded that it is mainly in woman's more susceptible 

 sympathies and intuitive initiation in Christian truth, that she has 

 very often been a pioneer of Christianity and the world's civilization. 

 For one, I confess to the long-enter.i.ined belief, that if woman had 



VOL. IX. — 2(i 



