ence among women, will deny it?) how unworthily do we behave, in treating them as we do? particularly, when we address ourselves to their intellectual faculties.

I am led into these remarks, by having met of late, in several of the periodical publications of the day, (yours among the number, for which that wicked ODoherty will have to answer, yet,) a number of little, short, spicy impertinencies respecting women, which are excessively exasperating. Some, to be sure, are whimsical and striking enough; some, wicked and spiteful; some, very funny; some, very silly; and some, very startling; but all, every one, I believe, likely to do more mischief, than was intended, when they were first let off.

There are men, you know, who cannot be laughed or stared out of countenance, where woman is the subject of their ribaldry; and yet, if we get in a huff about the matter, it only makes them worse. 66 Poh, poh!" they say, "you take the affair altogether too seriously—it's only a little bit o' fun, you know!" Fun! to be flinging squibs and crackers about, in teaparties; transmitting electricity by post; and hysterics, in the shape of a love-letter, (with fulminating powder in the seal,) a criticism, or a copy of verses, to this or that fine woman. Fun, indeed! very like the fun of the whale-fishers, blowing up whales in the family way-with Congreve rock

ets.

In fact, I had begun to think of undertaking some of these profane young gentlemen, myself; and had actually tossed up a considerable quantity of retribution, in my own mind, when your August Number (an au-gust number, it is, by the way,) came to me, and I found the thing already done so much to my liking, that I have abandoned all that relates to particular women.

Still, however, four or five pages, in aid of the good cause, may not be amiss; a cause, that concerns, directly and materially, one-half, if not twohalves, of the whole human family.

It is bad policy to depreciate women. I would sooner teach them to overvalue than to undervalue themselves, so long, at least, as they are our companions for life, and the mothers of our children. We all act according to our own standard of self-estimation;

and, the more sensitive we are, the more are we influenced, in our behaviour, by the opinion of others concerning us. Women are more sensitive than we; and, therefore, more at the mercy of opinion. It is women, after all, that form our characters. I never knew an extraordinary man, whose mother was an ordinary woman; or whose wife was a fool, unless he married her in his dotage.

But among other pleasantries of the day concerning women, it has come to be said so frequently of late, that women are inferior to men, in their intellectual faculties; and said, in such a variety of ways, that, if the theory be not overhaled, in a serious manner soon, it may become a settled popular belief.

Wherefore, a word or two on that, in a serious way. I maintain that women are not inferior to men, but only unlike men, in their intellectual properties; and I believe that all the confusion of thought, which has arisen upon the subject, is owing to this one circumstance; that men have attempted to compare, for certain purposes, things which cannot be compared, for those purposes; and that all, who have written upon the subject, have mistaken what is different from a certain standard, (which very standard was unphilosophical and uncertain,) with what is inferior to it; that they have confounded similitude with quality, resemblance with value, in trying two different things, by one and the same standard, when they should have been tried by two separate standards.

Would it be philosophical to say that women are inferior to men, in their animal organization, because they are not the same? Are women more degenerated from their original standard? Are they worse fitted for their offices and appointments (in their physical properties) than men?

Things unlike cannot be compared, so as to justify any inference respecting the inferiority of either. Homer and Shakespeare are unlike; but who shall decide upon the superiority of either? The Thames and the Atlantic; the Transfiguration and the Laocoon; Demosthenes and Alexander; Handel's Messiah, and the enterprize of Columbus-they are all unike. Yet who but a poet, an orator, or a madman, would, thereby, infer the superiority of either? How are they to be

compared?(by a moralist or a mathematician, I mean,)—for poets, orators, and madmen, will compare anything; and take especial delight, in detecting resemblances, which are invisible to other men.

It has been said that women have less imagination than we have. Now, I believe it capable of proof, that women have more imagination than men. I am no flatterer of women; but I love the truth. I am no advocate for their intellectual superiority, take all their faculties together; but I believe that they are equal to men; and that, while they are inferior in some things, they are superior in others, by nature; that, while they have less of one quality, intellectual or physical, they have more of another, such as that of imagination, for example.

I hold that, as women are unlike men in their bodies, so are they unlike them in their minds; and that all the education in the world (notwithstanding the visions of Rousseau, Mary Wolstoncraft, and all their followers) would never make women more like men, in their intellectual organization, than in their animal organization. Do what you will; train them as you will, in athletick or warlike amusements, and there will always be as much difference between the minds, as there is between the bodies of men and women-a difference, that is essential and sexual. A little patience, and I shall endeavour to prove this.

Education will do much, but it cannot do everything. It may, now and then, produce a woman stronger in body, and stronger in mind, than many, who are thought strong men. But then, all the education in the world will never produce a woman as strong as the strongest man, either in mind or body; and all the training in the world will never make the female part of the human family equal in bodily or intellectual power-by power, I mean downright and absolute strength-to the male part of the human family. Education will never do this, until it shall be able to give a mane to the lioness, and plumage, or voice, to the female bird.

But then, the female will always be endowed with other properties, in a greater degree than the male; each will have some, of which the other is destitute, either entirely, or in partbut all will be fitted and designed for the mutual comfort of both.

Imagination, I believe, to be always in proportion to animal sensibility, and to the delicacy of animal organization; women, I believe, to have more animal sensibility, because they are more delicately organized, than men; and, therefore, do I believe that women have more imagination than men.

And I contend further, that, if women were educated precisely as men are; and, that, if they had the same opportunities and excitements, that men have-with no more discouragements

they would be more fruitful in works of imagination-in poetry, musick, sculpture, painting, and eloquence, than men are; but altogether less fruitful, in the abstract and profound sciences; in mathematicks, theology, logick, &c. &c.

But then, whatever were the education of women; and however fruitful they might be, in one department, or barren in another, I contend that there would always be an essential, specifick difference, between the productions of women, and those of men.

This difference would not be so apparent, in the common productions of either; but it would be, in a comparison of all, that women have produced, with all that men have produced; and thoroughly evident, and express, in the leading productions of both.

There might be women, who would write like men; and men, who would write like women. But then, the first among women, would write wholly different from the first among men. There would always be a something in the poetry, musick, painting, sculpture, and eloquence of women, to distinguish them from the poetry, musick, painting, sculpture, and eloquence of men, wherever the character of either was decided and peculiar enough, to make it distinguishable from other productions, in the same branch, by the same sex.

Take an example-Angelica Kauffman's pictures-all her men are women; so are those of Mr Westallbeautiful apparitions, with nothing to shock or terrify. A picture, by one of these painters, might, on some accounts, be mistaken for a work of the other; but would hers be ever mistaken, for the work of a giant in painting; or his, for that of a giantess ?

The women of Rubens, now, are very often, (particularly, in his more vigorous compositions,) downright,

powerful men. Rubens was one of the giants. Nobody, therefore, would find any difficulty in distinguishing one of his women, from the woman of any female painter that ever did live, or ever will live. And yet easier would it be, to distinguish his men from her

men.

But let Rubens have undertaken such women as Angelica Kauffman, or Rosalba Carriera did, (in her inimitable portraits,) and you would see, at once, that Rubens drew his women from men-just as Angelica Kauffman drew her men from women; that each took for models, those, who least resembled their own sex: that he painted from feminine men-she, from masculine women.

And so, do I contend, would be the manifestation of female genius, in every other department of art or science. It would be less courageous, magnificent, and sublime. But it would be more delicate, beautiful, and affecting. The woman would be found lurking in whatever she did. There would be more tenderness, more delicacy, more timidity in it.

Put all the men and women of the earth in training. Choose the greatest of men, and the greatest of women. Give them the same subject, for a drama, a poem, a painting, or an oratorio; and the result, I say, would be an unequivocal revelation of their several distinguishing sexual proper

ties.

Let it be the DELUGE, for example. The woman would think only of the day before, the man of the day after, the destruction of the world. She would rely on the calm sunset-the tranquillity of the skies-the beauty of the blossoming herbagethe powerful and grand population of the world, before the giants were destroyed: He, upon the time, when the skies were dissolving-the whole earth in travail-and the whole animal creation shrieking upon the waters. She would pour in the melodies of evening, shower and star-light; he, the noise of thunder, the rushing of wind and flame.

She would imagine the distraction and sorrow of a mother, moaning over her half-drowned babe-her newlyborn; the consternation and beauty of a wife, reaching over a precipice, at the drifting body of her husband; her dark hair flashing over the waters; or,

the doating tenderness of some pale, fond girl, asleep in her dead lover's bosom, under a mass of overthrown trees, whose foliage was yet green; or, both in some haunted cavern, among sea-shells; the waters rising slowly about them, on every side, without being perceived.

But the male would put forth his power, in the fierce delineation of some youthful giant, overthrown by the waters, and bearing away the great branches of some tree, which had abandoned their hold; or convulsed, and wrestling, in the waters, with a shadow, perhaps, of unintelligible shape and proportions; or, of many beautiful women, swept away, as it were, while embracing at some festival; their long melancholy tresses (encumbered with drenched flowers, intertangled with glittering and obscene reptiles) afloat upon the still, dead

wave.

And so, too, were the parting of Hector and his wife to be given for the subject of a picture,-though the execution of both might be wonderful, how unlike they would be! You may swear that the female Hector would be a younger man, with redder lips, a whiter forehead, and straighter legs; and that the male Andromache would have a sort of unnatural determination, and loftiness of stature, look, and bearing.

Educate men and women alike, in every respect, give them the same opportunities, and the same occupations-make no difference between them, and a giantess, like Joanna Baillie, or Madame De Stäel, may appear, now and then, among them; but then she will be, in certain points, only a female giant-no match for the male giants. She might be able to overlook the second class of men ; but the first class would certainly overlook her. She would be, after all, in the masculine operations of her mind, or body, only a woman-" a giant among pigmies-a one-eyed monarch of the blind."

But then, our male giants would be, in the same way, but sad pretenders to the beauty and gracefulness of the female-their affection for their young, and their essentially feminine properties.

But, I have promised some endeavour at proof. I have asserted that imagination is always in proportion to

animal sensibility.-Is this denied? Look about you, and call to mind those persons, poets, orators, or musicians, who are most remarkable for imagination; and you will find them all, more or less distinguishable from other men, by the delicacy of their organs, or, in other words, by their greater animal sensibility-their more exquisite powers of sensation. Are they not, without one exception, volatile, hasty, capricious, and petulant? Do they ever pursue any one thing, steadily? Are they ever great proficients in science? Have you ever heard of a great mathematician, mechanick, or theologian, who was remarkable for his imagination, or at all remarkable for his animal sensibility, or very irritable in his temper, or exceedingly alive to the delicacies of touch, flavour, sound, sight, or smell?-never. For, if he had been so, he would never have been distinguished for abstract, severe, thoughtful science.

Call to mind that man, whom you believe to have the most imagination; and, my life on it, that you find him the most irritable creature alive, for his years and constitution—the most unaccountable in his whims—and the most exquisitely sensible to all that can affect the senses. Will not the ringing of a glass, carelessly struck; the catching of a nail in a silk handkerchief; any irregularity in the arrangement of the table; or any unhappy combination of colour in the furniture; or the smell of cheese, or new paint, (or anything else, when he is out of humour,) keep him in one eternal fidget? Yet you never knew this to be the case with a man of profound science-no; for, if it were, he could not pursue his investigation, for a single hour;-no-because men of profound science have little or no animal sensibility, if they had, they could not study profoundly-they would be beset with continual allurement, provocation, and sources of uneasiness.

Milton was blind. So was Homer. Their poetry is all the better for it. And had they both been deaf, palsied, incapable of tasting or smelling, (after their minds were full of images, provided that their intellectual faculties were not thereby impaired,) their poetry would have been yet better. There would have been a more devout and blazing concentration, steadily, upon one point, of all their genius and power,

without any interruption from appetite,

or sense.

Very devout people shut their eyes, you know. So we all do, when we desire to think, steadily; and be alone with any subject. Now, if they could stop their ears, and seal up every other avenue to sensation, as easily as they could their eyes, would they not be able to think more steadily, and more intensely? and if we were able to become, in all our animal functions, like stocks and stones, at will, without hearing or smelling, tasting or feeling, would not our abstraction be more profound?

Nay, have we not, every one of us, continual proof of this? Do not men appear sometimes to lose all their animal consciousness, while deeply engaged in study, calculation, reading or composition ?-Do we not find that those, whose senses are continually on the alert, are never severe thinkers? And, on the contrary, if we see a very absent man, as he is called; that is, a man who neither hears, sees, tastes, feels, nor smells, like other men, do we not immediately conclude, that he is a severe thinker, occupied in profound meditation? Men will hear their own names called, without knowing it; suffer their shins to be roasted alive, (like Sir Isaac Newton,) without feeling it; and endure the extremity of hunger, if their watches are wrong, without any suspicion of the cause.

And why? because no man of acute animal sensibility can think so severely; and those who are able so to think, prove, thereby, that, whatever their animal sensibility may have been, it is no longer sufficiently active, or troublesome, to interfere with the sublime abstractions of the mind, when such men become all intellect, all soul.

Now, let us try the question in another shape, for a minute or two. Suppose the organ of hearing, in some profound mathematician, to become as exquisitely sensible, as it is, under certain diseases (in what is called a nervous fever, for example,) when the ticking of a watch is enough to drive one distracted. Suppose the whole surface of his body to become as exquisitely sensible also, to the touch, as it is, in many disorders, when a breath makes the blood tingle; suppose the organ of sight quickened in the same proportion, so that every fluctuation of light and shadow, and every combination

of colour, should attract his regard, in spite of himself; and that every other bodily faculty and sense were exasperated and afflicted in the same degree. And all this, while his intellectual powers are as healthy and vigorous as ever-I ask how it would be possible for him to continue the character of a profound mathematician; or even to think, steadily, for a minute. Think steadily! why, one might as well expect a man to think steadily, in the situation of Regulus; or, after he had been flayed alive, anointed with honey, and left, in the hot sunshine, to be devoured by insects, like a St Domingo slave.

But what would I infer from this? Ans.-This, that where the intellectual faculties are equal, and other circumstances, (as education, age, &c. equal,) he who has the least bodily sensibility, will be able to think most abstractedly and steadily; and that he, who has most bodily sensibility, will be leust able to think, either abstractedly, or steadily.

Let us now take another step. I have asked who are they, that are most remarkable for their imagination; and I ask again, if they are not men of delicate frame, and great sensibility of nerve, whose senses are surprisingly active and vigilant; continually taking impressions and collecting imagery, for future purposes? I would ask also, when the poetical faculty is in flower? is it not most vivid and brilliant in youth? or when the subject is in love; or after some fiery revolution of the animal spirits, of a similar nature ?—and, if the faculty of imagination does not become more and more reasonable, torpid, and ineffectual, as we grow older?-and just in proportion to the decrease of animal sensibility in our bodies? Is there a man alive, think you, of two-score, who can look back, with complacency, upon the poetry of his youth-or upon any other work of imagination, produced by him, in that season of sunshine? Probably not-and hence, I infer, that our estimate of imagination, as well as our imagination itself, undergoes a progressive change with our bodily sensibility-as we grow wiser and wiser. Full grown men are prone to regard works of imagination-even their own-as young men do, the frivolities and gay trifling of their boyhood.

Who ever heard of a robust, powerful man, with a fine imagination ?— nay, who ever heard of a man, with coarse hair, steady eyes, and a thick skin, who was at all remarkable for the faculty of imagination? Either may be distinguished for grander properties; but neither will be, for the lighter ones of the mind.

All men, who have been greatly, and peculiarly distinguished, for splendour and activity of imagination, so far as I know anything of them, have been men of inflammable bodily temperaments; great irritability of nervewith clear, changeable eyes, thin skin, and fine hair, like women.

We are now coming to a conclusion. I desire to make myself intelligible; and shall, therefore, avoid the use of terms and phrases, which are not universally understood. There is no need of great precision, for the present.

Now let us imagine a case, which must continually happen. Two children are born of the same intellectual capacities; one is robust, hardy, and not at all remarkable for animal sensibility-a healthy child, with organs of sensation like the multitude-nothing more. The other, we will suppose to be exceedingly delicate, tender, and sensible, with organs of sensation remarkably fine, active, and exciteable.

Give the first one a bauble to play with; and you will find it occupy him for hours, (after he has learned the use of his hands, I mean.) He will be insensible to everything else, for a time. All his faculties will be occupied upon that one thing. The ticking of a watch; the gingling of silver bells; or the colour of the coral; or the feeling of it in his mouth, will be enough to keep such a child quiet, for a considerable time. Why?-because, his animal sensibility being only of an ordinary degree, his attention is not disturbed by other sounds, and sights, &c.; and he is able to concentrate all his thinking faculty upon that one thing, which does engage him. Such a child, therefore, will be likely to think more abstractedly, and more profoundly, than if his animal sensibility were more acute; and will be more likely to excel in matters of science, research, and calculation, than his fellow, whom I shall presently describe. But then, while he will be more remarkable for a thoughtful, investigating temper,