WOMAN AS FRIEND.

The subject of this lecture is Paula, an illustrious Roman lady of rank
and wealth, whose remarkable friendship for Saint Jerome, in the latter
part of the fourth century, has made her historical. If to her we do not
date the first great change in the social relations of man with woman,
yet she is the most memorable example that I can find of that exalted
sentiment which Christianity called out in the intercourse of the sexes,
and which has done more for the elevation of society than any other
sentiment except that of religion itself.

Female friendship, however, must ever have adorned and cheered the
world; it naturally springs from the depths of a woman's soul. However
dark and dismal society may have been under the withering influences of
Paganism, it is probable that glorious instances could be chronicled of
the devotion of woman to man and of man to woman, which was not
intensified by the passion of love. Nevertheless, the condition of
women in the Pagan world, even with all the influences of civilization,
was unfavorable to that sentiment which is such a charm in social life.

The Pagan woman belonged to her husband or her father rather than to
herself. As more fully shown in the discussion of Cleopatra, she was
universally regarded as inferior to man, and made to be his slave. She
was miserably educated; she was secluded from intercourse with
strangers; she was shut up in her home; she was given in marriage
without her consent; she was guarded by female slaves; she was valued
chiefly as a domestic servant, or as an animal to prevent the extinction
of families; she was seldom honored; she was doomed to household
drudgeries as if she were capable of nothing higher; in short, her lot
was hard, because it was unequal, humiliating, and sometimes degrading,