peril of having their principles warped by that too indiscriminate
defence of right and wrong to which the professors of the law are
exposed. If we question their title to eminence as mathematicians, they
are exempted from the danger of looking for demonstration on subjects
which, by their very nature, are incapable of affording it. If they are
less conversant with the powers of Nature, the structure of the human
frame, and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies than philosophers,
physicians, and astronomers, they are delivered from the error into
which many of each of these have sometimes fallen, from the fatal habit
of resting on second causes, instead of referring all to the first. And
let women take comfort that in their very exemption from privileges
which they are sometimes disposed to envy, consist their security and
their happiness."

Thus spoke Hannah More at the age of fifty-four, with a wider experience
of society and a profounder knowledge of her sex than any Englishwoman
of the eighteenth century, and as distinguished for her intellectual
gifts and cultivation as she was for her social graces and charms,--the
pet and admiration of all who were great and good in her day, both among
men and women. Bear these facts in mind, ye obscure, inexperienced,
discontented, envious, ambitious seekers after notoriety or novelty!--ye
rebellious and defiant opponents of the ordinances of God and the laws
of Nature, if such women there are!--remember that the sentiments I have
just quoted came from the pen of a woman, and not of a man; of a woman
who was the best friend of her sex, and the most enlightened advocate of
their education that lived in the last century; and a woman who, if she
were living now, would undoubtedly be classed with those whom we call
strong-minded, and perhaps masculine and ambitious. She recognizes the
eternal distinction between the sphere of a man and the sphere of a
woman, without admitting any inferiority of woman to man, except in