homeliest principles assume forms of beauty. In intellectual pursuits
she is destined to excel by her fine sensibilities, her nice
observations, and exquisite tastes, while man is appointed to
investigate the laws of abstruse sciences, and perform in literature
and art the bolder flights of genius. She may surpass him in
representing life and manners, and in the composition of letters,
memoirs, and moral tales, in descriptive poetry, and in certain styles
of music and painting, and even in sculpture. But she will never write
an Iliad or a Paradise Lost, or tragedies like those of Aeschylus. She
will never rival Demosthenes in producing a political oration, nor
a massive philosophic history like Thucydides. She will not paint a
Madonna like Raphael, nor chisel an Apollo Belvedere. The logic of
Aristotle, the polemics of Augustine, the prodigious onsets of a
Luther, the Institutes of a Calvin, the Novum Organum of Bacon, the
Principia of Newton, the Cosmos of Humboldt--the like of these she
will never achieve, nor is it desirable that she should.

Women seldom invent. There are all manner of inventions, often
hundreds of applications in a single day, for patents at the Patent
Office, yet among them there are no female applicants. Woman cannot
compete with man in a long course of mental labor. The female mind is
rather quiet and timid than fiery and driving. It admires rather than
covets the great exploits of the other sex. Woman never excelled
in architecture. To her belong the gentler arts of quiet life and
retirement, where she has power to soften and refine the heart of
him who is accustomed to battle with the elements and the forces of
external nature.

We might speak at length of woman's gentle nature, present striking
examples of female submission, endurance, and heroism, and speak in