to balance, or where to bestow your admiration. The acuteness of
Aristotle--the purity of Plato--the calm, unrepented satisfaction of
Socrates--the varied lore of Epicurus, and the lofty teachings of Zeno,
have alternately attracted or absorbed your attention. Permit me to
suppose, that the high-toned ethics of the Stoics, and their elevation
of mind, which could teach its frail companion, the body, the proud
lesson of insensibility to pain, have won your peculiar complaisance.
Yet, while meting out to them the full measure of your applause, have
you ever recollected that modern times--that your own country came in
competition for a share of fame! Has it occurred to you that your own
sex--even the most delicate and tender part of it--exceeded the ancient
Stoics in the voluntary infliction of pain, and extinction of pity? Yes;
some of the timid and beautiful members of this seminary may enter the
lists with Zeno, Cleanthus, and Chrysippus, and cherish no slight hope
of victory. I trust to prove to you that the ancient and sublime Stoics
were very tyros in comparison with many a lady of our own times. In
degree of suffering, extent of endurance, and in perfection of
concealment, they must yield the palm. I do assure you, that, its most
illustrious masters--fruitful as they were in tests to try the
body--never invented, imagined, nor would have been able to sustain that
torture of tight-lacing which the modern belle steadily inflicts without
shrinking, and bears without repining sometimes to her very grave. True,
they might sometimes have broken a bone, or plucked out an eye, and been
silent; but they never grappled iron and whalebone into the very nerves
and life-blood of their system. They might possibly have passed a dagger
too deeply info the heart, and died; but they never drew a ligature of
suffocation around it, and _expected to live_! They never tied up the
mouths of the millions of air-vessels in the lungs, and then taxed them
to the full measure of action and respiration. Even Pharaoh only
demanded bricks without straw for a short time; but the fashionable lady