suffer much. They suffer long, and are kind; verily, they have their
reward. But wherever Man is sufficiently raised above extreme poverty,
or brutal stupidity, to care for the comforts of the fireside, or the
bloom and ornament of life, Woman has always power enough, if she
choose to exert it, and is usually disposed to do so, in proportion to
her ignorance and childish vanity. Unacquainted with the importance of
life and its purposes, trained to a selfish coquetry and love of petty
power, she does not look beyond the pleasure of making herself felt at
the moment, and governments are shaken and commerce broken up to
gratify the pique of a female favorite. The English shopkeeper's wife
does not vote, but it is for her interest that the politician
canvasses by the coarsest flattery. France suffers no woman on her
throne, but her proud nobles kiss the dust at the feet of Pompadour
and Dubarry; for such flare in the lighted foreground where a Roland
would modestly aid in the closet. Spain (that same Spain which sang of
Ximena and the Lady Teresa) shuts up her women in the care of duennas,
and allows them no book but the breviary; but the ruin follows only
the more surely from the worthless favorite of a worthless queen.
Relying on mean precautions, men indeed cry peace, peace, where there
is no peace.

It is not the transient breath of poetic incense that women want; each
can receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway; it needs but
to become a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure of that. It
is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of authority which men
have appropriated to themselves. If demands, made in their behalf, lay
stress on any of these particulars, those who make them have not
searched deeply into the need. The want is for that which at once
includes these and precludes them; which would not be forbidden power,
lest there be temptation to steal and misuse it; which would not have