emblems of her alliance, and means of on independent life. There she
passed her days, sustained by her own exertions, and true to her
supposed engagement.

In any tribe, we believe, a woman, who lived as if she was betrothed
to the Sun, would be tolerated, and the rays which made her youth
blossom sweetly, would crown her with a halo in age.

There is, on this subject, a nobler view than heretofore, if not the
noblest, and improvement here must coincide with that in the view
taken of marriage. "We must have units before we can have union," says
one of the ripe thinkers of the times.

If larger intellectual resources begin to be deemed needful to Woman,
still more is a spiritual dignity in her, or even the mere assumption
of it, looked upon with respect. Joanna Southcote and Mother Anne Lee
are sure of a band of disciples; Ecstatica, Dolorosa, of enraptured
believers who will visit them in their lowly huts, and wait for days
to revere them in their trances. The foreign noble traverses land and
sea to hear a few words from the lips of the lowly peasant girl, whom
he believes especially visited by the Most High. Very beautiful, in
this way, was the influence of the invalid of St. Petersburg, as
described by De Maistre.

Mysticism, which may be defined as the brooding soul of the world,
cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The
mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind
towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was
heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the thought, that, if
it be true, as the legend says, that Humanity withers through a fault