WRETCHED indeed, would be the condition of our species, if we were irrevocably doomed to be the victims, as we are the produce of time. Like the beasts of the field, we should grow up from the imbecility of childhood to the decrepitude of age, acquiring animal strength one day which we were to lose the next; and after we had shed the bloom of our youth, would possess nothing which could claim the admiration, or even respect of our fellow creatures. But happily for mankind, we are blessed with faculties, which though increased, are seldom diminished by length of years. He whose wisdom is enlarged with age, will lose scarcely any thing which he ought to value by continuation of life. The vigorous efforts of manhood may be more admired, but the sober wisdom of age will always be respected. Even after the loss of those powers which once ennobled and exalted the possessor to the highest summit of human greatness, we look with an almost idolatrous veneration on the emaciated frame which has now become. the consecrated depository of decayed genius. But how little of this pious and consoling sentiment do we entertain for the fair sex. From them every day takes away something of that fading beauty which is so rarely possessed, and so transiently enjoyed. Their infancy passes away without real pleasure, the bloom of youth is but for an hour, and their age destitute of all those intellectual enjoyments which alone can make it attractive, or even happy. These considerations have often suggested to my mind the enquiry, whether they have been consigned to this miserable state of uncertain and transitory bliss by nature, or whether it is the effect of art. I was convinced that they never attained those powers of the mind which make the age of man more illustrious than his youth, only, because we have prevented them from doing so, that they are perfect by nature but are crippled by education, But thinking it more becoming the gallantry of a young gentleman than of an Old Bachelor, to undertake the defence of their cause, I have, after many entreaties, obtained from GALEN some reasoning on the subject, which

I long ago promised to the world. If it should be adopted in the education of young ladies, I doubt not that we might say of the next age as Horace does of an individual.

Time to them shall count each day
Which from these it takes away.

But here it is, let the reader judge for himself.

My Dear Uncle,

MAY 1, 1813.

I am sorry to be reminded of my promise to write to you on the subject of Dr Rush's opinion of the female mind, by so melancholy an occurrence as the death of its author Poets and orators are accustomed to mourn for the loss of their companions. Moschus invokes the Nightingales of the groves, and the streams of Arethusa, to murmur their soft sorrows for the death of Bion. Gray, after the lapse of centuries, wakes his plaintive lyre to the memory of the lost companions of his tuneful art," who were murdered by Edward. Cicero forgets every sentiment of dislike which rivalry could inspire, in his eulogy on Hortensius, whose loss he deplores, not as that of one whose competition diminished the splendor of his life, but as a companion and fellow-laborer in the same glorious undertaking. Surely, then, I may be pardoned the indulgence of dwelling for a moment on the memory of Dr. Rush, who has been so recently lost to the world. I cannot boast the honor of calling myself his rival; to me he was a friend and an instructor, to his profession an ornament, to mankind a benefactor. Nothing that I could do could add to his happiness during life, nothing that I can say can increase the lustre of his reputation, now that he is no more. To a great, comprehensive, and pervading mind, was in him united a warmth and energy of fancy, which few of his profession ever possessed.

With a genius so active, and an imagination so strong, it was but natural that he should sometimes adopt opinions more ingenious than true. Among these may I think be ranked that which I am about to examine, which may in general terms be stated to be, that the capacity of man for intellectual attainments is less than that of woman. They are said to possess more fancy and less judgment, a greater propensity to the frivolities of Romance but less aptitude for the severer studies of sci

ence.

That the intellectual powers of women are, under the present state of things, inferior to those of men, is no better proof of any natural imbecility of intellect, than the inferiority of the unlearned is, that they are born with less capacity for improvement than the learned. The fact which is the foundation of the inference, is as undisputed in the one case as in the other. Let us then examine whether it may not be accounted for on the same princi ples: If we find there are causes which certainly exist, Sufficient to account for the difference of capacity in the two sexes, it will not only be illiberal, but unphilosophical to resort to other causes which are unknown. For it may be laid down as a rule of reasoning in morals as well as in physics, that it is unreasonable to assign more Causes for the appearances of things, than are both true. and sufficient to account for the phenomena.

In the first place, I would ask how do we learn that their minds are inferior to those of men ? Ey never ob serving them to perform those great cxploits, or to exercise those abilities which have adorned many men in eve-. ry age of the civilized world. The indications of such abilities are great capacity for conducting wars, reputas: tion for eloquence, useful discoveries in science, or a talent for clegant composition. The motives which make the possession of any one of these desired are, ambition of power, love of fame, of riches, or as Plato says, the love of philosophy itself. But women cannot from the natu ral feebleness of their frames undergo the fatigues and hardships incident to a military life; they are excluded, in some countries by law, and in others by custom, from all deliberative bodies, the proper theatres of cloquence;: so that they are left to cultivate, if any, the department of science only. Now the customs of civilized nations have imposed so many restraints upon women, have so scrupulously secluded them from the gaze and admiration of the world, that nothing would be thought more unbecoming the delicacy of a lady than to set up (for example) as the inventress of steam engines, the defender of the hydrostatic paradox, or to enter the list of contro-; versial writers on Politics or Theology. So that the only possible motive they can have for cultivating the only region of knowledge which is left them, is the love of Philosophy itself. Before we go. further m this inquiry. it would be well to consider how many men in the world. from the day of its creation to the present hour, have devoted their lives to the solitude of the scholastic cell, when cheered by no hope but that of being wise, and an. imated by no passion but the love of knowledge. The

number, if it could be ascertained, would, I imagine, tame our exulting pride.

I may be asked how it has happened that men have always gained the ascendancy over women in the outset, unless they did so by superior sagacity. They have done it, my dear uncle, by physical force. They compel the women to perform the drudgeries of life while, they spend the day in the recreations of the chase or in indolence at home. They occupied their own minds as they pleased, and directed the exertions of their wives as they pleased. Without making a parade of ancient learning for the purpose of establishing this fact, I refer you to Captain Cook's account of the state of society among the inhabitants of Nootka Sound, and to the state of savage life as it is generally known to exist in Ame rica.

These reasons alone appear to me to be sufficient to account for the very few instances upon record of great powers of mind being displayed by women, but when united with that difference of education which men first imposed by force and now continue by custom, the conclusion is irresistible. For this difference of education, there is this additional reason. Women are constituted, by nature to be the nurses of children, while the superior energy & activity of man renders him more capable of providing a subsistence for the family: accordingly in all Countries, the economy of the house is assigned to them. But as if this end which they are ultimately' to reach, was the only one to which they are capable of attain-" ing, they are fitted by education for scarcely any other business or enjoyment. By the same mode of practical argument, we might justify the infanticide of the modern Chinese and ancient Spartans. For as our children must ultimately die, we should only anticipate the doom of Heaven by killing them, and because they were predestined for one object, prevent the accomplishment of any other. But as the certainty of death is only a stronger reason for enjoying life while it lasts, so, that a woman is to become a mother, to hang with anxious care over each vicissitude of her infant's life, to soothe unbidden each aching sense, and remove unasked each silent want, is only an additional reason why we should enable her to find consolations to a mother's inquietude or widow's sorrows in the pleasures of literature, That one of the objects for which they were created was to attend to children is then, neither a proof of inferiority of capacity nor that their minds such as they are, should not be cultivated. Still it has every where been adopted, and we

think it quite enough that girls should devote the first ten or twelve years of their lives to learning to read and write their own language. Their education is completed according to this course, at the period when that of a boy fairly begins; their minds are turned out on the world at the age of twelve or fourteen, naked almost as they came into it, while the important interval between twelve and eighteen is unprofitably consumed in spoiling paper with colors, producing discord on the Piano, and dancing out of time to the violin. They are then married and come to their ultimatum of keeping house and "chronicling small beet," while boys have been successively whipped from the grammar school through the universities, and are even now illy prepared to enter on the business of an active profession. After all this misapplication of a young lady's time, she is transferred from the romping boarding school to the solitude of the Country to yawn with disconsolate fatuity over the frag ments of her broken instrumeut, and the faded landscapes of her youthful limnership, and we console her by deriding her ignorance of Greek and Mathematics.

I submit it to your candor, whether this picture of female education in this country, and its consequences, be not, in the general, too true? I admit that there are some brilliant excepti ns to it; and these exceptions confirm my argument that the inferiority of women, in the walks of science and literature, results not from any inlierent defect of genius, but from the unpardonable and even infamous manner, in which their education is neg lected?

These reasons are amply sufficient to account for the actual difference of mind between the two sexes. But those gentlemen who have dissected and analysed the subject with the dexterity of surgeons and the sagacious curiosity of Philosophers, would imagine I had not perceived the true point of all their reasoning, if I were to pass over in silence their metaphysical distinction. This distinction when examined, becomes a strong confirma. tion of the argument I have already advanced. For as I have explained the whole difference of capacity by the difference of education and the effect of custom, so each distinguishing characteristic of the mind may be accounted for by the same causes. It is the synthesis and analysis of chemistry which reciprocally test the truth of conclusions derived from either. We have examined the compound; let us now consider the elements which compose it.