In the estimation of foreigners—­of those great critics of whom Jeffrey and Mackintosh were the representatives—­Madame de Stael has won the proud fame of being the most powerful writer her country has produced since Voltaire and Rousseau.  Historically she is memorable for inaugurating a new period of literary history.  With her began a new class of female authors, whose genius was no longer confined to letters and memoirs and sentimental novels.  I need not enumerate the long catalogue of illustrious literary women in the nineteenth century in France, in Germany, in England, and even in the United States.  The greatest novelist in England, since Thackeray, was a woman.  One of the greatest writers on political economy, since Adam Smith, was a woman.  One of the greatest writers in astronomical science was a woman.  In America, what single novel ever equalled the success of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?  What schools are better kept than those by women?  And this is only the beginning, since it is generally felt that women are better educated than men, outside of the great professions.  And why not, since they have more leisure for literary pursuits than men?  Who now sneers at the intellect of a woman?  Who laughs at blue-stockings?  Who denies the insight, the superior tact, the genius of woman?  What man does not accept woman as a fellow-laborer in the field of letters?  And yet there is one profession which they are more capable of filling than men,—­that of physicians to their own sex; a profession most honorable, and requiring great knowledge, as well as great experience and insight.

Why may not women cope with men in the proudest intellectual tournaments?  Why should they not become great linguists, and poets, and novelists, and artists, and critics, and historians?  Have they not quickness, brilliancy, sentiment, acuteness of observation, good sense, and even genius?  Do not well-educated women speak French before their brothers can translate the easiest lines of Virgil?  I would not put such gentle, refined, and cultivated creatures,—­these flowers of Paradise, spreading the sweet aroma of their graces in the calm retreats from toil and sin,—­I would not push them into the noisy arena of wrangling politics, into the suffocating and impure air of a court of justice, or even make them professors in a college of unruly boys; but because I would not do them this great cruelty, do I deny their intellectual equality, or seek to dim the lustre of the light they shed, or hide their talents under the vile bushel of envy, cynicism, or contempt?  Is it paying true respect to woman to seek to draw her from the beautiful sphere which she adorns and vivifies and inspires,—­where she is a solace, a rest, a restraint, and a benediction,—­and require of her labors which she has not the physical strength to perform?  And when it is seen how much more attractive the wives and daughters of favored classes have made themselves by culture, how much more capable