at her service.  When the all-conquering Dahomian army marched upon Abbeokuta, in 1851, they numbered ten thousand men and six thousand women; the women were, as usual, placed foremost in the assault, as being most reliable; and of the eighteen hundred bodies left dead before the walls, the vast majority were of women.  The Hospital of the Invalides, in Paris, has sheltered, for half a century, a fine specimen of a female soldier, “Lieutenant Madame Bulan,” now eighty-three years old, decorated by Napoleon’s own hand with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and credited on the hospital books with “seven years’ service,—­seven campaigns,—­ three wounds,—­several times distinguished, especially in Corsica, in defending a fort against the English.”  But these cases, though interesting to the historian, are still exceptional, and the instinctive repugnance they inspire is condemnatory, not of women, but of war.

The reason, then, for the long subjection of woman has been simply that humanity was passing through its first epoch, and her full career was to be reserved for the second.  As the different races of man have appeared successively upon the stage of history, so there has been an order of succession of the sexes.  Woman’s appointed era, like that of the Scandinavian tribes, was delayed, but not omitted.  It is not merely true that the empire of the past has belonged to man, but that it has properly belonged to him; for it was an empire of the muscles, enlisting at best but the lower powers of the understanding.  There can be no question that the present epoch is initiating an empire of the higher reason, of arts, affections, aspirations; and for that epoch the genius of woman has been reserved.  The spirit of the age has always kept pace with the facts, and outstripped the statutes.  Till the fulness of time came, woman was necessarily kept a slave to the spinning-wheel and the needle; now higher work is ready, peace has brought invention to her aid, and the mechanical means for her emancipation are ready also.  No use in releasing her, till man, with his strong arm, had worked out his preliminary share in civilization.  “Earth waits for her queen” was a favorite motto of Margaret Fuller’s; but it would be more correct to say that the queen has waited for her earth, till it could be smoothed and prepared for her occupancy.  Now Cinderella may begin to think of putting on her royal robes.

Everybody sees that the times are altering the whole material position of woman; but most persons do not appear to see the inevitable social and moral changes which are also involved.  As has been already said, the woman of ancient history was a slave to physical necessities, both in war and peace.  In war she could do too little, in peace she did too much, under the material compulsions which controlled the world.  How could the Jews, for instance, elevate woman?  They could not spare her from the wool and the flax and the candle that goeth not out by night.  In