the events connected with our great struggle for freedom.  He dwelt with tenderness on our disappointments, and entered more fully into the humiliations suffered by women, than any man we ever met.  His views were as appreciative of the humiliation of woman, through the degradation of sex, as those expressed by John Stuart Mill in his wonderful work on “The Subjection of Women.”  He was intensely interested in Frances Power Cobbe’s efforts to suppress vivisection, and the last time I saw him he was presiding at a parlor meeting where Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell gave an admirable address on the cause and cure of the social evil.  Mr. Channing spoke beautifully in closing, paying a warm and merited compliment to Dr. Blackwell’s clear and concise review of all the difficulties involved in the question.

Reading so much of English reformers in our journals, of the Brights, McLarens, the Taylors; of Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler, and Octavia Hill, and of their great demonstrations with lords and members of Parliament in the chair,—­we had longed to compare the actors in those scenes with our speakers on this side of the water.  At last we met them one and all in great public meetings and parlor reunions, at dinners and receptions.  We listened to their public men in Parliament, the courts, and the pulpit; to the women in their various assemblies; and came to the conclusion that Americans surpass them in oratory and the conduct of their meetings.  A hesitating, apologetic manner seems to be the national custom for an exordium on all questions.  Even their ablest men who have visited this country, such as Kingsley, Stanley, Arnold, Tyndall, and Coleridge, have all been criticised by the American public for their elocutionary defects.  They have no speakers to compare with Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women.  The women, as a general rule, are more fluent than the men.

I reached England in time to attend the great demonstration in Glasgow, to celebrate the extension of the municipal franchise to the women of Scotland.  It was a remarkable occasion.  St. Andrew’s immense hall was packed with women; a few men were admitted to the gallery at half a crown apiece.  Over five thousand people were present.  When a Scotch audience is thoroughly roused, nothing can equal the enthusiasm.  The arrival of the speakers on the platform was announced with the wildest applause; the entire audience rising, waving their handkerchiefs, and clapping their hands, and every compliment paid the people of Scotland was received with similar outbursts.  Mrs. McLaren, a sister of John Bright, presided, and made the opening speech.  I had the honor, on this occasion, of addressing an audience for the first time in the Old World.  Many others spoke briefly.  There were too many speakers; no one had time to warm up to the point of eloquence.