Of course she enforces her assertions by citing the women who have distinguished themselves in every position of responsibility, military, political and intellectual, and only refrains from multiplying instances because of their number.  Not to quote those alone who have filled chairs of medicine with honor, she ingeniously remarks that the remedies classed as “an old woman’s recipe” are those oftenest prescribed, to the glory of her sex, who by patience, humanity and observation have invented without the help of Galen and Hippocrates an infinity of reliefs for the sick which their adherents can neither improve nor disapprove.  She makes her final point on the question of moral superiority.  It is sometimes stated “that some women have been more flagitious than any men, but that in nowise redounds to the dishonor of our sex in general. The corruption of the best is ever the worst:  should we grant this, ... it must be owned their number would at least balance the account.  I believe no one will deny but that at least upon the most moderate computation there are a thousand bad men to one bad woman.”  She winds up by an appeal to her own sex in the very spirit of Miss F.P.  Cobbe, the sum of which is to adjure women, for their own sakes, not to be silly.

How many contemporaries of George Selwyn had their eyes opened by this clear statement of their demerits there are no means of ascertaining.  But Sophia raised up at least one furious antagonist, who replied by a pamphlet called “MAN Superior to WOMAN, or a Vindication of Man’s Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, containing a Plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of SOPHIA.  By a GENTLEMAN.”  The first thing to be noted is, that whereas Sophia said her say in about fifty pages, the masculine reply covers seventy-eight in smaller print.  He opens by a “Dedication to the Ladies,” beginning, “Lovely creatures”—­an exordium which any woman of spirit would resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was to be expected.  His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire is pointless.  The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature.  His summary of woman’s character and occupations was given earlier, with more brevity and wit, and no less truth, by Pope.  To Sophia’s historical illustrations he opposes female types named Tremula, Bellnina, Novilia, etc.  But in truth the production is so excessively scurrilous that one needs to remember that those were the times of Congreve and Fielding to believe that the author could have the right to style himself “A GENTLEMAN.”  We shudder with pity for poor Sophia, who had such a mass of filth flung at her.  But that decorous personage is not disconcerted:  she does not lose her head or her temper, but opens her mouth with a