Governments will never be perfect till all distinction between private and public virtue, private and public honour, be done away!  Who so fit an agent for the operation of this change as enlightened, unselfish woman?  Who so fit, in her twofold capacity of companion and early instructor, to teach men to prefer honour to gain, duty to ease, public to private interests, and God’s work to man’s inventions?  And shall it be said that women have no political existence, no political influence, when the very germs of political regeneration may spring from them alone, when the fate of nations yet unborn may depend upon the use which they make of the mighty influences committed to their care?  The blindness which sees not how these influences would be lessened by taking her out of the sphere assigned by Providence, if voluntary, is wicked—­if real, is pitiable.  As well might we desire the earth’s beautiful satellite to give place to a second sun, thereby producing the intolerable and glaring continuity of perpetual day.  Those who would be the agents of Providence must observe the workings of Providence, and be content to work also in that way, and by those means, which Almighty wisdom appoints.  There is infinite littleness in despising small things.  It seems paradoxical to say that there are no small things; our littleness and our aspiration make things appear small.  There are, morally speaking, no small duties.  Nothing that influences human virtue and happiness can be really trifling,—­and what more influences them than the despised, because limited, duties assigned to woman?  It is true, her reward (her task being done) is not of this world, nor will she wish it to be—­enough for her to be one of the most active and efficient agents in her heavenly Father’s work of man’s regeneration,—­enough for her that generations yet unborn shall rise up and call her blessed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[108] Aime Martin.

[109] Ibid.

LOVE—­MARRIAGE.

The conventual and monastic origin of all systems of education has had a very injurious influence, on that of women especially, because the conventual spirit has been longer retained in it.

If no education be good which does not bear upon the future duties of the educated, it follows that the systematic exclusion of any one subject connected with, or bearing upon, future duties, must be an evil.  The wisdom of employing those who had renounced the world to form the minds of those who were to mix in it, to be exposed in all its allurements, to share in all its duties, was doubtful indeed; and the danger was enhanced by the fact, that the majority of recluses were any thing but indifferent to the world which they had renounced.  The convent was too often the refuge of disappointed worldliness, the grave of blasted hopes, or the prison of involuntary victims; a withering atmosphere this in which to place warm