criminals to the halter, were forced, rarely with their own consent, into the arms of men they disliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses against their wills.  Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one example—­and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the French and German feudal lord had the right of cuissage, or, in plain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer’s bride on the marriage night.

Shelley considered that in consequence of all this, men had forgotten their duties to the other sex, and that even at the time at which he lived woman was still in great social bondage, improperly educated, tied down by restrictions, and refused participation in the higher positions of labor.  He called not in vain, against the inequality of the sexes, and asserted that woman’s position must and should be altered by forgetting the tyranny of the past, and, be determined, for the good of the future.

We should be rejoiced that eloquent exponents of the abominations of former ages, the evils of the present, and the proper position of the future, are now hard at work.  The “Women’s Rights” party is up teaching men their duties on every continent; in distant India, the Brahmo Somaj is battling, not vainly, against the horrors of the Zenana, and in conservative England, which has been stormed, and the forlorn hope is now taking possession of the citadel; everywhere it is the same.  Yes, woman, thanks to Shelley and the reformers, is about to be emancipated and free; free to earn her living, how, where, and when she likes; the equal of man, who shall no longer play such fantastic tricks as he did in the past, in proof of his dignity and superiority.  The fourth of July is not long past and gone; I trust that in the dim vista of the future, our descendants will keep a national holiday, or a day to be set apart on which shall be celebrated the “Declaration of the Independence of Women,” and then, perhaps, Shelley’s description of woman in the “Episychidion” will be more apparent: 

    “Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human,
     Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman
     All that is unsupportable in thee,
     Of light, and love, and immortality.”

I now approach a very delicate portion of my essay:  the question of the marriage relation.  By many it is scouted with much virtuous indignation, but I conceive that the liberal, who, like too many, dare not discuss this matter in its broadest and widest aspects, should be stigmatized as unworthy of the name.  Christ is reported to have urged the admirers of his ethical system to take up their cross and follow him, leaving father, mother, wife, children, and all they may have—­thus Shelley acted, and it bears as equally pregnant lessons to free thinkers as it did to those Syrian fishermen.  Oh, that liberals had as much “faith” in the truth, in the efficacy of their cause, as the first Christians are said to have had in the teachings of that Christ whom they regarded not as a Divinity, but as a son of God, as we to-day are sons of God, of the most high!  Oh, that we could carry that “faith” into our beliefs, and the determination to be stopped at no obstacle which may bar the progress of truth, which must conquer in the end!