to no purpose but to make the young men of fortune prodigal sons, and the statesmen of the country fools and conspirators. Such was the general effect of these remarkably stupid contrivances of the sages and legislators of this renowned people. Certainly we moderns may not be able to deal with marble and brass as well as they did. We make not such fine statues; but the living subject, the real positive woman, breathing and alive, that nature has presented to us-here, at least, there can surely be no comparison in the manufacture and the management.

After all, what these ancients thought of the women, while they were using them in this atrocious manner, is sufficiently evident if we cast about and enquire a little further into their proceedings. For observe them, where their own mean, base, selfish passions were not concerned; observe them, when they left their own concerns, and consulted only their understandings and their imaginations. Observe their mythology;—I propose it to your consideration. Their general notions and views of human character are there for ever embodied and preserved.

What says, then, their mythology, their pantheon, their gods and goddesses? Observe them.

There was a king of heaven, Jupiter; but then there was a queen also; a divided empire, at least that is, as some critics suppose, in Jupiter

and Juno were seen the representatives of the two great characters in the drama of human existence, the man and his wife.

The conjecture seems probable; but I am sorry it is so, for Juno was no doubt a most stormy, noisy, fretful, and troublesome personage; was by no means popular amongst the gods and goddesses, and often made Olympus extremely uncomfortable. All this must be allowed; and, as I have said, I am sorry for it; but pursue your enquiry, and, as you glance your eye on the Pantheon, you will immediately see that the softer sex has a full moiety of all the influence that is to be found there. There was Astræa, and there was Ceres, and there was Vesta; very respectable personages, all of them.

The deity that presided over the cause of purity and decorum was of course a goddessDiana. When poetry was concerned, it was nine to one in favour of the ladies, Apollo and the Muses.

In every thing that related to grace, the men were absolutely excluded, they were no where. The graces, three; all ladies; the hours, aurora, all ladies. Wherever elegance was involved in the idea, the ladies only. Nymphs without number; not a clown to be found. Beauty, of course a queen. How impossible to have had a king, a legitimate king, of beauty! While such were

the provinces assigned to the ladies, to the men, on the contrary, were left, and very properly, fighting and boxing, and noise and drunkenness, and every thing that was more or less coarse, disagreeable, and abominable; the stormy wind and the roaring ocean-to Mars, for instance, and Bacchus and Pan, and Castor and Pollux, and Eolus and Neptune, and other rustics and ruffians of a similar description.

The only difficulty in the compass of this mythology, is, the appropriation of wisdomMinerva, the goddess of wisdom. I have every respect for the fair-am a great believer in goddesses, and quite worship their spritely talents and elegant accomplishments; but wisdom, the great-sublime-hum-drum virtue and quality of wisdom,—the mineralogical, geological, theological, chymical, mathematical, and astronomical virtue of wisdom;-how the ancients came to suppose this to be their characteristic, their predominant recommendation-in a word, their particular forte, I must confess I am quite at a loss to comprehend, and I dismiss the difficulty in despair.

I cannot, in like manner, comprehend why there was a god of eloquence, and no goddess; certainly there might have been a goddess of eloquence. These, however, are only two exceptions to general rules, and of no material importance.

But turning now from Olympus above, to the world below-from the deities of the Greeks to their annals and history, I cannot, as I have told you, enter into any details of history, nor therefore of Grecian history; but a fact or an anecdote may be suggested to you, which may speak volumes, if properly considered, and tell you more in two minutes, than the common events you see recorded, would do in a twelvemonth.

You remember, for instance, the disturbance that Helen made in the world-a pretty strong fact—and again, at a subsequent period, you may remember also, the anecdote of Themistocles; he stood musing for a moment or two, and then, pointing to his little son, who was playing at a distance-see there, said he, the ruler of the world. A brother statesman, who was walking with him at the time, looked a little astonished. Oh! yes, said Themistocles, it is even so-Greece rules the world-Athens, Greece-I, Athens-that child, the mother-and the mother, me. We need say no more of the Grecians.

Romans.

We turn to the

The Romans were, of all the nations that ever appeared in the world, the most unlike any other, and the nation most likely to furnish an exception to any general rule. Yet even in the annals of this band of warriors, the influence of the softer sex may be perceived. Lucretia caused one

revolution-the daughter of Virginius anotherRome was saved by the mother of Coriolanusand a Roman lost the world for the sake of Cleopatra.

Instances of this kind, and others to the same effect, might be found, and are well known, but the fact is, that it was the very principle and glory of the Roman character to sacrifice the domestic charities to the public duties-the State was all in all. The poor woman for once, and once only, in the history of the world, was obliged to adopt the same feelings and doctrines. Their natural empire was dissolved-they found it necessary to attempt another-they were obliged to rest their glory on being the mothers and wives of patriots and heroes; but they did so rest their glory, the Roman matron is renowned in the story of Rome, and they must be considered as having perfectly succeeded. The elevation of character, to which they not only aspired, but attained, is shown in the instance of Arria, even at a late period, when the Romans were not what they had once been. Her husband, Poetus, was convicted of a conspiracy against the emperor Claudius; it was impossible that he could live-he was given to understand this—a public execution awaited him. The heroine saw the path of honour for her husband, as she thought, but he hesitated; she then saw, she equally thought, the path of love and