all made and furnished too nearly alike; and so of all our affairs.
A fashionable sameness, somber and dull, spreads over our whole outward
life.

Then, in opinions of men and things, of politics and social relations,
in education, literature, art, in morality and religion, there should be
more freedom, more conformity to individual judgment, more thinking for
self and less by proxy, more personal and less party influence. There is
a terrible tyranny over us in these things. We are cast in the stiff
mold of Fashion. We have our fashionable forms of thought, and seem
afraid to break them. We have our formulas and creeds, and they bind us.
If there were more freedom there would be less error and atheism. Our
minds are all different. No two think exactly alike, or look exactly
alike, or feel exactly alike. Then why should we not be free and use our
own reason for our own purposes and give others the same privilege? Why
be such slavish conformists, and brand as traitors or heretics all who
differ from our party or church?

I would awaken young women to these things. They have their individual
interests, both temporal and eternal. They have their characters and
life-connections to form. They have great and stirring interests to hold
in their hands. They have examples to set and lives to live And they
have a mighty influence to exert in their day both upon the present and
coming generations, both upon this and the future world. The subject of
this essay is one of inexpressible interest to them. Woman is too much
in chains. She wants more freedom. And she will never have it till she
takes it herself. She should covet and seek a higher life. She should
claim her full equality with her brother, man, and strive to show
herself worthy. In woman and her life are wrapped up some of the
greatest interests and issues of humanity. O that each individual woman
could feel it, and live as realizing the solemn fact!

Lecture Five.

EDUCATION.

Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--Every
Circumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--True
Womanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should be
Understood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman's
Influence--Education as it is--Girls should have Something to Live
For.

"Life is real, life is earnest." To make life grand is the end of
living. God has a great purpose in every human soul; that