ting the fate
of empires; the acute lawyer detecting the obliquities of fraud, or the
skilful dramatist exposing the pretensions of folly; but let her
remember that those who thus excel, to all that Nature bestows and books
can teach must add besides that consummate knowledge of the world to
which a delicate woman has no fair avenues, and which, even if she could
attain, she would never be supposed to have come honestly by.... Women
possess in a high degree that delicacy and quickness of perception, and
that nice discernment between the beautiful and defective which comes
under the denomination of taste. Both in composition and action they
excel in details; but they do not so much generalize their ideas as
men, nor do their minds seize a great subject with so large a grasp.
They are acute observers, and accurate judges of life and manners, so
far as their own sphere of observation extends; but they describe a
smaller circle. And they have a certain tact which enables them to feel
what is just more instantaneously than they can define it. They have an
intuitive penetration into character bestowed upon them by Providence,
like the sensitive and tender organs of some timid animals, as a kind of
natural guard to warn of the approach of danger,--beings who are often
called to act defensively.

"But whatever characteristic distinctions may exist between man and
woman, there is one great and leading circumstance which raises woman
and establishes her equality with man. Christianity has exalted woman to
true and undisputed dignity. 'In Christ Jesus there is neither rich nor
poor, bond nor free, male nor female,' So that if we deny to women the
talents which lead them to excel as lawyers, they are preserved from the
peril of having their principles warped by that too indiscriminate
defence of right and wrong to which the professors of the law are
exposed. If we question their title to eminence as mathematicians, they
are exempted from the danger of looking for demonstration on subjects
which, by their very nature, are incapable of affording it. If they are
less conversant with the powers of Nature, the structure of the human
frame, and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies than philosophers,
physicians, and astronomers, they are delivered from the error into
which many of each of these have sometimes fallen, from the fatal habit
of resting on second causes, instead of referring all to the first. And
let women take comfort that in