on as woman, she
claimed it. When the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized
by him in stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her
fair bosom the daggers aimed at his,--when the Countess of Buchan hung
confined in her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for
crowning Robert the Bruce,--when the stainless soul of Joan of Arc met
God, like Moses, in a burning flame,--these things were as they should
be. Man must not monopolize these privileges of peril, birthright of
great souls. Serenades and compliments must not replace the nobler
hospitality which shares with woman the opportunity of martyrdom. Great
administrative duties also, cares of state, for which one should be born
gray-headed, how nobly do these sit upon a female brow! Each year adds
to the storied renown of Elizabeth of England, greatest sovereign of
the greatest of historic nations. Christina of Sweden, alone among the
crowned heads of Europe, (so says Voltaire,) sustained the dignity of
the throne against Richelieu and Mazarin. And they most assuredly
did not sacrifice their womanhood in the process; for her Britannic
Majesty's wardrobe included four thousand gowns,--and Mlle. de
Montpensier declares, that, when Christina had put on a wig of the
latest fashion, "she really looked extremely pretty." Should this
evidence of feminine attributes appear to some sterner intellects
frivolous and insufficient, it is, nevertheless, adapted to the level of
the style of argument it answers.

_Les races se feminisent_, said Buffon,--"The world is growing more
feminine." It is a compliment, whether the naturalist intended it or
not. Time has brought peace; peace, invention; and the poorest woman of
to-day is born to an inheritance such as her ancestors never dreamed of.
Previous attempts to confer on women social and political equality,--as
when Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, made them magistrates, or when the
Hungarian revolutionists made them voters, or when our own New Jersey
tried the same experiment, in a guarded fashion, in early times, and
then revoked the privilege, because (as in the ancient fable) the women
voted the wrong way,--these things were premature, and valuable only as
concessions to a supposed principle. But in view of the rapid changes
now going on, he is a rash man who asserts the "Woman Question" to be
anything but a mere question of time. The fulcrum has been already
given, in the alphabet, and we must simply