which was as narrow as it was shallow. The dangers which threatened
the female character and the permanent injury likely to result to
society, if the example of these women should be followed, were
vigorously portrayed. Women were reminded that their power was in
their dependence; that God had given them their weakness for their
protection; and that when they assumed the tone and place of man,
as public reformers, they made the care and protection of man seem
unnecessary. "If the vine," this letter fancifully said, "whose
strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis-work, and half
conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the
overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear
fruit, but will fall in shame and dishonor into the dust."

Sarah Grimke had just begun a series of letters on the "Province of
Woman" for the _N.E. Spectator_, when this pastoral effusion came out.
Her third letter was devoted to it. She showed in the clearest manner
the unsoundness of its assertions, and the unscriptural and unchristian
spirit in which they were made. The delicate irony with which she also
exposed the ignorance and the shallowness of its author must have
caused him to blush for very shame.

Whittier's muse, too, found the Pastoral Letter a fitting theme for its
vigorous, sympathetic utterances. The poem thus inspired is perhaps one
of the very best among his many songs of freedom. It will be remembered
as beginning thus:--

"So this is all! the utmost reach
Of priestly power the mind to fetter,
When laymen _think_, when women _preach_,
A war of words, a 'Pastoral Letter!'"

Up to this time nothing had been said by either of the sisters in
their lectures concerning their views about women. They had carefully
confined themselves to the subject of slavery, and the attendant
topics of immediate emancipation, abstinence from the use of slave
products, the errors of the Colonization Society, and the sin of
prejudice on account of color. But now that they found their own
rights invaded, they began to feel it was time to look out for the
rights of their whole sex.

The Rev. Amos Phelps, a staunch abolitionist, wrote a private letter
to the sisters, remonstrating earnestly but kindly against their
lecturing to men and women, and requesting permission to publish the
fact of his having done so, with a declaration on their part that they
preferred having female audiences only. An