check and curb upon the writer, and makes him more dignified in spite of himself; but when he breaks free of all restraint, as here, the dead language is more intolerable than the living one. Perhaps another advantage of the Latin for this proverbially flattering kind of literature may be found in the fecundity of its superlatives, there being nothing in our own language that may claim comparison with its glib and liberal issimuses. — I do not know whether one little token of the care with which Taylor regulated the golden balance of his periods has ever been noticed. I mean his frequent elision of the letter e in the termination ed, to prevent the reader from accenting it. In this he is always guided by so delicate an ear as stands him in stead of metrical rules. JOHN. It is certainly worth remarking. - By putting Taylor and Chapman together, we get such a picture as realizes Wordsworth's conception of a perfect woman, such a one as we can love, and feel that therein we are made in God's image; such a one as makes love what it should be, venerable, reverend, not a thing to be lightly treated and put on and off like a glove. PHILIP. Spenser had a noble idea of love : this rare portrait; yet it would be doubting the good providence of God, to draw back our heads. into the dull tortoise-shell of our selfish unbelief, and refuse to think that there are many such. It is only in love that the soul finds weather as summer-like as that of the clime whence it has been transplanted, and can put forth its blossoms and ripen its fruit without fear of nipping frosts. Never was falser doctrine preached than that love's chief delight and satisfaction lies in the pursuit of its object, which won, the charm is already fluttering its wings to seek some fairer height. This is true only when love has been but one of the thousand vizards of selfishness, when we have loved ourselves in the beautiful spirit we have knelt to; that is, when we have merely loved the delight we felt in loving. Then it is that the cup we so thirsted after tastes bitter or insipid, and we fling it down undrunk. Did we empty it, we should find that it was the poor, muddy dregs of self at the bottom, which made our gorge rise. If it be God whom we love in loving our elected one, then shall the bright halo of her spirit expand itself over all existence, till every human face we look upon shall share in its transfiguration, and the old forgotten traces of brotherhood be lit up by it; and our love, instead of pining discomforted, shall be lured upward and upward by low, angelical voices, which recede before it forever, as it mounts from brightening summit to summit on the delectable mountains of aspiration and resolve and deed. and childhood will haunt him through all his after life. If they were good and holy, they will cheer and encourage him in every noble deed, and shame him out of every meanness and compromise. PHILIP. In spite of the side-thrusts which you sometimes make at my Abolitionism, I am persuaded that you go as far as I do in that matter. I know your humor for appearing what you are not, in order, by opposition, to draw out opinions upon the side which you really espouse. Such is your assumed liking for the artificial school of poetry. You are willing to assume any disguise in order to get into the enemy's camp, and, once there, like Alfred, you sing them a song that sends them all to their arms. A little while ago, you spoke approvingly of Miss Kelly; if I had done it, the Thersites-half of your nature would have been aroused at a breath. Do you really love to hear a woman speak in public? JOHN. Why not as well as in private, or at all? If any have aught worth hearing to say, let them say it, be they men or women. We have more than enough prating by those who have nothing to tell us. I never heard that the Quaker women were the worse for preaching, or the men for listening to them. If we pardon such exhibitions as those of the dancing-females on the stage, surely our prudery need not bristle in such a hedgehog fashion because a woman in the chaste garb of the Friends dares to plead in public for the downtrodden cause of justice and freedom. Or perhaps it is more modest and maidenly for a woman to expose her body in public than her soul? If we listen and applaud, while, as Coleridge says, "Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast In intricacies of laborious song," must we esteem it derogatory to our sense of refinement to drink from the fresh brook of a true woman's voice, as it gushes up from a heart throbbing only with tenderness for our neighbour fallen among thieves? Here in Massachusetts we burn Popish nunneries, but we maintain a whole system of Protestant ones. If a woman is to be an Amazon, all the cloisters in the world will not starve or compress her into a Cordelia. There is no sex in noble thoughts, and deeds agreeing with them; and such recruits do equally good service in the army of truth, whether they are brought in by women or men. Out on our Janus-faced virtue, with its one front looking smilingly to the stage, and its other with shame-shut eyes turned frowningly upon the Anti-slavery Convention! If other reapers be wanting, let women go forth into the harvest-field of God and bind the ripe shocks of grain; the complexion of their souls shall not be tanned or weather-stained, for the sun that shines there only makes the fairer and whiter all that it looks upon. Whatever is in its place is in the highest place; whatever is right is graceful, noble, expedient; and the universal hiss of the world shall fall upon it as a benediction, and go up to the ear of God as the most moving prayer in its behalf. If a woman be truly chaste, that chastity shall surround her, in speaking to a public assembly, with a ring of protecting and rebuking light, and make the exposed rostrum as private as an oratory; if immodest, there is that in her which can turn the very house of God into a brothel. PHILIP. I shall not dispute the point with you. I love to hear the voices of women anywhere, but chiefly where truth is pleaded for; they know a shorter way to the heart than those of men do. Chapman valued woman as highly as you do. Hear him. "Let no man value at a little price A virtuous woman's counsel; her winged spirit O, what a treasure is a virtuous wife, |