CONTENTS. Men and Women-their equal but distinct Claims and Capacities SISTERS OF CHARITY: A LECTURE. Introduction Work for Women Female Religious Communities in ancient times Page ix xi xii xiii 29 Every one must have observed the new influence, which is not being asserted or sought, but is falling to the lot of women, in swaying the destinies of the world. It is not a share in directing the patronage of ministers or guiding the councils of kings, as in former times, but a portion in the formation and the moulding of public opinion. For a great part of our periodical literature,-for much of that world of fiction in which many live and nearly all take delight,—we are indebted to the ethereal fancy, the delicate perception, and the grace of expression possessed by women. It seems to me-and I am confirmed in this opinion by the bright examples of heroic benevolence-that if the young generation are to be an improvement on their fathers, if sin is to have less dominion and religion more power, if vice is to be abashed and virtue to be honoured, it is to Woman we must look for such a generation." Opening Address, by LORD JOHN RUSSELL, at the Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858. A LETTER TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL. MY LORD, 11 Ir was the remark of some very clever man, whose name at this moment I forget (Addison, I think), that "whenever any satirical exposition is made of the weakness, inconsistency, or vices of men in a general way, every individual man does not therefore feel himself aggrieved, nor called upon to take up the cudgels in defence of his sex; whereas when women are libelled or disparaged, every woman is up in arms, and considers the attack on her sex as a personal affront.' This is true; and the reason at least one reason is, that when women are derided and satirised, the satire invariably comes from men whose praise or blame women feel intensely, led thereto by a natural instinct and by the whole tendency of their training and education. And if women were to write satires against men (which Heaven forbid !), would not every individual man feel insulted and aggrieved, and called upon to express his disgust and his dissent? The result in both cases arises from the intuitive value which men and women set on each other's good opinion; one of those great natural laws which I believe to have been ordained by Almighty wisdom for the moral elevation of both sexes through mutual attraction and mutual influence well and wisely understood. It will |