the property by which any animal is male or female.

Lavater has drawn the following characteristic distinctions between the male and female of the human species.

"The primary matter of which women are constituted appears to be more flexible, irritable, and elastic, than that of man. They are formed to maternal mildness and affection; all their organs are tender, yielding, easily wounded, sensible, and receivable. Among a thousand females there is scarcely one without the generic feminine figure; the flexible, the circular, and the irritable.

"They are the counterpart of man, taken out of man, to be subject to man; to comfort him like angels, and to lighten his cares. 'She shall be saved in child-bearing, if they continue in faith, and charity, and holiness, with sobriety' (1 Tim. ii. 15.). This tenderness, this sensibility, this light texture of their fibres and organs, this volatility of feeling, render them so easy to conduct and to tempt; so ready of submission to the enterprise and power of the man; but more powerful through the aid of their charms than man with all his strength. 'The man was not first tempted, but the woman, afterward the man by the woman. And, not only easy to be tempted, she is capable of being formed to the purest, noblest, most eraphic virtue; to everything which can deserve praise or affection. Highly sensible of purity, beauty, and symmetry, she does not always take time to reflect on internal life, internal death, internal corruption. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wife, and she took of the fruit thereof.' (Gen. iii. 6.).

"The female thinks not profoundly; profound thought is the power of the man. Women feel more. Sensibility is the power of woman. They often rule more effectually, more sovereignly, than man. They rule with tender looks, tears, and sighs: but not with passion and threats; for if, or when, they so rule, they are no longer women, but abortions. They are capable of the sweetest sensibility, the most profound emotion, the utmost humility, and the excess of enthusiasm. In their countenance are the signs of fanciful and inviolability, which every feeling man honours, and the effects of which are often miraculous. Therefore, by the irritability of their nerves, their incapacity for deep inquiry and firm decision, they may easily from their extreme sensibility become the most irreclaimable, the most rapturous enthusiasts. Their love, strong and rooted as it is, is very changeable; their hatred almost incurable, and only to be effaced by continued and artful flattery. Men are most profound; women are more sublime.

"Men most embrace the whole; women remark individually, and take more delight in selecting the minutiae which form the whole. Man hears the bursting thunder, views the destructive bolt with serene aspect, and stands erect amidst the fearful majesty of the streaming clouds. Woman trembles at the lightning, and the voice of distant thunder; and shrinks into herself, or links into the arms of man. Man receives a ray of light single, woman delights to view it through a prism in all its dazzling colours. She contemplates the rainbow as the promise of peace; he extends his inquiring eye over the whole horizon. Woman laughs, man smiles; woman weeps, man remains silent. Woman is in anguish, when man weeps, and in despair when man is in anguish; yet has the often more faith than man. Man without religion, is a discaled creature, who would persuade himself he is well, and needs not a physician; but woman without religion, is raging and monstrous. A woman with a beard is not so disgusting as a woman who acts the freethinker; her sex is formed to piety and religion; to them Christ first appeared; but he was obliged to prevent them from too ardently, and too hastily, embracing him: 'Touch me not.' They are prompt to receive and seize novelty, and become its enthusiasts. The whole world is forgotten in the emotion caused by the presence and proximity of him they love. They sink into the most incalculable melancholy, as they also rise to the most enraptured heights.

"Male sensation is more imagination, female more heart. When communicative, they are more communicative than man; when secret, more secret. In general they are more patient, long-suffering, credulous, benevolent, and modest. Woman is not a foundation on which to build. She is the gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble (1 Cor. iii. 12.); the materials for building on the male foundation. She is the leaven, or more expressively the oil to the vinegar of man: the second part of the book of man.

"Man singly is but half man; at least but half human; a king without a kingdom. Woman, who feels properly what she is, whether still or in motion, rests upon the man; nor is man what he may and ought to be, but in conjunction with woman; therefore, 'it is not good that man should be alone, but that he should leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.'"

They differ also in their exterior form and appearance.

"Man is the most firm; woman the most flexible. Man is the straightest; woman the most bending. Man stands steadfast; woman gently retreats. Man surveys and observes; woman glances and feels. Man is serious; woman is gay. Man is the tallest and broadest; woman the smallest and weakest. Man is rough and hard; woman smooth and soft. Man is brown; woman is fair. Man is wrinkly; woman is not. The hair of man is more strong and short; of woman more long and pliant. The eyebrows of man are compressed; of woman less frowning. Man has most convex lines; woman most concave. Man has most straight lines; woman most curved. The countenance of man taken in profile is more seldom perpendicular than that of the woman. Man is most angular; woman most round."

In determining the comparative merit of the two sexes, it is no derogation from female excellence that it differs in kind from that which distinguishes the male part of our species: and if, in general, it should be found (what upon an impartial inquiry will most certainly be found) that women fill up their appointed circle of action with greater regularity than men, the claim of preference cannot justly be decided in our favour. In the prudential and economical parts of life, it is undeniable that they rise far above us: and if true fortitude of mind is best discovered by a cheerful resignation to the measures of Providence, we shall not find reason, perhaps, to claim that most singular of the human virtues as our peculiar privilege. There are numbers of the other sex who, from the natural delicacy of their constitution, pass through one continued scene of suffering from their cradles to their graves, with a firmness of resolution that would deserve so many statues to be erected to their memories, if heroism were not esteemed more by the splendour than the merit of actions.

But whatever real difference there may be between the moral or intellectual powers of the male and female mind, Nature does not seem to have marked the distinction so strongly as our vanity is willing to imagine; and after all, perhaps, education will be found to constitute the principal superiority. It must be acknowledged, at least, that in this article we have every advantage over the softer sex that art and industry can possibly secure to us. The most animating examples of Greece and Rome are set before us, as early as we are capable of any observation; and the noblest compositions of the ancients are given into our hands almost as soon as we have strength to hold them; while the employments of the other sex, at the same period of life, are generally the reverse of everything that can open and enlarge their minds, or fill them with just and rational notions. The truth of it is, female education is so much worse than none, as it is better to leave the mind to its natural and uninstructed suggestions, than to lead it into false pursuits, and contract its views, by turning them upon the lowest and most trifling objects. We seem, indeed, by the manner in which we foster the youth of that sex to be trained, to consider women agreeably to the opinion of certain Mahometan doctors, and treat them as if we believed they had no souls: why else are they

Bred only, and completed to the taste Of lustful appetite, to sing, to dance, To dress, and trol the tongue, and roll the eye. MILTON.

This strange neglect of cultivating the female mind can hardly be allowed as good policy, when it is considered how much the interest of society is concerned in the rectitude of their understandings. That season of every man's life which is most susceptible of the strongest impressions, is necessarily under female direction; as there are few instances, perhaps, in which that sex is not one of the secret springs which regulates the most important movements of private or public transactions. What Cato observes of his countrymen is in one respect true of every nation under the sun: "The Romans (said he) govern the world, but it is the women that govern the Romans."

If it be true then (as true beyond all peradventure it is) that female influence is thus extensive, nothing certainly can be of more importance than to give it a proper tendency, by the assistance of a well-directed education. Far are we from recommending any attempts to render women learned; yet surely it is necessary they should be raised above ignorance. Such a general tincture of the most useful sciences as may serve to free the mind from vulgar prejudices, and give it a relish for the rational exercise of its powers, might very justly enter into a plan of female erudition. That sex might be taught to turn the course of their reflections into a proper and advantageous channel, without any danger of rendering them too elevated for the feminine duties of life. In a word, they ought to be considered as designed by Providence for use as well as show, and trained up, not only as women, but as rational creatures.

SEX of Bees. See BEE.