the property by which any animal is male or female.

"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 receptive."

"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."

"Men 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 sinks 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."

In determining the comparative merit of the two sexes, it is no derogation from female excellency that it differs in kind from that which distinguishes the male part of our species; and if, in general, it shall 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 find little reason to claim that exalted virtue as our peculiar privilege. 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 occasion the chief distinction.