historic testimony I could collect relative to Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.

MEDON.

Analysing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.

ALDA.

Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and subjecting it to a chemical process.

MEDON.

Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette. What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that ever were—or are? She would put Lady. herself to school. But now for the moral.

ALDA.

The moral!-of what?

MEDON.

Of your book. It has a moral, I

suppose.

ALDA.

It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently explained my own views, may I proceed?

MEDON.

If you please—I am now prepared to listen in earnest:

We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organization; it is inferior in

VOL. I.

F

power, and different in kind. That certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this: in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-directed-more independent of the rest of the character, than we ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.

In thinking over all the distinguished women I can at this moment call to mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.' It is from not knowing, or not allowing, this

1 Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth century, painted one or two pictures, considered admirable as works of art, of which the subjects are the most vicious and barbarous conceivable. I remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which I looked at once, but once, and wished then, as I do now, for the privilege of burning it to ashes.

general principle, that men of genius have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they have made them completely artificial.' Women distinguished for wit may sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of some particular time; they

1 Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placed next to Desdemona; Diana Vernon is (comparatively) a failure, as every woman will allow; while the masculine lady Geraldine, in Miss Edgeworth's tale of Ennui, and the intellectual Corinne, are consistent, essential women: the distinction is more easily felt than analysed.