and the difficulty of escaping from the dominant power of her sensations, naturally blind her with the lustre of things chiefly external. By this means, her IDEAS, or the combinations of her various impressions, are necessarily modified, and they are consequently more quick and dazzling than solid.

Intensity of sensibility and quickness of ideas in woman naturally render more multiplied and more vivid the pleasurable or painful EMOTIONS, which, when referred to her wants, they contribute to form.

The emotions of modesty, timidity, fear, pity, &c. chiefly predominate in her, because they are the natural results of her weakness and mobility. Hence she rather enjoys the present than reflects on the past or calculates as to the future.

Such sensations, ideas and emotions naturally induce desires of corresponding intensity; and accordingly women rather yield to their PASSIONS than follow the calmer dictates of reason. Happily, the gentler passions-filial affection, maternal tenderness, and other domestic regards, are those most generally and most powerfully felt by them.

Passion having no necessary connection with reason, and vanity or caprice dominating, it sometimes happens that to forbid any thing to women, is sufficient to make them desire it; that love, jealousy, superstition, &c. are sometimes carried by

them to an excess that men never feel; that hatred is in them nearer akin to love than to indifference; and that they never pardon wounds inflicted on vanity or injuries in love.

In conformity with these elementary circumstances, the IMAGINATION, a peculiarly and strongly marked function in woman, is highly susceptible of excitement, and yields easily to every excess.

These circumstances, moreover, being added to her weakness and timidity, lead her to seek support in superstition, and to prefer the most enthusiastic and extravagant theological doctrines.

In all this, the particular and instinctive influence of the matrix has great effects. Plutarch accordingly informs us, that the Pythoness of Delphi ascended the tripod to prophesy only once a month; and perhaps at no other periods, could even she have imagined "that she felt a presentiment of the approach of the God, and amidst wild agitations, tearing of hair, and foaming of the mouth, have exclaimed, "I feel -I feel the God! Lo, he appears!-Behold the God!"—and have repeated his discourse and his oracles correctly.

In modern times, it is chiefly through the enthusiasm of woman that religious creeds have been promulgated. "The nun in the cloister," says Diderot, "feels herself elevated to the skies; her soul pours itself forth in the bosom of the divinity; her essence mingles with the divine essence. She

faints; she swoons; her breast rises and falls with rapidity; her companions flock round, and cut the laces of her vestments. Night comes on; she hears the celestial choirs; her voice joins theirs in concert. Again she returns to earth; she speaks of joys ineffable; she is listened to; she is convinced, and she persuades others."

So natural is all this to woman, that St. Lambert says, "There are even some superstitions that I would leave to the majority of men, and still more to that of women. I would not prohibit their worship of some inferior divinities, which might present to them examples, and promise them protection. The personifying and making divinities of the virtues, talents and amiable qualities amongst the ancients, was a fine idea: that superstition well might have a very happy influence over the morals. Women being very susceptible of imitation, ought to imitate these models." *

Consistently with this disposition, women believe in ghosts and apparitions, in dreams, magic, con

Il y a même des superstitions que je laisserais au grand nombre des hommes, et plus encore à celui des femmes. Je ne leur interdirais pas le culte de quelques divinités subalternes, qui leur présenteraient des modèles et leur promettraient une protection. C'est une belle idée chez les anciens d'avoir personnifié et divinisé les vertus, les talens, les qualités aimables; cette superstition bien dirigée aurait pu avoir sur les mœurs la plus heureuse influence. Les femmes, très susceptibles d'imitation, devaient imiter ces modèles.

juring, divination, and fortune-telling, and they comply with all superstitious customs. They readily yield assent also to mesmerism or animal magnetism, the visions of somnambulism, &c. and hence the charlatans who live by such means, have chiefly women for their patients; and they find no difficulty in inducing them to believe the most absurd assertions.

It is to the influence of this ill-regulated imagination, that must be ascribed the fact of a greater number of insane women than men being confined in lunatic asylums; and such is the power of this faculty, that even "those who possess most reason and strength of mind, frequently give way under a certain state of the body, as at the approach of the catamenia, or during the first months of pregnancy." It has, moreover, been remarked that, amongst insane women, delirium increases and suicide occurs most frequently, at the catamenial period.

From the intensity, rapidity and variability of all the preceding mental operations, it is to be expected that imagination should be superficial and restless rather than profound, energetic and sustained. Rousseau, accordingly, observes that "that celestial fire which excites and inflames the soul, that genius which consumes and devours, that burning eloquence, those sublime transports that penetrate to the bottom of our hearts, will

ever be wanting in the writings of our women... The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you would desire, but never any soul. They are almost always a hundred times more sensible than passionate women know not how either to feel or to describe even love.*”

Sappho may indeed be cited as the author of lyric strains not excelled in any age. But her masculine-her unwomanly character, procured her from Horace the name of "mascula Sappho," and this was doubtless the outward sign of that temperament, which caused her to be accused of sexual vices, and probably made her an object of horror to Phaon,-women of that kind being generally more actively erotic than others, as well as ugly and violent in disposition.

I should here next notice woman's reasoning powers; but as these are feeble, and as that is owing partly to feeble volition, and its consequence in feeble attention, it is these which require our next notice in this sketch of the mind of woman.

* Mais ce feu céleste qui échauffe et embrase l'ame, ce génie qui consume et dévore, cette brûlante éloquence, ces transports sublimes qui portent leur ravissement jusqu'au fond des cœurs, manqueront toujours aux écrits des femmes

Les écrits des femmes sont tous froids et jolis comme elles. Ils auront tant d'esprit que vous voudrez, jamais d'ame. Ils seront cent fois plutôt sensés que passionnés: elles ne savert ni sentir ne décrire l'amour même,