male sex. Appeals were made to the women themselves to come forward and take their share in the operations and employments, the arts and the manufactures that tended to the advantage of the community, and efforts were made to induce the legislature to pass laws compelling women to engage in work suited to their capacities. It was generally believed by men that the position of women would be much improved if they were to assimilate their mode of life to that of men. But these attempts had all, hitherto, ended in failure. Some women, indeed, were convinced of the equality of the sexes, and would have been willing to engage in useful occupation, but they were deterred by the clamour raised by some of their sisters, who declaimed passionately against the whole scheme, which they denounced as an insidious attack on their rights and privileges. It was a monstrous absurdity, they alleged, to represent that they were fitted for work. Their comparative feebleness, their delicate limbs, and elegant rounded forms would be utterly destroyed were they to engage in continuous work. Their capacity was for pleasure only, they were the toys and playthings of men, they were in the world to soothe and refine the rougher sex by their soft and winning ways and their exalted and intellectual conversation. Once allow them to share the occupations of men, all the charms of life would be lost. The poetry of life would be gone for ever, and society would relapse into a state of barbarism. Were women ever to be degraded to the hard mechanical ways of men, life would be one long dull round of irksome labour, uncheered by the civilizing and elevating intercourse of a softer sex, and men would soon find that, while less-
