by that exquisite superiority. Her private feeling is liable to be so profoundly interested that sometimes she acquits or condemns, not as a judge, but as a person. Her element, which attains to equilibrium in the world's broad atmosphere, might, if condensed into the Leyden jar of a court-room, explode with singular effects. Upon the bench it might happen that she would make our bail too light, or refuse it altogether. By common consent, Justice has always been a woman; but it was found necessary to blindfold her, that she may not see into which scale to throw a heart.
But this heart of woman, so liable to hurried action, is the centre of her bravest and least calculated gestures. Her profession is that of heroine. Wherever it be natural to recoil, she flouts Nature and declines the job of shrinking. Portia and Helena might be two sisters of the healing art, gratefully welcomed by their own sex's modesty, but self-possessed and prompt wherever suffering tears down the pales of convention; sisters of mercy, hunting after wounds in the rear of battle, dressing maimed soldiers down the sighing wards of hospitals, appalled at no hurt the most hideous, repelled by no festering squalor; the mates of man in courage and dexterity. Let a university be founded for their training.
What shall a Portia undertake to do? That which is level to Portia's capacity. Must she do it? That is as she herself may decide. But we let our women do the dirty drudgery of kitchens, expose themselves to the publicity of saloons, grow sallow and stooping over spin-
