It is so natural to wish to find what is fair and
precious in high places,--so astonishing to find the Bourbon a
glutton, or the Guelph a dullard or gossip.
In our own country, women are, in many respects, better situated than
men. Good books are allowed, with more time to read them. They are not
so early forced into the bustle of life, nor so weighed down by
demands for outward success. The perpetual changes, incident to our
society, make the blood circulate freely through the body politic,
and, if not favorable at present to the grace and bloom of life, they
are so to activity, resource, and would be to reflection, but for a
low materialist tendency, from which the women are generally exempt in
themselves, though its existence, among the men, has a tendency to
repress their impulses and make them doubt their instincts, thus often
paralyzing their action during the best years.
But they have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few
conventionalities, compared with what must be met in other nations.
There is no reason why they should not discover that the secrets of
nature are open, the revelations of the spirit waiting, for whoever
will seek them.
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