shrewd way of getting above, around, or under a difficulty; such an original, Yankee patent escape from doing what the law of the land requires, by assuming the cant and demeanor of a superior righteousness; and President Walker's argument is such a severing of the strongest timbers on which the temple of Higher Law' rests, that we have not been able to resist repeating it here in abstract.] Continuing his advances of demonstration, Dr. Walker says: Conscience, considered as a moral faculty, belongs to our emotional, and not to our intellectual nature. So a man's opinion of right is, after all, not measured by the degree of his conscientiousness, but by the degree of his intelligence; therefore a man in large and complicated affairs should submit his opinion of right to that of the decided umpire the government. When a man's opinion of right' is in conflict with law, it is not a conflict between right and wrong, between conscience and no conscience; but between two conflicting 'opinions of right,' both of which are fallible. Therefore when we follow the law we follow the public's opinion of right of the public's conscience as at present instructed. To obey the law, we do not forsake conscience, and not the less conscience because the collective conscience of the community. Man is called upon not to give up his 'opinion of right' — his 'in. terpretation of the will of GoD'- his 'higher law;' but simply to hold it in abeyance to the 'state's interpretation of the will of God.' It is strange to watch the workings and influence of the Boston Mutual Admiration Society; to see its ramifications showing themselves everywhere like the power of a police. It is a moral constabulary to keep Bostonians loyal to a clique. Most ludicrous is it to hear its opinions repeated and revered in society to notice how its frowns and criticisms are feared to listen to its verdicts repeated with trembling. thou great Athenian Mrs. Grundy! VOL. LXIII. 15 Few can give you an independent, original opinion on religion, politics, literature, or art. The door of thought is so warped by the little red-hot stove in the 'Hub's confined club-room that it can neither shut nor open true; and the song constantly chorused within is; 'You tickle me and I'll tickle you.' One clique monopolizes freedom. Its members are free to invent social theories as absurd as Fourier's; political formulas that only its mad prejudices can fit; religious beliefs warranted to set tastefully to any particular congregation; literary bindings of Bay-State calf only, and restrictions or latitudes in art to which local aspirants must squeeze or stretch. Free speech and free thought are to speak and think as it does. Take such papers as those magnificent models of journalism, the 'Transcript,' 'Traveller,' and 'Journal;' vote for Andrew, Sumner, and Wilson. Do those things or be a 'Copperhead.' Fear for the influence exerted by Theodore Parker or Charles Beecher, and you are a worshipper bound by the forms of the church of hated Old England; you are priest-ridden; a religious fossil-fogy. Dare to doubt that John Brown is the nineteenth century's Redeemer that he is the nearest approach Humanity has made to its Saviour; and you are a 'pro-slavery caitiff.' Dispute the philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau, and be esteemed an ignoramus. In literature, music, painting, the Boston mass waits expectant until the Mutual Admiration claquers strike their palms, and then applause resounds. Black is the fashionable color in which our modern Athens paints genius. Let a colored man or woman write a letter, paint a sign, or mould a boot-jack, and immediately is the negro's intellectual equality with the white man demonstrated, and his or her desk or studio is thereafter borne on the right shoulder of the M. A. Society. There are artists in Boston so ordinary that did not some local peculiarity or rela tionship float them on the breath of the same powerful existence, they might draw their pictures in the sand. Out in the world its impartial sponge would wipe out their performances as scribblings on a slate. There is a Boston creed, made fixed and sacred by the M. A. Society. Learn it, and learn to stand by it, if you would live among the Hub's elect. It must be said with the eyes fixed reverently on the dome of the State-House, the figure bowing as the sons of the prophet bow: 'Boston is Boston, and Andrew is its prophet: that's so! that's so!' (a sacred Eastern exclamation of strongest assent.) 'I believe in Boston as the ark of Freedom the interpreter of Christianity - the unerring, righteous Hub. I believe its apostles to be Governor Andrew, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, the A M and Sigma,* and that its spotless robes, woven by a divine charity and omniscient intelligence, are the 'Transcript' and 'Journal.' I believe the present war has been brought about and yet exists because of the wandering of a depraved people from the teachings and example of the Athens of America and its sages. I SIGMA is the nom-de-plume of a certain very respectable old gentleman who keeps a stud of three or four hobby-horses that he alternately gallops in a most daring but merciless manner up and down the avenues of the Evening Transcript.' believe the inhabitants of the Southern States, whom I sincerely hate and exe crate, and always have hated and execrated, to be merely talking gorillas, and I profoundly thank my State and Heaven for having given to us a Du Chaillu, that glory of New-England Knighthood-Major-General Benjamin Franklin Butler. I believe our Common to be the original garden of Paradise, and the stately dome I now bow before to be the apex of onstriding civilization. I believe 'Dwight's Journal of Music' to be the tuning-fork by which the angels above us set their songs. I can skate the outer-roll backward. That's so! that's so! I was born in Boston, or should have been, and my bones shall rest, I earnestly pray, within the circling glory of the dome before me or in the shadow of Bunker Hill. I believe this Hub I live in to be the well of all future hope; that religion, science, and poetry flow to it from Cambridge; philosophy from our State beneath that western light. I believe that Truth is at its bottom; that Art clings like moss about it; that our Mutual Admiration Society is its windlass, and the A- M- is its bucket. Destruction and annihilation to all its detractors to all its doubters; and may Glory, Glory forever be to Boston-Great Boston - The Hub of the Universe! Amen.' NATURE. THE rounded world is fair to see, The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west! WOMANLINESS. say those slow, thoughtful men, not attending any of the nightly ism meetings, look out from their windows with some sorrow and disgust on the fantastic procession filing through the streets of the Present, and ask themselves: 'What is woman's duty?' 'What should constitute the beauty, force, and expression of female virtue?' 'What is the perfect outline of the female moral features?' 'What defines women's rights?' 'What lovely fragrant garland bounds their sphere?' The answer comes to each: Womanliness!' A WORD certainly as valid as manli- ing every thing human or divine; I ness is womanliness, yet it is nowhere to be found in the dictionaries. It is of frequent use, however, in conversation, and we have no term so efficient to express the pervading and all-necessary grace of female excellence. Toss over the pages of cumbrous Webster. There is 'Manliness, (from manly ;) the qualities of a man.' What are they? cour age, strength, vigor, energy, dignity, and magnanimity. Why-pray why-should we not read also 'Womanliness, (from womanly ;) the qualities of a woman.' And those are fortitude, (the courage enabling its possessor to bear danger with calmness, suffering with patience, injury with forbearance. Locke calls it the 'guard of other virtues,') dependence, gentleness, patience, gracefulness. Those we believe to form the sentinel virtues of woman's army of virtues. If the qualities of manliness were summed up in one word, that word would have an active signification. But each and all of the definitions of womanliness are passive in import. We would like to define mankind as - using grammar phraseology-a verb, both transitive and intransitive; man being its active expression, woman its passive. However, if that is correct, it is a fact every day forgotten or ignored by the numerous and constantly increasing body of females, supported by a battalion of male fanatics those dangerous extreme reformers (save the term!) who, with loud shouts at their own wisdom and immaculateness, exalt every new, startling, and revolutionary idea; they would have women step from and exceed their sphere, carrying, over a hoop-lantern, the transparency: 'Woman's Rights!' Wherefore, some slow, thoughtful men, who, perhaps in an old-fogy way, reverence women, and have no restless, yearning desire (poor behind-the-age crea tures!) to attempt changing and improv The author of this paper would relate that, once a young man, on the eve of a journey to Europe, stepped into a lectureroom, where an intelligent-faced female, who might have looked happier and prettier bending over a baby, was vehemently discoursing to an audience; describing the picture she saw of woman's low position, and then calling upon her hearers to give to woman her rightful place, equal to man's, at the ballot-box, in the professions, in public deliberations, etc. The speaker was the celebrated Abby Somebody, who also, at times, lectured on spiritualism and other dogmas of the strong-minded. She was supported on the platform by three other respectably-dressed females, and two pale, thin, frowning men-‘the Rev. and the Hon. -,' the handbills saidyet there seemed much levity and but little respect in the audience. The accidental spectator before mentioned, being a novice to such exhibitions, though he had often tarried in New-England towns before, felt strangely mortified by the event -somewhat the same feeling a decent man might have if he witnessed a cock-fight, or bull-baiting, or had seen his own sister in Bloomer costume. The same unsophisticated youth reached a European port about twelve days afterward, and in journeying the following morning saw, by a railroad skirting a German canal, much to his astonishment and indignation, a woman drawing a canalboat, plodding along patiently and laboriously, while her husband sat contentedly at the helm smoking a pipe. The same authority humbly adds that that last sight, painful as it was-that visible relict of barbarism in the old worldaffected him less unpleasantly than the scene he had witnessed a fortnight before that illustration of reform in the new world. Poor young noodle! such a statement would not gain him much honor in Tremont Temple. Where, in our reading of history, we have discovered women as only slaves and creatures of man, there have we found, too, a record of social degradation and barbarism. History again, and now we have experience, too, to confirm it, teaches that when, by mad assumption or silly sufferance, women desert their luxuriant province, and attempt to act the male rôles of philosopher, politician, warrior, law-giver, and public reformer, then may we fear disorder, revolution, and social chaos. The pure, luminous planets, moving with symmetry and effulgence through the moral sky, man looks up to with reverence and love, and his noblest aspirations, ascending on their mellow beams, strives and prays for the heaven their chaste influence teaches him of. But if women wander from their established paths in the immense and magnificent expanse around and above man's probationary earth, calamity ensues as certainly as physical destruction would follow a deviation of the celestial bodies from their prescribed orbits. The centre of the whole moral world, the centripetal force tending to preserve woman in her sphere, and insure order and happiness to mankind, is-Womanliness. The women who, from ambition or accident, have achieved celebrity beyond or outside of true womanly functions; who have stepped into the active ranks with men, or striven for something more dazzling than the 'gem of purest ray serene' - the ore fused from a blending of all female virtues-womanliness; they have won often great applause and notoriety, and sometimes have acted really glorious parts; but the most celebrated of those occupy no such high and enduring rank in men's hearts and reverence, nor have they left an influence as pure and fruitful as many of their more peaceful, gentle, modest sisters have insured by the simple but ample fulfilment of womanliness. And we think, if with such talent and enthusiasm they gained so much out of their sphere, what might they not have accomplished to the glory of GoD and ennobling of mankind in it! When our eyes have gazed with admiration on the self-dependent,originative philosopher of Alexandria — the elegant Hypatia-how we must raise them as our hearts swell in love and veneration, to dwell on Mary bathing the feet of JESUS and drying them with her hair, or on Ruth, as we read her life and hear those words embodying the supremacy of firm, gentle womanly devotion in the most touching poetry: 'Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried: the GoD do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." How loudly may we extol the heroism and self-sacrifice of Charlotte Corday; but where can we find words of pearls to match the loveliness of that unsurpassed woman- Lady Russell-to portray her ardent and tender affection, her piety and sublime fortitude, the character alike exemplary in prosperity or adversity, when obscured by multitudes or hidden in retirement. Her correspondence remains a spotless monument and example of womanliness. Fame chants the genius and fascination of Madame de Staël, the great female whom Napoleon's mandate of banishment from Paris made ill and unhappy, because applause and literary and fashionable celebrity were as necessary to her as bread. Now recall the story of the Roman girl, whose bosom nourished her grey-haired father dying of starvation in prison. What an electric thrill courses through us, exalting the better and purer nature! Recall that single recorded act of her life, and remember at the same moment, if you can, the volumes and volumes of Madame de Stael's talent. Recall that glorious instance of almost divine womanliness, and be ennobled by it. There is Joan d'Arc, the inspired virgin warrior. We think of her as of a martial statue; classically beautiful in a graceful attitude of soldierly daring and enthusiasm. Here is Martha Washington, the bright rays of her example shining as far and warm as the sun's, infusing with high purpose and noble hopes many a mother's milk; she who bore the child destined through her wise teaching, fervent prayers, and pure influence to become the model of Christian manliness and patriotism; she whose name is never uttered, save with veneration and affection-the mother of Washington. ously enshrined in our hearts! The warm springs of exaltation bubbling about those altars are every day doing something to purify and revive our being, and at times those occasional spring-times when thaws must visit even the hardest frozen natures - will overflow until even our eyes are moist and reflect the beauty of that most divine text from heaven, glorifying the earth-Womanliness. There was no intention, upon commencing, of attempting to soar in the pathos or generalities of the subject; no idea of essaying a flight in an atmosphere so ethereal, and beneath a sky even as inspiring as womanliness. The purpose was merely to pick up a few fragments. However, the hen, remembering she is not an eagle, will now, having got safely over several palings and a brave stretch of meadow, descend to scratch in the gravel for a crumb or two. The feathers of the quill in hand droop in despondency at its inability to construct, after Æsop, a fable in which the Watch-discontented with its noiseless and elegant, its wonderful and useful works; dissatisfied with its mission of counsellor and monitor-might transfer its wheels, springs, and jewels, all its minute, delicate, and beautiful muscles to the Locomotive's work; leave its carefully cherished place near man's heart-or rather, withdrawing all its effective power and virtue, every thing but the empty case-to attempt the ponderous labor of a railway-engine. The moral of such fable should be pointed with the lesson, that woman's renunciation of the sphere of womanliness Shouted to our memories come the names of hundreds of females who have written, philosophized, fought, shaken systems and states, moulded mobs, governed men. With wondering applause must we honor the talents and energies which made their possessors great. 'Intellect, resolution, courage are rare gifts, but they are not those gifts whose tokens we look for most anxiously in a woman's record.' They have glory and acclamation, but there are others, endeared to us, possessing our gratitude, remembered with reverence and tender regard to enact the rôles accorded by Proviour common mothers and sisters-who found sufficiency of work and reward in the womanly sphere, and the seeds of whose evergreen inheritance are springing up every day in the pleasantest of foliage and the richest of fruit for the welfare, temporal and eternal, of all mankind. Their names not as brilliant in history, but how warmly, how glori dence to man, is as vain in its reasons and as unwise and destructive in its operation as the performance related of the watch. The desertions from the snowy banner of womanliness are not limited to that corps called the 'strong-minded,' who, seeking what their erratic ambition misleads them to believe a more brilliant |