is governed by a law as fixed as in the world of work or politics, and these very changes illustrate the law. To understand the world of fashion, let us analyze it. How is it made? Every class of human beings must have some outlet for its forces. Woman, having no voice in the state, no share in commerce, no place in the church, is compelled to concentrate her interest and enthusiasm on dress, society, fashion shut out from the world of work, she lives on the bounty of man; hence to please him is the first law of her being. As her power is in most cases purely physical, she appeals to his senses. She goes to balls and parties with bare neck and arms for a deeper reason than because "fashion says so." Through her charms of person she holds man. A transient, evenescent power! hence the wail of man's faithlessness. : The great law underlying all the different spheres of life, is that law of attraction holding man to woman, and woman to man. Here is a relation, where, in the nature of things, there can be no real antagonism. Degraded, oppressed, wronged, outraged, cruelly and brutally treated, woman still clings to man for protection, because they are indissolubly one and the same. Our laws and customs, bad as they are, rest on the true idea, the oneness of the sexes. Our only mistake is that we fail to recognize the equality of that oneness. While the worlds of trade, commerce, and politics, have their special laws, man's inspiration in each and all is woman; he Isinks into savagism without her; his relation to her is the fixed law that makes him noble and heroic in any direction. So in the home, in society, man is the sun of the social system, not a "disfranchised class." Woman does not dress for herself, but to attract him. These constant changes in fashion are not senseless changes; but just as a child is amused with a new toy, so woman pleases and captivates man by all these little freaks and arts of dress so exquisitely described by the author of Woman in Society. Just as "women govern the world of politics," so men govern the world of fashion. Just as "measures which a statesman has meditated a whole year, may be overturned in a day by a woman," so may the efforts of women of sense to lift their sex into higher duties be neutralized by the opinion of a man. The literal meaning of such. passages as the above is, that woman controls man, not by her enlightened views on the subject under consideration, but by an appeal to his passions. The courtezans of Paris have reduced the passional nature of man to a science. They understand the attractions of the luxurious parlor, with its soft seats, well-tempered light and atmosphere, the mys teries of dress and jewels, "and that evening hour when the cares of the day are over, and the warm artificial light excites the imagination and gives feeling predominance over the understanding, and the heart lies open." And this is the hour for woman's triumph; and such are the conditions for earnest women, whose souls are kindled with great questions of government, education, and social reform, to galvanize the consciences of sensuous men in their hours of relaxation into the high duties of statesmanship and philanthropy, "to shame magistrates to their duties, regenerate city governments, shut up dram-shops, and make social vice disreputable." In such surroundings, is the sovereign of society to mould the politics and religion of a mighty nation. While the author demands of woman a positive influence on all the great interests of life, he prescribes impossible conditions for its attainment. People are interested in those fields of labor where they work, not in those they are forbidden to enter. Men are amused with the gossip and changes of the world of fashion; but they have no enthusiasm, or permanent interest in it, and never will have, until they see that they are responsible for its belittling and demoralizing power on the women by their side. Women are amused with the excitement of men in politics, their sharp encounters in Congress; but they have no interest in questions of government, and never will have, until they too are responsible for the legislation of the country. While he would make the parlor the centre of power, he warns woman from the whole field of labor, where she can study man in his normal condition, - not mid the bewilderments of silk, satins, diamonds, and thread work, but where in common daylight she can gather the facts of life, learn its shame and glory, its trials and triumphs, its poverty and wealth, and the close relation between social virtue and national strength. Thus only can women secure a permanent power over man, and, in the sunlight of a higher civilization, walk by his side up and down the highways of life. To make the parlor a power, a centre of attraction, a real permanent benefit, men and women must meet with common interests in the popular thought and topics of the day. If woman without this general knowledge, is to hold man a willing slave within four walls away from all outside amusements, clubs, campaigns, and caucuses, then to her level must he come at last. How oft the hope of a noble manhood, with laurelled brow, high in the shining walks of life, has been wrecked by casting anchor, with light craft, in shallow seas like this. But if, on the contrary, in spite of all bewildering arts, man feels that he has duties to the race, his country, and himself, and goes forth to the outer world, while woman at home draws closer to the harrow sphere of self, they part, thei meet but on the low plane of appetit jewels, luxury and elegance are turned to parlor without man is solitude. Ah! v of ennur that daily perish within the slo gilded chambers of death, called home! Just as the clergy have become a hap men, by coming down from the sublime the future, to think and talk and preach life, thus giving us a more rational a women have more common sense, healt power and place are recognized in the give us more rational codes, customs a fashion. Luxury, elegance and seclusio knowledge, virtue and strength. As th tion becomes a monstrosity, and with loses the power of propagation; so do wealth and refinement, separate thems to influence the lives and opinions of t "This movement towards the lega seems to be at the same time an argum the pedestal she occupied. This dispo her disabilities is accompanied by a d from her exaltations; this demand, tha of labor, appears to be associated with mere worker." Mr. Frothingham clearly sets forth i of woman on the pedestal she now oc renness of our social life; the parlor w desolate and forsaken; and the Qued crown, or throne, running here and th ion. He paints us a dark, sad pictur sensuous manhood, in the present iso of what he says, and what we all know cult to see what he means by "dethr disabilities, an Ishmaelite in politics, a cast through poverty or vice from socie in the world of work with a few half and has been, the condition of women "exaltations" such as these for free For a fair day's wages; for a fair day' profitable and honorable walk of life women in her rights of person and property; for Constitutions that shall no longer class the mother of men with minors, criminals, paupers, lunatics and idiots; for a power that shall open colleges, make the press and pulpit respectful, and place the ballot, that great regulator of all our interests, political, commercial, religious, educational, social, and sanitary, in the hand of every woman. Ah! kind sir, woman may with safety come down from the solitude of these eyries on the barren rocks, into the rich valleys by your side for substantial benefits like these. It is in these "exaltations" the birds of prey devour the young and heedless: in this ideal world that cunning hands weave nets for tender feet, and winding sheets for loving souls. Remember! oh fathers and husbands, it is from the gay and fashionable throng that vice recruits for her palsied ranks its most helpless victims. By a sudden turn in the wheel of fortune, to-morrow your wife or daughter may stand face to face with the stern realities of life; when she too must work or perish. "Give à man," says Alexander Hamilton, "a right over my subsistence, and he has a right over my whole moral being." If to earn one's bread with brain and pen and tongue, with chisel, brush, or poetry and song, in the professions, trades, or politics, if to be "mere workers" is "dethronement," let me and all come down. History clearly shows that the disfranchisement of any class has been uniformly based on the idea of inferiority, of unfitness to govern, and it shows, too, that such classes have been as uniformly neglected, inferior, and degraded. That the enfranchisement of woman is the grand step in her elevation is difficult to prove because, it is a self-evident proposition, and no objecter has been able to make an argument on the other side. If women are disfranchised because as some claim, they are too pure and holy to take cognizance of civil and political rights, why, if they are above the governing classes, have we no codes suited to their exalted position? Are laws made for the lower stratas of the race suited to these queens of the moral universe? The laws at this hour for women in many States of the Union are nearly parallel with those in slavery, and yet men tell us that such laws are the outgrowth of respect, and that in rolling off these "disabilities" there is danger of losing honor and power. No one of common sense claims that manhood has been endangered by an extention of rights, by laws for his protection, and on what principle woman has more honor and power without political rights than with them, no one has yet been able to explain. Do you find that women have less self-respect, and men less chivalry, in those States, where they have already taken onward steps in their legisla 66 tion for women? With a knowledge of the science of government, of republican institutions, and with a direct voice in establishing liberty, justice, and equality on the earth, what "dethronement" can there be for woman, who to-day in practical life is the foot-ball of male assumption from Greenland to Cape Horn? With the key to wealth, education and power in our hands, do you tell us the golden gates of life will not roll back as readily to our open sesame," as when we were beggars, and outcasts at your feet, or as ideal Queens, without a crown, a sceptre, or a throne? Underneath the customs of ages, deep in the human soul is the law of our being, struggling ever with the transient facts of life, towards the realization of the ideal, the beautiful, the true. It is this dim perception of woman exalted in her motherhood, the soul of our social trinity, as she will stand supreme, when we at last compass the laws of our being, that many of our best thinkers now substitute for the facts of life. The artist illustrates this idea in that beautiful conception of Beatrice and Dante, where the true woman, on a slight elevation in all her native purity and beauty, stands self-poised, looking upward as if to draw inspiration from the great God of truth, while man on a lower plane gazes on her with a chaste and holy love, and thus the poet tells us by the law of attraction, woman draws man upward and onward through the Hells to Heaven. It is this ideal woman our poets, artists and scholars now worship, and guild with their own rich fancies the Queens and thrones of our social life. When we talk to men like these of the degradation of woman, they ignore the facts around them, they scout the barbarisms of custom as relics of a darker age; their own creeds and codes as a dead letter, and the wail of womanhood as the unsexed gibberings of those cut loose from the moorings of social life. "I insist that outside the home, the becoming characteristic place for women, who have the means, the leisure, the conveniences at hand is society." And by society, Mr. Frothingham means the "social world, "" which includes dress, manners, polite customs," "which If there are men ready to enter this world, to devote themselves to dress, manners, polite customs, to be "masters of the noble arts of conversation" with no other profession, calling or life-work, but to talk, read, and travel, with the women by their side; and if this class of persons are safe against all the changing fortunes of life, are above all interests in politics, the world of work, or the fields of benevolence, I see no objection, as far as the living, moving world of ordinary mortals is concerned, to the lofty isolation of these people in |