Many of the women connected with these movements are as
superior in every thing properly womanly as they are in exceptional
talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of
woman is properly to be enlarged. Every woman has rights as a human
being which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded to
her as if she were a man,--and first and foremost, the great right of
doing any thing which God and nature evidently have fitted her to excel
in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an
astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the
technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of
her powers.
Still, _per contra_, there has been a great deal of crude, disagreeable
talk in these conventions, and too great tendency of the age to make the
education of woman anti-domestic. It seems as if the world never could
advance, except like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far,
now in this direction, and now in the opposite. Our common-school system
now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used
to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago.
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