But even this does not satisfy woman in her loftiest aspirations. The soul which animates and inspires her is boundless. Its wants cannot be fully met even in an assemblage of wits and beauties. The soul of Madame de Staël pined amid all her social triumphs. The soul craves friendships, intellectual banquetings, and religious aspirations. And unless the emancipated soul of woman can have these wants gratified, she droops even amid the glories of society. She is killed, not as a hero perishes on a battle-field; but she dies, as Madame de Maintenon said that she died, amid the imposing splendors of Versailles. It is only the teachings and influences of that divine religion which made Bethany the centre of true social banquetings to the wandering and isolated Man of Sorrows, which can keep the soul alive amid the cares, the burdens, and the duties which bend down every son and daughter of Adam, however gilded may be the outward life. How grateful, then, should women be to that influence which has snatched them from the pollutions and heartless slaveries of Paganism, and given dignity to their higher nature! It is to them that it has brought the greatest boon, and made them triumphant over the evils of life. And how thoughtless, how misguided, how ungrateful is that woman who would exchange the priceless blessings which Christianity has brought to her for those ornaments, those excitements, and those pleasures which ancient Paganism gave as the only solace fox the loss and degradation of her immortal soul! * * * * * AUTHORITIES. Plutarch's Lives; Froude's Caesar; Shakspeare's Antony and Cleopatra; Plato's Dialogues; Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, especially among the poets; Lord's Old Roman World; Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars; Dion Cassius; Rollin's Ancient History; Merivale's History of the Romans; Biographic Universelle; Rees's Encyclopedia has a good article. PAGAN SOCIETY. GLORY AND SHAME. 50 B.C. We have now surveyed what was most glorious in the States of antiquity. We have seen a civilization which in many respects rivals all that modern nations have to show. In art, in literature, in philosophy, in laws, in the mechanism of government, in the cultivated face of Nature, in military strength, in aesthetic culture, the Greeks and Romans were our equals. And this high civilization was reached by the native and unaided strength of man; by the power of will, by courage, by perseverance, by genius, by fortunate circumstances. We are filled with admiration by all these trophies of genius, and cannot but feel that only superior races could have accomplished such mighty triumphs.