In her Funeral Sermon, preached by Bishop Rainbow, he mentioned her learning, hospitality, and encouragement of letters, and reckoned among her many virtues, Courage, Humility, Faith, Charity, Piety, Wisdom. “Thus died this great wise Woman, who, while she lived, was the Honour of her Sex and her Age, fitter for a History than a Sermon.” =In 1694 Mary Astell protested= against the state of things in her day in a small anonymous publication, “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, by a Lover of their Sex.” Speaking of the repute learning was held in about 150 years ago, she says, “It was so very modish that the fair Sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their charms, and Plato and Aristotle untranslated were frequent ornaments of their closets. One would think by the effects that it was a proper way of educating them, since there are no accounts in history of so many great women in any one age as are between 1500 and 1600.” She refers to Mr. Wotton’s “Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning,” p. 349, and makes clear that her proposal is to found an institution for the higher education of women, to be dedicated to the Princess Anne of Denmark. In 1696 she also published “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, by a Lady.” Defoe next year in his “Essays on Projects,” proposed to establish Academies for women, and criticises “the Lady” who had suggested the idea under the conditions of a Monastery. “Reflections upon Marriage” appeared in 1700. In the third edition of the latter, 1706, answering objections, in the Preface, she says, “These Reflections have no other design than to correct some abuses which are none the less because power and prescription seem to authorise them. ’Tis a great fault to submit to Authority when we should only yield to Reason,” ... “designing nothing but the Pubic Good, and to return, if possible, the native Liberty, the Rights and Privileges of the Subject.... She did not indeed advise women to think men’s folly wisdom, nor his brutality that love and worship he promised in the matrimonial oath, for this required a flight of wit and sense much above her poor ability, and proper only to masculine understandings.... ’Tis true, through want of learning and of that superior genius which men, as men, lay claim to, she was ignorant of the natural inferiority of our sex, which our masters lay down as a self-evident and fundamental truth. She saw nothing in the reason of things to make this either a principle or a conclusion, but very much to the contrary, it being Sedition, at least, if not Treason, to assert it in this Reign. For if by _the natural superiority of their Sex_ they mean that every man is superior to every woman, which is the obvious meaning, and that which must be stuck to if they would speak sense, it would be a sin in any woman to have dominion over any man, and the greatest Queen ought not to command, but to obey her Footman, because no municipal Laws can supersede or change the Laws of Nature.