The condition of woman constitutes an important part of the complete history of any age or country. In her own appropriate sphere, she exerts an influence, powerful and enduring, for the political greatness, the moral grandeur, and general prosperity of a state, as well as for its social peace and harmony. In her heart dwell, for the most part, the charity, the virtue, the moral soundness of communities, and, it almost might be said, the patriotism of a people. Her character and condition are the character and condition of the society of which she is a component part. In those countries and climes where the female is made a slave, or treated with unmerited severity, the males are not men, but the most brutal of savages. Where civilization, Christianity, and refinement allow woman her proper level, man is the exponent of real humanity and intelligence. The annals of ages are but an accumulation of evidence establishing these truths. The graver of the Athenians, in the age of Pericles, attributed the decline of those virtues which, in all ages, have been considered the brightest ornaments of the sex, and the consequent increase of vice in the republic, to the pernicious influence of the beautiful and fascinating Aspasia. To her they imputed the crime of seducing the first orator and statesman of his time. On the other hand, the stern virtue, the heroism, the self-denying patriotism of the sons of Sparta, were legacies from their mothers. They shunned no dangers, feared no enemy, shrank from no hardship, and, when they met an honorable death in combat with the invaders of Grecian soil, the brave-hearted matrons consoled themselves with the idea that for this purpose they had given birth to children. When Carthage was for the last time besieged by the Romans, the patriotic women of that devoted city imparted to her warrior defenders a portion of their heroism and love of country, and cut off their tresses for bowstrings for the archers.