It is man who degrades woman, not woman who degrades man. Asiatic monarchs have ever regarded woman, not as a companion, but as a toy, a picture, a luxury of the palace; while men of common rank throughout Asia and in many parts of Europe treat her as a slave, a drudge, a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water," and make it her duty to wait, instead of being waited on; to attend, instead of being attended. Out of this sordid idea of woman's destiny has grown in all probability the custom of regarding her as property. Influenced by this idea, there are still some persons to be found among the lower classes, even in our own country, who do not hesitate to sell, buy, or exchange their wives for a material consideration. Some of our American forefathers, in the early settlement of Jamestown, purchased their wives from England, and paid in tobacco, at the rate of one hundred and fifty pounds each, and thought it a fair transaction. Perhaps this is the reason why ladies are so generally disgusted with the use of the "Virginia weed." But the doctrine that woman was created the inferior of man, though venerable for its antiquity, is not less fallacious than venerable. It is simply an assertion which does not appear to be sustained by historical facts. It is true that woman is called in Scripture the "weaker vessel;" weaker in physical strength she may be, but it does not follow that she is weaker in mind, wit, judgment, shrewdness, tact, or moral power. The sterner sex need not flatter themselves, therefore, that superiority of muscle necessarily implies superiority of mind. History sufficiently discloses the fact that woman has often proved herself not only a match, but an over-match, for man, in wielding the sceptre, the sword, and the pen, to say nothing of the tongue. Illustrations of this great fact, like coruscations of light, sparkle along the darkened track of the ages, and abound in the living present. But in looking into the broad expanse of the historical past, we cannot attempt to do more than glance here and there at a particular star, whose undiminished lustre has given it a name and a fame, not only glorious, but immortal. As in all ages there have been representative men, so in all ages there have been representative women, who crowned the age in which they lived with honor, and gave tone to its sentiment and character.