Christianity has changed the scene. Wherever her pure and pitying spirit prevails, the sway of brute force is softened, and the "weaker vessel" upheld. Bearing in her hand the blessed Gospel, "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of the people Israel," she adds to the literature of the world a new volume, the History of Woman. She spreads a page, for which the long, slow ages had neither looked, nor inquired,--neither waited for, nor imagined, the page of female biography. So liberal have been our own immediate times in supplying fitting materials, that an extensive and valuable library might readily be selected in this department alone. Since knowledge has shed her baptism upon the head of woman, her legitimate sphere of duty has become extended, and enriched by incident. We see her not only brought forward as a teacher, but entering unrebuked the fields of science and literature; we see her amid the hardships of colonial life, displaying a martyr's courage, or ascending the deck of the mission ship to take her part in "perils among the heathen." The venerable moralist of Barley Wood, who so perseveringly encouraged her sex to reflect, to discriminate, to choose the good and refuse the evil, who, after attaining the age of sixty years, presented them with eleven new and instructive volumes, has not long laid down her pen, for the rest and reward of the righteous. That high souled apostle of erring, suffering humanity, to whose dauntless benevolence crowned heads did honor, whose melodious voice I almost fancy that I again hear, as in the plain garb of her order, she stood as a tutelary being among the convicts at Newgate,--she has but recently arisen to that congenial society of the just made perfect, who rejoice over "one sinner that repenteth." And the harp of that tuneful one, so recently exchanged for a purer harmony, still breathes upon our hearts the echoes of her varied lay, as when touched by her hand it warbled-- "Fame hath a voice, whose thrilling tone Can bid the life pulse beat, As when a trumpet's note hath blown, Warning the hosts to meet; But ah! let mine, a woman's breast, With words of home-born love be bless'd." She, too, who sleeps beneath the hopia-tree in Burmah, whose courage and constancy no hero has transcended, how rapidly has she been followed in the same self denying path, by others who "counted not their lives dear unto them," if they might bear to the perishing heathen the name and love of a Redeemer.