This, and this only, saves old systems from violent demolition. Were the State of Connecticut at this moment to attempt to put in force such of the blue-laws as are technically unrepealed, she would be met by the open rebellion of her highest officer; and the chief-justice who should attempt to fine a bishop for kissing his wife on Sunday might shake hands cordially with the chief-justice who once ruled that a man might beat his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb! The laws which relate to woman are based, for the most part, on a very old and a very Oriental estimate of her nature, her powers, and her divinely ordained position. We shall see this, if we follow the course of legal enactments or religious prohibitions from the beginning. When the subject of Woman's Civil Rights first came to be considered, it was customary to quote from the scholars one of the sayings of Vishnu Sarma: "Every book of knowledge which is known to Oosana or to Vreehaspatee is by nature implanted in the understandings of women." Nobody asked what sort of knowledge was known to these two deities; but most readers took it for granted that it was divine: and ordinary people asked why, if society began with this reverent faith, we had nothing better now than the practical scepticism of priest and lawyer. When the names of these two deities were translated into Venus and Mercury (that is, into _love_ and _cunning_), the announcement seemed more in keeping with the subsequent revelations of Vishnu Sarma:-- "Women, at all times," he says, "have been inconstant, even among the Celestials." "Woman's _virtue_ is founded upon a modest countenance, precise behavior, rectitude, and a _deficiency of suitors_." "In infancy, the father should guard her; in youth, her husband; in old age, her children: for at no time is a woman fit to be trusted with liberty." "Infidelity, violence, deceit, envy, extreme avarice, a total want of good qualities, with impurity, are the innate faults of womankind." These extracts will throw some light, perhaps, upon the knowledge of Oosana and Vreehaspatee, and will save modern women from any very strong desire to restore the "good old rule." After such a commentary on this seeming compliment, we shall not think it strange, that, in a country where dialect is the exponent of condition, the most ancient drama represents the Hindoo wife as addressing her lord and master in the dialect of a slave.