of manifestation in which she could not easily have taken the highest rank, had not her inclination led her for the most part to content herself with being the inspirer, prompter, and unavowed co-adjutor, of others. "The present paper was written to promote a cause which she had deeply at heart; and, though appealing only to the severest reason, was meant for the general reader. The question, in her opinion, was in a stage in which no treatment but the most calmly argumentative could be useful; while many of the strongest arguments were necessarily omitted, as being unsuited for popular effect. Had she lived to write out all her thoughts on this great question, she would have produced something as far transcending in profundity the present essay, as, had she not placed a rigid restraint upon her feelings, she would have excelled it in fervid eloquence. "Yet nothing that even she could have written on any single subject would have given an adequate idea of the depth and compass of her mind. As, during life, she detected, before any one else had seemed to perceive them, those changes of time and circumstances, which, ten or twelve years later, became subjects of general remark; so I venture to prophesy, that, if mankind continue to improve, their spiritual history for ages to come will be the progressive working out of her thoughts, and the realization of her conceptions." Such tributes, borne by noble men to noble women, are so frequently hidden away in the heavy volumes which lie out of ordinary reach, that I take pleasure in bringing them to support my own plea; and I only wish I could as easily add to that in the text the charming acknowledgments of Alexis de Tocqueville to his wife. [40] In an article in the "Edinburgh Weekly Journal" for Jan. 10, 1827, written by Sir Walter Scott, the following allusion is made to abuses which had crept into the army in the middle of the eighteenth century:-- "To sum up this catalogue of abuses, _commissions_ were in some instances bestowed upon _young ladies_, when pensions could not be had. We know ourselves one fair dame who drew the pay of a captain in the ---- dragoons, and was probably not much less fit for the service than some who at that period actually did duty." [41] "In the little brown duodecimo which contains the jottings of 'that famous lawyer, William Tothill, Esquire,' there is the following entry, of the date of James I.:-- "'Fleshward _contra_ Jackson. Money given to a _feme covert_ for her maintenance, because her husband is an unthrift. The husband pretends the money to be his; but the court ordered the money to be at her own disposal.'"--_London Quarterly_, July, 1861. A very ancient germ of a "Married Woman's Property Law." III. THE UNITED-STATES LAW, AND SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS.