Iphigenia says,-- "More than a thousand women is one man Worthy to see the light of day;" a sentiment which has prevailed ever since. "Silence and a chaste reserve Is woman's genuine praise, and to remain Quiet within the house," proceeds Macaria, and still farther:-- "Of prosperous future could I form One cheerful hope? A poor forsaken virgin who would deign To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons From one so wretched? Better, then, to die Than bear such undeservèd miseries!" Here is the popular idea which curses society to-day,--no vocation possible to woman, if she may not be a wife, and bear children: and these are favorable specimens; they show the practical tendencies of the very best of Euripides. The heroic portions are like Miriam's song, and have nothing to do with us and our experiences. In speaking of Aristophanes, I do not speak ignorantly. I know how much students consider themselves indebted to him for details of manners and customs, for political and social hints, for a sort of Dutch school of pen-painting. But if a nation's life be so very vile, if crimes that we cannot name and do not understand be among its amusements, why permit the record to taint the mind and inflame the imagination of youth? Why put it with our own hands into the desks of those in no way prepared to use it? Would you have wit and humor? Sit down with Douglas Jerrold, or to the genial table spread by our Boston Autocrat, and you will have no relish left for the coarse fare of the Athenian. One of the most vulgar assaults ever made upon the movement to elevate woman in this country was made in a respectable quarterly by a Greek scholar. It was sustained by quotations from Aristophanes, and concluded by copious translations from one of his liveliest plays, offered as a specimen of the "riot and misrule" that we ambitious women were ready to inaugurate. Coarser words still our Greek scholar might have taken from the same source to illustrate his theory. He knew very well that the nineteenth century would bear hints, insinuations, sneers, any thing but plain speaking. We have limits: he observed them, and forbore. Women sometimes talk of Aristophanes as if they had read his plays with pleasure; a thing for which we can only account by supposing that they do not take the whole significance of what they read,--and this is often the case with men. But a college furnishes helps. The mysteries of the well-thumbed English key are translated afresh into what we may call "college slang," illustrated oftentimes by clever if vulgar caricatures, where a few significant lines tell in a moment what a pure mind would have pondered years without perceiving; and if, perchance, some modest woman finds her friend or lover at this work, society says only: "You should not have touched the young man's book. What harm for him to amuse himself?--only