women should never find it out! Keep them pure, no matter what becomes of men. What business had you to know the meaning of those pencil marks?" Even St. John does not hesitate to condemn Aristophanes.[7] "With an art in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient," he begins, "he opens up a more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteries of iniquity with a fearless and by no means an unreluctant hand. He ventures fearlessly on themes which few before or since have touched, despising the stern condemnation of posterity. He evidently shared in the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists, availed himself joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral character of Aristophanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found save where virtue is." When I first took up my pen, knowing well that I should speak of Margaret Fuller's beloved Greeks in a tone somewhat different from hers, I did not know that I should have the sympathy of a single eminent scholar. It was with no common pleasure, therefore, that, opening her Life at random, one day, I chanced upon these words from her own pen. She is speaking of a class of private pupils:-- "I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious tendency of a classical education to be 'auld wives' tales.' But the puzzles (of my pupils) about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions; and I suspect, from reminiscences of my own mental history, that, if all teachers do not think the same, it is from the want of an intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds. I really find it difficult to keep their _morale_ steady, and am inclined to think many of my own sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such _naïveté_, and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings, and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their vices and failings."[8] We may be permitted also to quote, from the competent pen of Buckle, the following words:-- "We have only to open the Greek literature," he says, in his lecture on "The Condition of Women," "to see with what airs of superiority, with what serene and lofty contempt, with what mocking and biting scorn, women were treated by that lively and ingenious people, who looked upon them _merely as toys_."