Do you remember, as you read of those crowds of worthless women, what sort of public opinion educated them,--what sort of public opinion such histories tend to form? Do you ever ask any questions concerning the men of the same eras,--how they employed their time, and what part they took in those games of wanton folly? It is time that some one should: and I cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact, that while the word "mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out for reprobation, there is no corresponding term, which, applied to man, produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself. In speaking of the court of Charles II., Dr. William Alexander says, in 1799: "Its _tone_ ruined all women: they were either adored as angels, or degraded to brute beasts. The satirists, who immediately arose, despised what they had themselves created, and gave the character to every line that has since been written concerning women," down to the verses of Churchill, and that often-quoted, well-remembered line of Pope, with which we need not soil our lips. We may quote here a criticism upon the "Cinq-Mars" of Alfred de Vigny, taken from Lady Morgan's "France." You will find it especially interesting, because it bears on what has been suggested of the influence of history, and may be compared with a portion of one of Margaret Fuller's letters, in which she criticises the same work, and makes, in her own way, parallel reflections. "I dipped also," says Lady Morgan, "into the 'Cinq-Mars' of Alfred de Vigny, a charming production. It gives the best course of practical politics, in its exposition of the miseries and vices incidental to the institutions of the middle ages. Behold Richelieu and Louis XIII. in the plenitude of their bad passions and unquestioned power, when-- 'Torture interrogates and Pain replies.' Behold, too, their victims,--Urbain, Grandier, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and the long, heart-rending list of worth, genius, and innocence immolated. With such pictures in the hands of the youth of France, it is impossible they should retrograde. How different from the works of Louis XV.'s days, when the Marivaux, Crebillons, and Le Clos wrote for the especial corruption of that society from whose profligacy they borrowed their characters, incidents, and morals! Men would not now dare to name, in the presence of virtuous women, works which were once in the hands of every female of rank in France,--works which, like the novels of Richardson, had the seduction of innocence for their story, and witty libertinism and triumphant villany for their principal features. "With such a literature, it was almost a miracle that one virtuous woman or one honest man was left in the country to create that revolution which was to purify its pestiferous atmosphere. Admirable for its genius, this work is still more so for its honesty."