However the Doctor admitted that on the whole the received opinion was the more probable. And after making this admission he related an anecdote of Lady Jekyll who was fond of puzzling herself and others with such questions as had been common enough a generation before her, in the days of the Athenian Oracle. She asked William Whiston of berhymed name and eccentric memory, one day at her husband's table to resolve a difficulty which occurred to her in the Mosaic account of the creation. “Since it pleased God, Sir,” said she, “to create the Woman out of the Man, why did he form her out of the rib rather than any other part.” Whiston scratched his head and answered. “Indeed Madam I do not know, unless it be that the rib is the most crooked part of the body.” “There!” said her husband, “you have it now: I hope you are satisfied!” He had found in the writings of the Huguenot divine, Jean D'Espagne, that Women have never had either the gift of tongues, or of miracle; the latter gift according to this theologian being withheld from them because it properly accompanies preaching, and women are forbidden to be preachers. A reason for the former exception the Doctor supplied; he said it was because one tongue was quite enough for them: and he entirely agreed with the Frenchman that it must be so, because there could have been no peace on earth had it been otherwise. But whether the sex worked miracles or not, was a point which he left the Catholics to contend. Female Saints there certainly had been,—“the Lord,” as Daniel Rogers said, “had gifted and graced many women above some men especially with holy affections; I know not,” says that divine, “why he should do it else (for he is wise and not superfluous in needless things) save that as a Pearl shining through a chrystal glass, so her excellency shining through her weakness of sex, might show the glory of the workman.” He quoted also what the biographer of one of the St. Catharines says, “that such a woman ought not to be called a woman, but rather an earthly Angel, or a heavenly homo: _hæc fœmina, sed potius Angelus terrestris, vel si malueris, homo cælestis dicenda erat, quam fœmina._” In like manner the Hungarians thinking it infamous for a nation to be governed by a woman—and yet perceiving the great advantage of preserving the succession, when the crown fell to a female, they called her King Mary, instead of Queen.