his will, while you, as its joint owner, enjoy the right of applying it to whatever use you please. It follows, therefore, that as the person most interested in its preservation you should cheerfully encounter superior difficulties.” Having listened attentively to the somewhat quaint discourse of the Economist, Socrates felt anxious, as well he might, to learn the result; for the lady, expected thus wisely “to queen it,” was as yet but fifteen. His faith, however, in womanhood was great; and Xenophon, who but reflects from a less brilliant mirror the Socratic wisdom, delivers, under the mask of Ischomachos, the mingled convictions both of the master and the pupil. The moral beauty of the dialogue, and its truth to nature, would have been lost had the lady at all shrunk from the duties of her high office. But her ambition was at once awakened. The obscurity to which, in the time of Pericles, women were, by the manners of the country, condemned, now no longer seemed desirable, and the love of fame was urged upon her as a motive to extraordinary exertions.[97] Her reply is highly characteristic. Running, with the unerring tact of her sex, even in advance of her husband, she desired him to believe that he would have formed an extremely erroneous opinion of her character, had he for a moment supposed that the care of their common property could ever have proved burdensome to her: on the contrary, the really grievous thing would have been to require her to be neglectful of it! ----- Footnote 97: That this passion led women to interfere too frequently with politics may be inferred from the remark of Theophrastus, that to be versed in the science of domestic economy was more honourable to them.—Stob. 85. 7. Gaisf. ----- Men always conceive they are complimenting a woman when they attribute to her a masculine understanding, and they thus, in fact, do place her on the highest intellectual level known to them. Socrates adopted this style of compliment in speaking of the wife of Ischomachos. And I may here remark, that we need no other proof of how differently the Athenians felt on the subject of women from the Orientals with whom they have been compared, than the mere circumstance of their conversing openly with strangers respecting their wives. In the East, a greater affront could scarcely be offered a man than to inquire about his female establishment. The most an old friend does is to say, “Is your house well?”—whereas at Athens, women formed a never-failing theme in all companies; which proves them to have been there contemplated in a different light. In fact, the sentiments of Ischomachos, every way worthy the most chivalrous people of antiquity, could only have sprung up in a society where just and exalted notions of female virtue prevailed; for, under the word “high-mindedness,” we find him grouping every refined and estimable quality which a gentlewoman can possess.