consistent, and more philosophical picture of the whole. Historians have sometimes puzzled their brains to assign a philosophical cause for this or that course of conduct of a great statesman, when a woman would have told you at once that it originated from some little family feud, or perhaps from an ardent attachment to some sweet, coy, unobtrusive, timid creature, the bare mention of whose name on the page of history would crimson her cheeks with the deep blush of modesty. The historian may be puzzled to account for the sudden and injudicious march of Mareschal Villars, at the head of the grand army of France, towards Brussels. Reader, the true cause was that he was anxious to see his wife, who was staying in a small town on the road to Brussels.[9] It has been said that the course which Cicero pursued towards the conspirators in Rome, resulted principally from the instigation of Terentia, who had her private reasons for hating them. And the hatred of the great orator for Clodius the Demagogue was likewise inspired principally by his wife Terentia, on account of her jealousy of Clodia, the sister of Clodius, who had been anxious to marry Cicero. Now in regard to all those more impalpable and delicate causes which take their origin in the heart, the affections, the social relations, woman is much more sagacious than man; she sees them when they escape his vision; and consequently her penetration may enable her to make discoveries or applications which man would never have thought of. Hence, I repeat again, the counsel of woman ought ever to be taken before we enter upon important events. Dufresnay has shown that many conspiracies even have failed because not confided to woman. And many a man who has kept his transactions secret from his wife, has rued the consequences. Rousseau tells us that while travelling through Switzerland he frequently found the views and advice of _Therese_ of the utmost importance; sometimes rescuing him from the great difficulties that surrounded him, and which could not have been so well overcome without her. And yet he tells us that she was not a well educated woman. The fact is, woman excels man, as has been well observed, in attaining her _present_ purposes; her invention is prompt, her boldness happy, and her execution facile. [Footnote 9: This celebrated general of Louis XIV, according to St. Simon, often turned his army aside from the great object which he had in view, from some such causes as these.]