spark of the _mens divinior_, which might otherwise have spread and become a flame, seldom survives for any length of time unextinguished. For a mind which learns to be satisfied with what it already is, which does not incessantly look forward to a degree of improvement not yet reached, becomes relaxed, self-indulgent, and loses the spring and tension which maintain it even at the point already attained. And there is no fact in human nature to which experience bears more invariable testimony than to this; that all social or sympathetic influences which do not raise up pull down; if they do not tend to stimulate and exalt the mind, they tend to vulgarize it. For the interest, therefore, not only of women, but of men, and of human improvement, in the widest sense, the emancipation of women, which the modern world often boasts of having effected, and for which credit is sometimes given to civilization, and sometimes to Christianity, cannot stop where it is. If it were either necessary or just that one portion of mankind should remain mentally and spiritually only half developed, the development of the other portion ought to have been made, as far as possible, independent of their influence. Instead of this, they have become the most intimate, and, it may now be said, the only intimate associates of those to whom yet they are sedulously kept inferior; and have been raised just high enough to drag the others down to themselves. We have left behind a host of vulgar objections, either as not worthy of an answer, or as answered by the general course of our remarks. A few words, however, must be said on one plea, which, in England, is made much use of, for giving an unselfish air to the upholding of selfish privileges, and which, with unobserving, unreflecting people, passes for much more than it is worth. Women, it is said, do not desire, do not seek, what is called their emancipation. On the contrary, they generally disown such claims when made in their behalf, and fall with _acharnement_ upon any one of themselves who identifies herself with their common cause.