Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/52

32 most forcibly in those men, so peculiarly interesting in their character and actions, who form their perceptions with the greatest ease and delicacy, and retain them most deeply and lastingly. Generally speaking, the female sex may be more justly reckoned in this class than the male; and it is for this reason that the female character is most intimately dependent on the nature of the family relations in a nation. Wholly exempt as she is from most outward occupations, and almost surrounded with those only which leave the soul undisturbed—stronger in what she can be than in what she can do—more full of expression in her calm and quiet, than in her manifested sensations—more richly endowed with all means of immediate, indefinable expression, a more delicate frame, a more moving eye, a more winning voice—destined rather, in her relations with others, to expect and receive, than to advance and approach—naturally weaker in herself, and yet not on that account, but through loving admiration of strength and greatness in another, clinging more closely—ceaselessly striving in the union to receive in common with the united one, to form the received in herself, and reproduce it moulded into new forms of creation—inspired at the same time with the courage which the solicitude of love and the feeling of strength infuse into the soul—not defying resistance, but not succumbing in endurance— is, strictly speaking, nearer to the ideal of human nature than man; and whilst it is true that she more rarely reaches it, it may only be that it is more difficult to ascend by the steep, immediate path, than to approach slowly by the winding one. Now, how much such a being—so delicately susceptible, yet so complete in herself, and with whom therefore nothing is without effect—an effect that communicates itself not to a part only, but to the whole of her nature,—how much woman must be disturbed by external mis-relations, can scarcely be estimated. Hence the infinite