Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/245

Rh The advancement of the higher development of woman, and her importance in society, is one of the most remarkable features of the New World's cultivation, its greatest merit and its principal labour for the future. All that is now wanting is merely that it does not stop half-way. I do not believe that the right-mindedness and chivalry of the men will fail, if the women will, with discretion and noble earnestness, take the place which society here is willing to assign to them.

It is with justice that we are accustomed to estimate the measure of a nation's cultivation by the estimation in which woman is held, and the place which she occupies in society, because it requires no small degree of spiritual culture to value a being whose highest power is of a spiritual character. The people of America have shown themselves to be possessed of this, and it will increase in the same proportion as the women of the country make themselves deserving of it.

I mentioned a growth of cultivation and improvement which in the Free States embraces the entire community, and spoke of popular education as its most essential power. This, and many institutions favourable to human development, belong to these States; but, besides these, there is a movement, a free development in popular life, which may be compared to the circulation of the sap in a vigorous, growing tree. Free associations now take the place of the old guilds and corporations, as regulators and promoters of all the various interests and functions of the social system. Thus have religious, moral, and industrial corporations arisen within the great community, and in faithful adherence to it, at the same time that the goodwill and the divers powers and talents of each individual are made available to its highest interests. The United States represent, at the same time, the highest development of the individual and the public at large. This internal, social movement of humanity is assisted from without,