SUGGESTIVE.

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position so ennobling, the highest enthrone­ment is fittingly to be accorded.

Nothing, says Gaskell, * would tend more to elevate the moral condition of the population than the restoration of woman to her proper social rank; noth­ing would exercise greater influence upon the form and growth of her offspring than her devotion to those womanly occupations which would render her a denizen of home. No great step can be made till she is snatched from unremitting toil, and made what nature meant she should be, the centre of a system of social delights. Domestic avocations are those of her peculiar lot. The poor man who suffers his wife to work, separated from him and from home, is a bad calculator.

To bring woman to the position she should hold in the worlds work, is hence but to recognize her, in the fullest sense, as the custodian and exponent of powers and prin­ciples of paramount importance, not only to the well-being, but to the very existence of the race. Sex, God-implanted, imperative for the very possibility of being, claims for

Op. cit. p. 16C>.