ences. but there is still required a woman, capable of stating, from a woman's point of view, the present position of woman before the Law. When this is once fitly done, it will level the last defence of the feudal Past. Woman's past condition, in all civilized countries, has been the outgrowth of early oriental and later classic influThe present attempt to emancipate her is a popular effort to overthrow them, and enthrone at their expense the Common Sense of the nineteenth century, the religious instincts of Jesus, and the intellectual aspirations which persist in the demand. With the first moment of victory will be inaugurated a new freedom for man also. Looking back through the ages, in the light of Christian love, he will criticise the spirit which has so far tyrannized over him. He will forget the coarse insults of the Greek comedy, and the Latin satirist, as he sees in his wife his fellowcitizen and fellow-laborer, as well as his friend. Reaching forward to the future, he will claim for her, and not only for her, but far more for his daughters, that absolute inheritance of God's world, that absolute field for thought and action which no woman has yet known. And woman? Emancipated by Love and Faith, free to accept or reject the ministries about her, she will perceive more clearly than ever the relation of man's life to her own. Recognizing, as opportunity evolves them, her duty to society and the State, marriage will gain a still diviner significance, and the security of public virtue be found in the assurance of private happiness. Margaret Fuller told the whole story when she said: "Let principles be once firmly established, and particulars will adjust themselves." C. H. D. THE VOICE THAT SINGS. [From Constant.] THE prayer of persevering faith is a hymn of sacrifice; the sigh of the sorrow that hopes is a chant of resignation, "the desire of the night for the morning," and the outgoing of charity is one prolonged canticle of love! Glory to God in the heavens, and on Earth peace to the men of good will! The Voice that Sings is the prayer of the world it is the morning hymn, announcing the awakening of the ages, as the song of birds heralds the opening of the day! The martyrs sang amid their punishments, for the faith in their souls felt itself immortal, like the Phoenix, and resumed a new youth amid the flames of the stake. The poetry of the soul awakens harmonies in the last dying sighs of the just, and sings, like the swan of our fable, its passage to other realms of life. All that smiles in Nature, all that blooms in the solar year, all that shines in the firmament, speaks and answers to the Voice that Sings. Beauty all robed in light, and crowned with flowers, warbles the overture to the opera of Love; the Earth adorns herself like a bride in her May, and sings by the voice of her forests; the Sea also lifts to the sky the stern bass tones of its billowy organ; the Sun has seen all the woe of our world, and his brow is radiant still; he listens to the music of the spheres, and sheds a soul of harmony and love in every beam of light and heat. Leave, then, in tears those children of the earth who feel but present pain, nor dream of good to come. But you, children of heaven, poets of charity, of hope and faith-you, who could see the world broken to pieces without ceasing to bless God in the midst of its ruins, prophet consolers, sing, sing ever! The Voice that Sings hushes to sleep the little babe's cry; sing, poets, sing for the isolated hearts whom none understand nor console. The Voice that Sings cheers up the laborer, and aids him to bear the burdens of the day; sing, consolers of the people; sing for those whose arms grow weary, while nothing smiles within their hearts. The Voice that Sings perpetuates worship here on earth; sing, little birds, for you have wings; sing, little children, for you have a mother; sing, poor captives and poor orphans, for you have a God who watches over you, and who counts your tears! Ye who are happy, sing to bless the Father Eternal; ye who suffer, sing to conquer pain, for it can not last forever! That religions be confounded, and perish of decrepitude; that philosophers grope amid the shadows of doubt; that selfishness petrify the victims of its chill embrace—what matters it, while in your hearts we hear the Voice that Sings! Let us love, and the life of our hearts shall be a song-burst of goodness towards all; for love is all harmony and if you ask me what is this Voice that Sings, I will answer- -It is the Voice of Love, the Believer. LIGHT AND NIGHT. Our through the loom of light, Up the dawn's rays so slant, Back, like the shuttle's flight, All the bright beams that burn Swallows at night return Home to their roof. Thus we but tarry here Back to the home of God Soul after soul departs, And the enfranchised hearts Burst through the sod; Death does but loose the girth Then from the heavy sod, Swift to the home of God, The Soul, like the Shuttle and Swallow, flies back. FEMININE SOVEREIGNTY. INTERPRETED BY THE BIRDS. Ir is the world of birds which offers to the observation of the philosopher the most numerous and charming examples of order in amorous liberty, of conjugal fidelity and maternal devotion. The history of swallows and pigeons, of swans, and even of house sparrows, swarms with inconsolable Artemisias and Niobes, who allow themselves to die of hunger and of grief beside bodies of their dead spouses or their slain children, and who do not make of their mourning the occasion of a crisis in business, like some who might be named among mortals. - Whoever has not seen the hen, the turkey, the partridge, and the quail, defend their young, can have but a moderate idea of heroism. A man who should display but once in the course of his career as a citizen, the tenth part of that devotion which these poor creatures exhibit at any moment of their lives to assure the safety of their tender broods, would have places of honor at all the theatres during his life, and statues in the forums after his death. A partridge that drags her wings and feigns to be wounded before the dog, that leaps in his face and picks at his eyes; a shrike that puts to flight, by the vigor of her resistance, the loafing truant who has meditated the invasion of her domicil; the swan, which will not let a cavalcade drink at the stream near her little ones all these poor mothers, whose existence is one long series of heroic acts and sublime devotions, would have much trouble to understand our admiration for the Athenian Codrus or Roman Curtius. Is that all? they would when you say, brayed into their ears, as into ours, the merit of these persons. There is no case known among the feathered bipeds where a mother has willingly abandoned her young, except under main force. The cases of infanticide, so common with the sow, with the rabbit, and with the human species, are so rare with the birds that such of the learned as are most worthy of faith, contest their existence. These cases of infanticide; moreover, could not in any issue be attributed to the mothers: they must be exclusively due to the amorous brutality of the males, which destroy the young ones as they break the eggs, in order to regain possession of the females. If some birds of prey drive their young from the had eyrie too soon, it is because they have not the means of meeting the expenses of their education. If infanticide is a crime unknown among birds, charity on the other hand is practiced among them towards lost children with a fervor which shames our philanthropy. Place in any window a young sparrow orphaned and lost from its home; immediately all the fathers and mothers in the neighborhood will come one after another to fetch it a bill full. Little creatures hardly weaned from their own nests, and yet without families, will profit by the oppor tunity to make their experiments in maternity. Noble and touching inspiration of the sentiment of universal solidarity, which man will not fail to exploit, with inexcusable barbarity! Thus act most of the little birds friendly to man, the chaffinch, the linnet, the swallow. The vulgar idea that the parents of the captive orphan bring it poison in order to withdraw it by death from the torments of captivity, is as stupid a prejudice as that which supposes the children of the executioner condemned by the law to practice their father's profession. The birds do not kill their children from tenderness-such Roman, Spartan, or Jewish virtues are repugnant to their manners; they are simple enough to keep the child with a cold in its head, rather than pull off its nose. The parents do not poison their young, as ignorance asserts; only when these ones have already tasted a little of the charms of liberty, instead of merely bringing them food and consolation, they bring them counsels to escape; and the poor captives, who are already but too much inclined to sadness, soon feed only on desires and ardent regrets, and end by sinking under a twofold weariness of spirit and body. Maternal charity goes so far among birds that it degenerates into abuse and amounts to suicide. Thus the red-throat, the bunting, the hedge-sparrow, in whose nest the female of the cuckoo has laid her egg, sacrifice the interest and even the existence of their own families, to the voracity of the bastard parasite, introduced by fraud into their nest. The cuckoo is too faithful an emblem of the loafing classes, who are inefficient at any kind of work themselves, and whom Nature would condemn to die of hunger, if labor were not condemned to nourish idleness. The red-throat and the bunting, who rear the young cuckoo to the detriment of their own family, symbolize the poor country girls |