it more highly, when it is good, because it is a woman's. Rosa Bonheur's great picture of the Horse Fair was greeted with a generous chorus of admiration, and her claims to rank as equal or superior to Landseer discussed on all hands. Mr. Ruskin holds up the Misses Mutrie as flower painters of the first order; and poor Edgar Poe, in collecting those poems which, headed by the "Raven," have lately attained such general circulation among lovers of literature, gave an American's tribute to our greatest female author in these words:"To the noblest of her sex-to the Author of "The Drama of Exile"-to Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, of England, I dedicate this volume, with the most enthusiastic admiration, and the most sincere esteem." So that women have no cause to complain of due recognition being withheld from them; they have now but to try the question of their powers fairly in an open field.

We have omitted to mention the dramatic art, in which women at least equal men. At the present day there are no actors who may be classed with Rachel, Ristori, and Charlotte Cushman, while Mrs. Siddons, in the memory of our fathers, claims a pre-eminent place.

We have not yet touched upon literary women and their effect on the age, because it is the most obvious part of our subject, and one on which little can be said that will not have suggested itself to the reader. It is in fiction of a profound and passionate order that they have chiefly excelled; and remarkable it is that when they do take up the pen, it is not to depict the external conventionalities in which women are supposed to abide, or those mild passions which poets feign to reside in the female breast, but to plunge into the deepest mysteries of human life, raking and ploughing into experiences upon which men seldom touch. The names of George Sand and Currer Bell are associated with books which have struck at the very heart of modern society; and Frederika Bremer, though her mind is of a more tenderly sympathetic cast, and softened by that gift of humour which is one of the safety-valves of genius, is fond of uncovering the mouths of social pits into which the stoutest beholder can only look and shudder. Women use their pens as dissecting knives, and lay bare social arteries till the blood spouts up, and common-place readers cry out and say it is all shocking and false; but yet people buy the books, and they are worn to rags and tatters in circulating libraries, and pass through edition after edition in defiance of the reviews. How different from the days of Miss Edgeworth and Jane Austen! from their clear, charming, crystalline pictures of life, dealing so artistically with all on the surface and never penetrating beneath. In other departments of literature women have not done much

of mark, but more and more of the writing of the day falls to their share. In newspapers and periodicals, as editors, as compilers of historical and all manner of other matter, they begin to form a formidable phalanx, and to exercise an increasing influence. And the part they play in the papers, and in particular the wide power exercised by one pen, which still labours on indefatigably in spite of failing health and numbered days, we allude to that of Harriet Martineau,-suggests the question of what position women will eventually take in relation to the State, for it is evident that while their influence is penetrating in all other directions, it must in time bear influentially on politics. This is the opinion of such men as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer; the latter observes in his "Social Statics,"

"It is, indeed, said that the exercise of political power by women is repugnant to our sense of propriety-conflicts with our ideas of the feminine character is altogether condemned by our feelings. Granted, but what then? The same plea has been urged in defence of a thousand absurdities, and if valid in one case is equally so in all others. There was a time in France when men were so enamoured of ignorance, that a lady who pronounced any but the commonest words correctly, was blushed for by her companions; a tolerable proof that people's feelings then blamed in a woman that literateness which it is now thought a disgrace for her to be without. It was once held unfeminine for a lady to write a book; and no doubt those who thought it so would have quoted feelings in support of their opinion. Yet, with facts like these on every hand, people assume that the enfranchisement of women cannot be right, because it is repugnant to their feelings."

We are, however, trenching on speculations so far ahead of any possible result, that we feel upon dangerous ground, and must pray our readers to remember that there is the widest difference between holding an opinion, based on philosophical grounds. however firm and true, and any attempt to force that opinion into facts which are wholly unsuitable for its reception. It is a common sneer to picture "Women in St. Stephen's," but there they never will be. St. Stephen's will have given place to some assembly more orderly and better ventilated, before women take practical part in political life. It is customary to represent theoretical changes as if each were to take place alone. But it is not so, the combinations of society are as infinite and wonderful as the never-repeated patterns of a kaleidoscope; one bit of the system never alters singly, but in new and totally unexpected directions we find adaptations to the ruling idea of the time. Those who care to see the best that can be said on the subject of the enfranchisement of women, will find it in an article contained

in the "Westminster Review" for July, 1851, and also in a small tract on the subject published by Chapman.

We have now gone through the various departments of society wherein women do or may find a place, without a word on the cardinal fact of life for both men and women-their domestic relations. In the first place, it is a subject upon which so much has been said or sung, that its usual aspects are pretty well exhausted; in the next place, its profounder theory involves the whole moral and religious condition of both parties, and cannot be compressed into a paper such as this. Our silence, then, is from no sense of their unimportance, but because we accept the household love and the household duties as the most sacred and perfect manifestation of a noble human character, and consider that their due training and fulfilment depend upon deeper causes and principles than we can treat of here.

ART. III.-ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA OF DREAMS AND APPARITIONS. [No. II. of a Series.]

(Continued from page 384.)

HAVING offered some few general remarks on the external senses, as being suggestive of dreaming under the partially waking condition of the brain, and also when the latter is partially conscious of some atmospherical conditions, when the body is rendered more susceptible to the effects of cold and heat, that these phenomena are suggestive of trains of thought during the state of sleeping, when the dream which is thus induced, although having many discrepancies and contradictions, still preserves a kind of unity in perfect keeping with the disturbing agents which first suggested the particular association, we shall next consider the particular phenomena, when the "mental faculties are some of them in a state of excessive activity, arising from some abnormal condition of health;" premising that the trains of thoughts which are experienced by the sleeper will, in the majority of instances, still indicate his individuality, subject to certain modifications induced by the painful or other states of the body. The following instance furnishes some curious subjects for the psychological reflections and physiological phenomena :

PARTIAL COMA, WITH FAINTNESS.-Some time since, a friend of the writer had a most singular dream. We cite the narrator's own words. He said: "I thought myself dangerously ill, so bad that I was not surprised when the physician assured me I was a My dying; nay, I felt à consciousness that such was the case.

affectionate wife and dear anxious children surrounded my bed, and seemed deeply sorrowful; and when I spoke to them, they sobbed most bitterly. It was then that I reasoned with them, and pointed out to them as a source of consolation, that my condition was merely one of transition from the present existence to a better, where pain would cease, and endeavoured to impress them with the fact that this change would be for my own advantage; that I should give up a life of anxiety for one of unmixed happiness. This was urged to sooth their grief, which was intense. Then I added what seemed to me a more serious declaration: Our parting must be painful; it is so ordained; but my faith convinces me that in a few brief years there will be a reunion." He described that for a few minutes he seemed unconscious, and was partially recovered by the sobs of his family; that he attempted to resume his discourse, when his spirit appeared as if waning, and all external objects became dim and indistinct. The great problem he would soon learn; and so awfully did his position affect him, that he awoke. But he was in a state of partial coma, with drops of cold perspiration on his forehead, and so deadly faint that he then actually concluded that the dream was a premonitory warning "that his time was come."

In this instance it was therefore the peculiar condition of his stomach and nervous system that induced the train of thought which had so vividly affected him (as fainting is an approximation to the state of death), and this sickly sensation, and the incapacity for any kind of movement, had caused the mind to produce the scene just related, which had had all the painful vividness of a real occurrence.

How marvellous are these phenomena of the mental faculties! that as our bodily powers seem on the wane, the immortal spirit acquires a greater and more intense capacity, and by anticipation produces events which may in all probability happen at some future period.

It is, however, not our intention of multiplying examples, but only cite one instance to illustrate each separate phase under each section. Therefore, by the way of contrast, and to render it manifest that disordered conditions of stomach or derangement of other viscera, predispose to dreaming, and that the proximate cause will induce the speciality of the dream.

He was a

His tem

Mr. M A— was in easy circumstances. hearty man, but liable to great biliary disturbance. perament was nervo-lymphatic, and he was very stout in his person, and took very little active exercise. He had had in consequence several attacks of what the ancient writers called μɛλaiva XoAn, with its constant results-great depression of spirits, and

what we modernly designate melancholy. But under judicious regimen he had recovered a very fair state of health. Occasionally, however, he had bilious attacks. When in this condition, he one night awoke in a state resembling insanity. He cried out in a most fearful manner, uttering the most extraordinary noises, until some of the members of his family awoke, and entered his bedroom to ascertain the cause. They found him struggling with fearful energy, striking away with his fists with great force and apparent rancour, as to render it dangerous to approach him. And this state was the more surprising, as he was a most benevolent and kindhearted man. Some of the party addressed him, and discovered that he was asleep, and evidently affected with some painful dream.

It was, however, thought to be a probable cause of his condition that the shirt-collar was too tight round his neck, and was acting as a tight ligature on the carotids, and thus impeded the circulation. By an immense effort and great presence of mind he was approached from behind, or rather at the head of the bed, and the shirt-collar was unbuttoned. It required great caution, from his enraged blows. This plan succeeded, and soon fortunately brought the sleeper relief, and he awoke much exhausted by his previous efforts; and when he recovered his consciousness he retained all the scene which had so affected him. He related that he was attacked in a most ruffianly manner by some thieves, who attempted to strangle him; and that he distinctly remembered that he experienced a conviction that his life was in jeopardy, and he therefore made a vigorous resistance, and struck them with more than usual savagery. It was a battle for existence; for the more he seemed to resist them, the tighter they grasped him round the throat; and in his terror he thought he must succumb, but that his only chance would be to make some one acquainted with his perilous condition. He said, with a good-tempered smile, "I roared out with all my might, 'Murder! murder!' We have mentioned this was done so lustily as to arouse the sleepers in an adjoining room. It is evident that the tightness of the shirt-collar, induced in all probability by his restless condition, by causing him to slide downwards from the pillows, had occasioned the annoying circumstance; and in this instance the dream may have saved him an apoplectic fit; for, with the constriction round his throat, in a comparatively short time such a casualty might result.

Here is another example, that the state of the body, even when there is not any indisposition, may predispose the particular kind of dream. And the one we select from many others, arises from a striking phenomenon to be indicated. A friend of mine awoke one morning coughing most violently, which ex