Social studies by Lady Wilde

The bondage of woman.--Genius and marriage.--Social graces.--Venus victrix.--Spiritual affinity.--Suitability of dress.--American women.--The world's new phases.--The destiny of humanity.--Australia (a plea for emigration)--The vision of the Vatican.--Irish leaders and martyrs.--The poet as teacher.--The two artists.--'Tertia mors est.'

THE BONDAGE OF WOMAN.

For six thousand years the history of woman
has been a mournful record of helpless resig-
nation to social prejudice and legal tyranny.
A doom of expiation laid on the sex, perhaps,
for having been first in the transgression. Yet,
tradition teaches also that through woman
comes the redemption of humanity, and many
earnest souls are even now waiting for some
diviner revelation of the mission of woman than
the world has yet seen. ' Earth waits for her
Queen,' is the epigraph of Margaret Fuller's
great essay, entitled, ' Woman in the Nine-
teenth Century.' As yet, however, the expia-
tory sacrifice goes on unchanged, and women
still weep and toil, as they have ever done,
that man, the lord of the world, may find

existence made easier and pleasanter by the
ceaseless devotion and patient self-sacrifice of
the inferior, at least, the weaker sex.

In the early ages, while men were warring
or hunting, the women of the family per-
formed all the servile duties ; drawing water
from the well, like Rebecca ; tending the flocks,
like Rachel ; or cooking the food, like Sara,
who was dismissed to knead cakes while angels
were conversing with her husband.

Polygamy and slavery began even before
Adam's death. ' Hear my voice, ye wives of
Lamech,' exclaimed the dictatorial Antediluvian
to his two wives, Adah and Zillah, who, no
doubt, obeyed in silence, for their answers are
not recorded in the sacred history.

Everywhere bondage was the portion of
women. In the East they were considered
as articles of traffic simply. A man acquired
his rights over them just in proportion to his
ability to purchase. Thus, Solomon had a
thousand wives in his harem.

In Africa, women have ever been the hard-
worked drudges of their barbarian masters.
The three thousand and thirty-three wives of
the King of Dahomey — to which mystic num-
ber he is limited — are but so many meni als ;
and other African chiefs have a bodygu ....