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dren, sent them home (as the mother country was fondly termed) for their education.  Of course, this expensive method could be adopted only by a privileged few, chiefly belonging to old English families of rank and wealth.  The great mass of American females could boast of few accomplishments save housewifery.  They had few books beside their Bibles.  They had few books beside their Bibles.  They were not expected to read - far less to write.  It was their province to guide to spindle and distaff, and work willingly with their hands.  Now, woman is allowed to establish her humble stool somewhat nearer the elbow-chair of her lord and master; to pore over the huge tome of science, hitherto considered as his exclusive property; to con the musty volumes of classic lore, written even in strange tongues; to form her own opinions, and give them forth to the world.  But, in the days of Phillis, these things were not so.  She was not simulated to exertion by the successful cultivation of female talent.  She had no brilliant exhibition of feminine genius before her, to excite her emulation; and we are at a loss to conjecture, how the first strivings of her mind after knowledge - her delight in literature, her success even in a dead language, the first bursting forth of her thoughts in song - can be accounted for,
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unless these efforts are allowed to have been the inspirations of that genius which is the gift of God. And who will dare to say, that the benevolent Sovereign of the universe has appointed her unfortunate race to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and given them no portion with their brethren?
The distinguished women of France were trained, as it were, in the very temple of science, to minister at its altars. Those of England, stood too, in the broad light of its wide-spreading beams; but at the time when Phillis lived, our own land was darkly overshadowed. We had no philosophers, no historians, no poets; and our statesmen--those wonderful men, who stood forth in the day of a nation's peril, the wonder and glory of the world--had not then breathed forth those mighty energies which girded the warrior for the battle, and nerved the hearts of a whole people as the heart of one man. All here was calm and passionless as the natural world upon the morning of creation, ere the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters. It passed, and the day-spring knew its place. Even thus with the spirit of Liberty. It breathed upon our sleeping nation, awakening the genius of the
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