Biographical Sketches

MRS. HUTCHINSON.

The character of this female suggests a train of thought which will form
as natural an Introduction to her story, as most of the Prefaces to
Gay's Fables, or the tales of Prior; besides that, the general soundness
of the moral may excuse any want of present applicability. We will not
look for a living resemblance of Mrs. Hutchinson, though the search
might not be altogether fruitless. But there are portentous
indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings
of the gentle sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of
those public women, whereof one was a burden too grievous for our
fathers. The press, however, is now the medium through which feminine
ambition chiefly manifests itself; and we will not anticipate the period
(trusting to be gone hence ere it arrive) when fair orators shall be as
numerous as the fair authors of our own day. The hastiest glance may
show how much of the texture and body of cisatlantic literature is the
work of those slender fingers from which only a light and fanciful
embroidery has heretofore been required, that might sparkle upon the
garment without enfeebling the web. Woman's intellect should never give
the tone to that of man; and even her morality is not exactly the
material for masculine virtue. A false liberality, which mistakes the
strong division-lines of Nature for arbitrary distinctions, and a
courtesy, which might polish criticism, but should never soften it, have
done their best to add a girlish feebleness to the tottering infancy of
our literature. The evil is likely to be a growing one. As yet, the
great body of American women are a domestic race; but when a continuance
of ill-judged incitements shall have turned their hearts away from the
fireside, there are obvious circumstances which will render female pens
more numerous and more prolific than those of men, though but equally
encouraged; and (limited, of course, by the scanty support of the
public, but increasing indefinitely within those limits) the inkstained
Amazons will expel their rivals by actual pressure, and petticoats wave
triumphantly over all the field. But, allowing that such forebodings
are slightly exaggerated, is it good for woman's self that the path of
feverish hope, of tremulous success, of bitter and ignominious
disappointment, should be left wide open to her? Is the prize worth her
having, if she win it? Fame does not increase the peculiar respect
which men pay to female excellence, and there is a delicacy (even in
rude bosoms, where few would think to find it) that perceives, or
fancies, a sort of impropriety in the display of woman's natal mind to
the gaze of the world, with indications by which its inmost secrets may
be searched out. In