Summarily and concisely, if she is more womanly, in any sort, for doing, saying, thinking, whatsoever, howsoever, whithersoever, is not what she ought the term and measure of what she may? or else who shall presume to prescribe other bounds to her nature, and undertake to restrain its ongoings in this or that direction?
Is female determined by male? woman's mind by the wind of man's caprice? or both mutually interdetermined by the law of their correlation, his wants and her capacities, her wants and his abilities? And if he preaches utility, but she follows taste, whether is to be concluded, that he needs more of practicality in her, or she more of æstheticality in him? Is it that women lack usefulness or that men lack beautifulness?
The sterner sex, by assuming to itself superior desires, can stigmatize the other because the female disposition does not meet its own; but truth and right may be much upon the other side. Women may be nearer standard, just in this land and age, than men; and their unsatisfied longings for handsome, chaste, and noble men are swifter witnesses than all the low complaint about feminine finery and extravagance. When men can seem to better understand that it is not necessarily madness to prefer (as Nero) a fortune in marble to a fortune in gold, or a Raphael's painting to 'money in the bank,' when they shall come to recognize the utility of beauty and holiness, then will not women be slow to acknowledge the use and usefulness of so much utility.
Honor to Sigel! honor to Heintzelman! Whatever may have been said or sung against others, there is no doubt as to the ability, faithfulness, perseverance, and courage of these gallant Deutschers, and with them of many others of their glorious nation who have followed their national and instinctive hatred of tyranny, and taken part with us in battle against the South. Hurrah then for our German Generals. Sigel soll leben, vivat hoch!
Wir geh'n die Waffen in der Hand,
Zu retten unser Vaterland,
Und unser Kampf ist Sieg.
Wir tragen nicht Erober-Schwerdt,
Wir schützen Weib und Kind und Heerd,
Gerecht ist unser Krieg.
(ENGLISH.)
'We go with weapon in our hand,
And all to free our Father-land,
A victory is our fight.
We seek to win no foreign earth,
We fight for wife and child and hearth:
God knows our cause is right.'
How many hundreds of thousands of Germans are there to whom these lines have become as applicable in this our 'Trans-Atlantic Germany' as when sung of old under the oaks of the Teuton father-land. When this battle shall be over, let every one bear in mind the good and faithful aid they gave us. Nor shall the Irish be forgotten, who with such desperate courage have contributed so largely to swell our armies. They are in every regiment, they have been foremost in every battle, their dead lie on every field. Let those deny it who will, we should have fared badly enough had it not been for the Irish. They have shown themselves from the beginning as presenting
'First fut on the flure,
First stick in the fight.'
They gave us the poet-warrior O'Brien, and the brave and generous Kearney, and the noble Corcoran—but the list is too long. Honor to them all.
There are many very good sort of people who will tell you, 'I don't like Germans,' or 'I don't like Irish!' We trust that this war will drive all such dislikes among us out of existence. Those who indulge in them are generally narrow-minded, un-cosmopolite sort of people. The principles of our day and of our war—the Republican principles—are opposed to all such illiberality. The Southerner, indeed, proposes to exclude all foreigners—it is his 'policy'—the Republican would give to the brain and muscle of every living being the fullest chance for development every where. Free Soil and Free Labor forever!