[From the Independent]

  ANDOVER, Jan. 20.—Andover is wonderfully lively this winter for so steady a place.—Public amusements are in the sacrosanct. A Course of Lyceum lectures is drawing quite full betimes, and, besides that, the Mendelsson Quintette Club are giving a course of concerts, which are fully attended. Some sensation has been made by Miss Antoinette Brown's lecture in the Lyceum course, which, of course, has a result that the descent of the angel in the pool of Judea had—of troubling the waters, and giving rise to animated discussion.

  Wise people, however, do not disturb their own peace by a too vehement opinion, one way or the other, on the question of which Miss Brown is the embodiment. All seem to concede that the difficult function of a public speaker is performed by her so unexceptionably, and with as little loss of feminine grace, as such a step admits of. She has lectured also with acceptance in Dover, Beverly, Taunton, Providence, and many other places, and has, we are informed, altogether more applications than she can meet.

  In private society, Miss Brown is quiet, retiring and modest, without the slightest shade of anything obtrusive or unwomanly. It would appear to be a safe course to allow the experiment which is now being made on the sphere of womanhood, to run itself out to its final results without opposition. The laws and sphere of the two sexes are so strongly and unalterably fixed by nature and constitution, that there is little danger I such patience. Women, as a general thing, will, by the force of constitutional instincts, tend to the sphere of domestic life.

  But there always have been, and always probably will be some who desire, and have the capacity for a wider sphere, and it will be difficult to show why they should not also follow their nature. Can one tell us why it should be right and proper for Jenny Lind to sing to two thousand people "I know that my Redeemer liveth," and improper for Antoinette Brown to say it? Why, it was proper for Madame Sontag to sing to the assembled clergy of Boston, and would have been highly improper for her to speak to them?—However, a little patience and quietness, and these vexed questions will determine themselves, by the most sensible of all tests—experience.—Independent.