if they have never been roused from the torpor of a vacant unthinking existence to feel the grandeur and the worth of those pursuits which awaken the sense of the Godlike in man's intellect, so magnificent in its reach, so glorious in its triumphs? It is not great knowledge nor extensive powers that are required to be able to feel this. It is sufficient to be free from littlenessto have that nice sense of the proportions and due relations of things which belong to a well balanced mind-which enables it to feel the grandeur and beauty of what its understanding cannot fathom, and saves it from that common error of little minds, mistaking their own garden for the universe.

In a former work* I have taken my part in striving to enforce these views upon women, and to point out how, in this as in many other instances, they are the natural guardians of man's highest interests. Every tender thought, every lofty emotion, every generous sentiment that men may be in danger of forgetting in the clash and tumult of the world should be shrined in the hearts of women, and thence go forth to purify and sustain and resist the lowering tendencies of active life. And against none is this aid more required than against the perversion of knowledge to be the mere servant of Mammon. Men will always love and value it sufficiently under that aspect; that which adds daily to our comforts and profits and pleasure will not fail to be honoured, but we may hope to see it reverenced in a higher spirit when that reverence shall become part of the home-creed of childhoodpart of that spiritual nurture which the child receives

* Thoughts on Self-Culture, chap. xii. Second edition. London:

from her who moulds his feelings and associations by the influence of hourly example and boundless love.

While men take the mere ambitious view of education, and women value certain acquirements for the sake of fashion only, a fearful amount of frivolity may co-exist with a great deal of information and intelligence; but this will hardly be the case when women shall be so educated as to feel the true worth of knowledge, the true value of a serene region of earnest interest and delight in the midst of all the misleading and lowering influences of the world, and to uphold this feeling in society. Compared with two generations ago, there is in the present day an immense increase of information, and therefore, perhaps, a generally quicker intelligence and power of apprehension. Minds accustomed to know even the roughest outline of a variety of subjects, and to understand a great variety of terms, will more readily seize new knowledge when presented to them than minds more limited in their experience. But is there, with this increased information, any corresponding decrease of frivolity among us? I fear not. The greater range of amusements, and the easier rate at which they may be enjoyed, rather tend perhaps to foster a frivolous tone; or, at least, that love of pleasure and distaste for quiet home-enjoyment which belong to the frivolous. People may follow the crowd to a lecture-room as to an assembly, and may know and use correctly many scientific terms where formerly they would never have attended to such subjects at all. But if they have only followed the crowd, and such is the case too often, there is no reason to expect that they should be less frivolous than before. It is not the occupa

influences character; and, till we read or attend lectures-not for fashion's sake, nor for talk, nor to appear instructed, nor to get rid of time, but with a simple and earnest desire to know-not till then will the practice affect the tone of thought or daily habits. We may safely assert, that if real value for mental pursuits were at all proportionate to the spread of mere information, the life now led by a large proportion of the wealthy classes of society would become an impossibility. There would be no occasion to denounce or laugh at it; the system itself must fall before the wide and earnest views of life which would then govern the majority of educated minds. To those who, either removed themselves from that life of pleasure-seeking and frivolous excitement, or, pausing now and then as its course slackens or the heart wearies with its emptiness, have leisure to contemplate its social and domestic effects, it needs no argument to prove how great would be the benefit of such a change. Equal benefit would result to the listless lives of women who cannot afford, or by position or habits do not incline to join, the race of amusement; since the earnest pursuit which would sober the pleasure-seekers would become a fresh source of vitality to those who have neither pleasure nor business to rouse them.

I shall have occasion later to enter more fully into this part of the subject, for the suffering of women from the want of animating pursuit is of too serious importance not to be carefully considered in their education; here I have only touched upon it as one of the many reasons which make it needful that in educating girls we should aim not at this or that form of acquirement, but at making love of knowledge for its

giving habits of mental exertion which shall help to counteract the many dangers of leisure and the narrowing tendencies of small cares and occupations amidst which women must unavoidably live.

The very fact that women have no professions to exercise their abilities, or make them feel the need of knowledge, which has been the plea for giving them little or no solid mental cultivation, is then in truth, as I said above, the reason why they need a higher and more severe tone of education; since, unless we would allow their faculties to be wasted both to themselves and society, they must be educated to feel from within what comes to the more active portion of mankind from without. They must be educated to feel the constant necessity of self-improvement and their responsibility as members of society, although not sharing in its active labours. It is not indeed difficult to show how many of woman's home duties, both as wife and mother, would be far better discharged by more cultivated minds, and how far her sphere of enjoyment and influence is increased by extending to man's intellectual life the power of sympathy she exercises so strongly within the range of feelings and affections; but it is not sufficient to rest the plea for female education even on such grounds as these. In educating a young girl we must feel that her future is too uncertain, too much beyond her own control, to venture to train her altogether for a position that may never be hers. The only safe course is to hold up individual perfectness, as far as such a term may be used, as the aim of education ; in other words, the harmonious development of all her powers as her own individual right and duty; to train her, in short, as God's creature, not as man's subor

laws, will be all the more clearly perceived and understood the more the mind is rendered capable of studying and comprehending other general laws of nature; for it were truly a dangerous satire upon man's supremacy to allow that it expects to be acknowledged only so long as women are feeble-minded and ignorant.