their husbands. No sensible person would say that a girl is superior to her brother because she has a greater aptness for mathematics than he, but because she excels in the queen-like attributes and virtues and duties peculiar to her own sex and belonging to her own sphere, that sphere so beautiful, that when she abdicates it, it is like being expelled from Paradise ; for, once lost, it can never be regained. That education is best even for a great woman, great in intellect as in soul, which best develops the lofty ideal of womanhood; which best makes her a real woman, and not a poor imitation of man, and gives to her the dignity and grace of a queen over her household, and brings out that moral beauty by which she reigns over her husband's heart, and inspires the reverence which children ought to feel. Do we derogate from the greatness of women when we seek to kindle the brightness of that moral beauty which outshines all the triumphs of mere intellectual forces? Should women murmur because they cannot be superior in everything, when it is conceded that they are superior in the best thing? Nor let her clutch what she can neither retain nor enjoy. In the primeval Paradise there was one tree the fruit of which our mother Eve was forbidden to touch or to eat. There is a tree which grows in our times, whose fruit, when eaten by some, produces unrest, discontent, rebellion against God, unsatisfied desires, a revelation of unrealized miseries, the mere contemplation of which is enough to drive to madness and moral death. Yet of all the other trees of life's garden may woman eat, those trees that grow in the boundless field which modern knowledge and enterprise have revealed to woman, and which, if she confine herself thereto, will make her a blessing and a glory forever to fallen and afflicted humanity. AUTHORITIES. Life of Hannah More, by H. C. Knight; Memoirs, by W. Roberts; Literary Ladies of Eugland, by H. K. Elwood; Literary Women, by J. Williams; Writings of Hannah More; Letters to Zachary Macaulay; Edinburgh Review, vol. xiv.; Christian Observer, vol. xxxv.; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxv.; American Quarterly, vol. lii.; Fraser's Magazine, vol. x. |