24 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [ix. 



sports and physical exercises which, are justly thought 

 absolutely necessary for the full development of the 

 vigour of the more favoured sex. Women are, by nature, 

 more excitable than men — prone to be swept by tides of 

 emotion, proceeding from hidden and inward, as well as 

 from obvious and external causes ; and female education 

 does its best to weaken every physical counterpoise to 

 this nervous mobility — tends in all ways to stimulate the 

 emotional part of the mind and stunt the rest. We find 

 girls naturally timid, inclined to dependence, born con- 

 servatives ; and we teach them that independence is 

 unladylike ; that blind faith is the right frame of mind ; 

 and that whatever we may be permitted, and indeed 

 encouraged, to do to our brother, our sister is to be left 

 to the tyranny of authority and tradition. With few 

 insignificant exceptions, girls have been educated either 

 to be drudges, or toys, beneath man ; or a sort of angels 

 above him; the highest ideal aimed at oscillating between 

 Clarchen and Beatrice. The possibility that the ideal of 

 womanhood lies neither in the fair saint, nor in the fair 

 sinner ; that the female type of character is neither 

 better nor worse than the male, but only weaker ; that 

 women are meant neither to be men's guides nor their 

 playthings, but their comrades, their fellows and their 

 equals, so far as Nature puts no bar to that equality, does 

 not seem to have entered into the minds of those who 

 have had the conduct of the education of girls. 



If the present system of female education stands self- 

 condemned, as inherently absurd ; and if that which we 

 have just indicated is the true position of woman, what 

 is the first step towards a better state of things ? We 

 reply, emancipate girls. Recognise the fact that they 

 share the senses, perceptions, feelings, reasoning powers, 

 emotions, of boys, and that the mind of the average girl 

 is less different from that of the average boy, than the 



