AN ESTABLISHED MAXIM. 315 



after-life it is equally necessary for the female adjunct ? and if 

 the last stage in the mental development of each man and woman 

 is to be reached only through the proper discharge of the paren- 

 tal duties, there should be equal preparation for the performance 

 of such obligations. 



But, after all, these arguments might have been considered 

 necessary in the eighteenth century when, if the incisive pen 

 of Lady Mary Wortley Montague indites the truth, men de- 

 barred her sex from the advantages of learning, fancying that 

 the improvement of their understandings would only furnish 

 them with the more art to deceive the male sex, and because 

 the males flattered themselves that the females were really of 

 inferior rank ; and the Lady Mary was persuaded that if there 

 was a commonwealth of rational horses (as Dean Swift has sup- 

 posed), it would be an established maxim with them, following 

 the cue of their masters, that a mare could not be taught to 

 pace ! In the nineteenth century we have progressed far be- 

 yond this, and whatever differences of opinion there may be as 

 to woman's right to vote, and the propriety of her taking part 

 in public affairs, the majority of intelligent male citizens are 

 agreed in opinion that women are by natural right entitled to 

 all the advantages of education enjoyed by men, and that what- 

 ever difference there may be in the faculty of production, in the 

 faculty of acquiring knowledge there is no difference between 

 the feminine and the masculine mind. 



" On the cultivation of the minds of women depends the wis- 

 dom of men," said Sheridan. " The future destiny of the child 

 is always the work of the mother," said Napoleon. And even 

 for her own sake, woman is as much entitled to an education as 

 her brother, for no entertainment is so cheap as reading and 

 study, no pleasure so lasting, nothing so moderates the passions, 

 nor teaches one to be contented at so small an expense as knowl- 

 edge ; and though the ultimate end of the education of a woman 

 is to make her a good wife and mother, it will have the effect of 

 rendering a virgin state happy, and as in the one case it will not 

 interfere with the indispensable requisite of every American 

 wife and mother to know how to order and regulate the family, 

 how to govern the domestics and train up her children, but 

 rather insure a more wise judgment in those prerogatives, so in 

 the other case, a proficiency in letters will not detract from the 



