The Merry Past 



the mendacious statements so industriously circu- 

 lated in England, does not improve morality, which 

 is as little affected by it as are indigestion or tooth- 

 ache. What education does is to render woman more 

 skilled in carrying on intrigues without open scandal, 

 which, considering that the great crime in Anglo- 

 Saxon communities is to " be found out," is perhaps 

 a useful attainment. 



The passionate and almost illiterate woman of 

 the eighteenth century was at a great disadvantage 

 in this respect, compared with her more cultured 

 sister of to-day, who, in a certain number of cases, 

 realises the valuable weapon which modern culture 

 has so obligingly placed at her disposal. 



That mere learning ever contributes to moral 

 perfection all past experience denies. In the reign 

 of Pericles — the time of Socrates, the time of Aristo- 

 phanes, the time of Phidias — when Greece was the 

 distinguished seat of literature and fine arts, Athens 

 was the sink of human depravity ; the virtues and 

 the liberty of Rome did not long survive the famous 

 Augustan age ; and, in the more modern periods of 

 Leo X, Louis XIV, and our second Charles, vice 

 and profligacy kept neck-and-neck with the growth 

 of human learning. Nevertheless, mental cultivation 

 is a most desirable thing. In the case of women, 

 however, and more particularly English women, the 

 acquisition of much knowledge seems to produce a 

 certain amount of unreasoning discontent and a 

 demand for rights which would in all probability 

 be dangerous to the very existence of this country as 



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