20 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [n. 



and that, at this epoch, womanly beauty, so far as it is inde 

 pendent of grace or expression, is a question of drapery and 

 accessories. 



Supposing, however, that all these arguments have a certain 

 foundation ; admitting for a moment, that they are comparable 

 to those by which the inferiority of the negro to the white man 

 may be demonstrated, are they of any value as against woman- 

 emancipation ? Do they afford us the smallest ground for 

 refusing to educate women as well as men to give women the 

 same civil and political rights as men ? No mistake is so 

 commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause 

 to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a 

 great extent, nonsensical. And we conceive that those who may 

 laugh at the arguments of the extreme philogynists, may yet feel 

 bound to work heart and soul towards the attainment of their 

 practical ends. 



As regards education, for example. Granting the alleged 

 defects of women, is it not somewhat absurd to sanction and 

 maintain a system of education which would seem to have been 

 specially contrived to exaggerate all these defects ? 



Naturally not so firmly strung, nor so well balanced as boys, 

 girls are in great measure debarred from the 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 conservatives ; 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 



