FEMALE EDUCATION. 225 



ture ; if they had been stimulated by competition all that time, and 

 had ended at twenty-one by being first-prize women (as probably 

 most of them had the power of being) — if this had befallen them, 

 then, I think, their sons would have been small and distorted men, 

 instead of being the lights of the world. 



One great argument for the " higher education " of women is that 

 it makes them fitter companions for highly-educated men. This view 

 should be looked at in the light of the ideal women that have been 

 created in literature by men and women of genius. If genius has the 

 instinct to discover the highest qualities, and to portray them for our 

 instruction, we should get guidance here. Women have been painted 

 by our poets, dramatists, and creative writers of fiction, by the thou- 

 sand. Many persons would accept the ideals thus sketched for them 

 as a surer guide than the labored deductions of the scientists. Men of 

 genius ought to have known the kind of women whose companionship 

 they liked, and whose influence on them was best. While they have 

 had to create every kind of woman in peopling the ideal worlds they 

 have made for us, it is certainly very remarkable that the ideal type 

 of the very highly book-educated woman of the modern educationalist 

 is scarcely met with at all. In " The Princess " of our poet-laureate 

 the fancy can not be said to be a serious or imitable one. Though the 

 sentiment of the " sweet girl-graduates with their golden hair " is this : 



" Oh ! lift your natures up, 

 Embrace our aims : work out your freedom, girls ; 

 Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed. 

 Drink deep until the habits "of the slave, 

 The sins of emptiness, gossip, and spite, 

 And slander die. Better not be at all 

 Than not be noble " — 



yet the poet paints the sweetness so as altogether to overpower the 

 learnedness in the picture, and the Princess's ideal and purpose come to 

 naught. And Lady Psyche's dream of likeness and equality is as far 

 as ever from being realized : 



"Everywhere 

 Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 

 Two in the tangled business of the world, 

 Two in the liberal oflBces of life, 

 Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss 

 Of science and the secrets of the mind. 

 Musician, painter, sculptor, critic move; 

 And everywhere the broad and bounteous earth 

 Should bear a double growth of these rare souls, 

 Poets whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." 



Shakespeare's women are certainly not of the learned sort. Their 

 years of adolescence were not taken up in getting book-knowledge 

 exclusively. Their emotional nature was not dried up by the strain of 

 VOL. xxrv. — 16 



