HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMAN. 317 



pathy which are so peculiarly your own. Slill less will such elevated 

 themes conflict in any degree with, the highest of all duties; or with 

 those earnest and devout thoughts which the study of Grod's visible 

 universe, or the investigation of the more mysterious realm of mind, 

 is calculated to awaken. When, at length, amid the boundless works 

 of creation, a being was made in the Divine image, gifted with reason, 

 a living soul, he needed a companion of like endowments, that he 

 might exchange with her the first utterances which give audable form 

 to thought. Thenceforth the study of the Creator's works blended 

 with the worship of Himself; nor — when reflecting on the inconceiv- 

 able vastness of that universe, of which our sun and all its planets are 

 but star-dust; and of the power with which the human intellect 

 grapples with its immensities : weighing the sun, analysing the fixed 

 stars, determining the very chemical elements of the nebute, and 

 reducing to law and order the whole phenomena of the heavens ; — can 

 I doubt that all which science has mastered is but a page in that ample 

 volume of God's works, on which the purified intellect shall, in a future 

 life, dwell with ever growing delight, and ever ampler recognition of 

 what God's infinitude is. 



Such enjoyment of immortal intelligences cannot be incompatible 

 with the devoutest reverence and worship ; but will rather fitly 

 form a part of it. i^or need we fear that, here, intellectual culture 

 will prove irreconcilable with the practical ideas and duties of every- 

 day life. God did not make man in his own divine image, only to 

 place him in a world requiring fools for its government. England, the 

 most practical of nations, has also proved herself the most intellectual. 

 Fler Bacon and Newton were no cloister-bred dreamers ; nor does it 

 surprise us — but, on the contrary, we accept it as the most natural of 

 things, — to find a Derby or a Gladstone, amid the cares of a vast 

 empire, sporting with the toils of highest scholarship; a Herschel 

 stepping down from the lofty abstractions of pure science, to contend 

 with them in the same literary arena ; or a Grove or Mill, practically 

 asserting the compatibility of the abstrusest scientific and metaphysical 

 speculations, with their duties to clients in the courts, and constitu- 

 encies in the legislative council of the nation. 



And if it be thus true that an earnest devotion to letters, or the 

 pursuit of some of the abstrusest branches of science, in no degree 

 conflicts with the cares of statesmanship and responsible professional 

 •duties : it is an insult to our common sense to tolerate the idea that 



