169 
every direction from sound good sense ; and in nothing more 
evidently so than in the manner in which it estimates the 
female mind, being incapable of comprehending the contrasted 
beauty and grace of her nature ; and insisting on treating her 
as simply a weaker homo , to be raised (not exactly by gymnastic 
exercises in the Platonic method), but by ill-adapted intel- 
lectual training, to become an inferior copy, instead of a 
poetical rendering of the original Adam. 
I have always been in favour of the highest culture for the 
female mind, and know that those thus educated can fulfil 
with the greatest propriety 'all the duties of their station. But, 
then, this culture must be adapted to the special character of 
those subjected to it. To expect the accomplishment of labo- 
rious tasks, invigorating and enjoyable as these may prove to 
the masculine mind, is to inflict probably irreparable injury on 
the more delicate, though equally perfect, organisation. It is 
simply to realise what Schiller has described in his charming 
little piece, Pegasus im Joche , wherein the poet tells us what 
befell the noble beast when yoked to the plough with a labo- 
rious ox ; and what, on the contrary, was seen when his pecu- 
liar powers were developed in their own line of things. 
It is a fable, I own, but marvellously like what has fallen 
under my own observation. 
Leaving the noble beast to the care of the philosophers, 
where he lies — 
Yon Gram gebeugt das edle Gotterpferd 
Zu Boden stiirzt und sich im Staube windet — 
I turn for a moment to the laborious ox, of which I take as an 
antitypical illustration a real man of science, to whom concen- 
tration of thought was a pleasure ; the late John Dalton, well 
known to several of my relatives.* As a boy, and early 
developing his taste for abstruse studies, his master, who 
delighted to exercise his powers, used to set him a difficult 
problem — say in his morning’s school. In the afternoon or 
evening the master would ask whether he had conquered the 
difficulty. “ Not yet, master, but I think I shall have it by 
morning,” used to be the reply ; sleeping or waking he would 
not relinquish his bull-dog grip till he had mastered his 
subject.f Try the same plan with a girl of the same age, and 
the probable result would be brain-fever. 
1/ 
* I accompanied my father and the above author of the Atomic Theory to 
the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh in 1834, of which I have 
the record in copious notes, 
t Something similar is recorded of Sir Isaac Newton. 
N 2 
