have husbands and children;" but husbands and fathers take an interest in this class of women, and they will naturally continue to look at the question almost too exclusively from this side.

The real difficulty is, as to the influence to be brought to bear upon young women whose destiny in life is as yet undecided, of whom none can tell whether they are to encounter the perils of matrimony, or are to enjoy what has been indulgently or ironically called the state of single blessedness. Are women to be brought up to be wives or unmarried independent women, or can an education be devised which will adapt them equally well to be either? If there can, this is the thing to be aimed at; but is this the thing which the more enlightened reprovers of what are pleasantly called female wrongs do aim at? Doubtless the education of girls has hitherto fallen short of both these aims, and confined itself in great measure to teaching them, not things most advantageous to themselves either in the married or unmarried state, but things adapted to get them married. Still the whole mass of social opinion about women, the conventional influences which surround and mould them, are mainly adapted to their position as wives and mothers. We are by no means disposed to deny that both the direct training of girls and the environment of opinion in which they live, might advantageously be in some degree altered so as to leave them with fuller resources to meet the demands and face the privations of unmarried life. But an excess in this direction is most of all things to be deprecated; and there is undoubtedly a growing body of opinion which favours this excess. It is constantly asserted, or implied, that all women ought to be educated as if they were men and were going to live as men, nay more, that the life of man is necessary to their complete education; you must, it is said, shut no avenue of knowledge to women, and debar them from no occupation through any false fear of soiling their purity or hardening

their nature. Now if the woman is to be educated to fight the battle of life in the same ranks and under the same discipline as the man, she must no doubt learn early to fit herself for the roughnesses of the campaign; but if to the normal condition of a woman's life the freshest bloom of delicacy, the grace and depth of unvulgarised emotions, and a nature unhardened by the keen pursuit of selfish interests, are not only the highest crown, but the most necessary conditions of her highest function and influence, is it wise to endanger these at the outset? Two replies are made. It is said, woman is an earthly creature, and it is idle to strive after supermundane purity. Most true, only let us have a quid pro quo. If women are to be exposed to a larger extent than hitherto to the ruder and coarser influences of life, let us take what care we can that they lose no more than is necessary, and nothing without an adequate countervailing benefit. Again it is said, if woman be that pure and lofty being you describe her and would fain have her remain, raised by a holier and finer nature above the man, she may be fearlessly exposed to the same influences as he is, and will pass unsullied through them. But this is by no means so certain as it is assumed to be. Doubtless the innate delicacy and modesty of women is greater than that of men, from this axiom we all start; but experience seems to prove that their finer bloom is more easily rubbed off. The stronger nature of man is better fitted for the ruder trials it has to undergo; contamination neither stains it so deeply nor leaves so permanent a mark. He is, as we have said, less dependent in his nature than woman, and daily we see men retrieving themselves from impressions and habits which must permanently have degraded a woman. Of course the man

suffers loss; he can never be what he might have been had he been true to himself and placed under happier conditions; but undoubtedly he has more power of casting his slough than the woman has; and things which

rub off his rough outside, sink into and decay the softer nature of a woman.

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not speaking of the contact of a higher nature with extraneous misery or debasement. When the divine affection of pity, or the yet higher resolve of duty, inspired by Christian charity and Christian patriotism, leads the way, Florence Nightingale and her band of nurses may walk with ministering hands through the loathsome hospitals of war, or Elizabeth Fry visit to redeem the vicious and polluted inmates of the prison; and a stain shall no more touch them than water cling to polished steel. It is of the evils of a competitive struggle we speak, with its temptations to selfishness, to dishonesty, to untruthfulness, its not easy reconcilement with modesty and self-forgetfulness; it is of the dangers which must necessarily, and undoubtedly do, hang about many of the avenues of knowledge. Ought women rashly to expose themselves to these?

And there is danger that they venture rashly, if only because extremes have a charm for them. There are signs enough of this in what advanced women write on education. They don't like the commonplace difficulties of the beginning, the patient training of intellect, which is what they most want. They prefer something easy and outré. "There is," says Miss Parkes, "one branch of education so important in itself, so admirable as a method of exact training, and so calculated to supply that lack of interest in large subjects for which women have been hitherto reproached, that it must receive specific mention, it is the study of the Science of Social and Political Economy." We are desired to "take the three reasons for the pursuit of this study by women separately: Firstly, it is most important to that sex who are expected more and more to undertake the application of detailed relief for social ills. Secondly, another important reason consists in its excellence as a means of training the mind to attain power as an instrument, for

which we so often hear the less daily applicable science of mathematics commended. . Thirdly, this study is perhaps the most thorough help in developing the minds of young people. Once imbued with the theoretical principles of social welfare, women would soon learn to feel an active interest in the special application of those principles daily treated of in the public papers," &c. Miss Parkes, however, is not responsible at first hand for the idea of teaching social science to the young. To us it seems a caricature of beginning at the end. That science which is of all others the most complex, the most difficult, and the least ascertained, is recommended as a whetstone to the intellects of boys and girls. The real fact is, that you may get them to learn its more obvious principles by rote, but that not one in a hundred of mature minds is competent to appreciate even its difficulties and shortcomings. To recommend it as a training for young people, is as if the ascent of Mont Blanc should be recommended for teaching babies to walk. First, it is important for children who will be expected to walk up-hill; secondly, it is excellent as a means of training the legs as an instrument of progression; thirdly, it is perhaps the most thorough help in developing the bodies of little people. We are not saying that women ought not to study economical and social science, that they are incapable of comprehending it as far as it is settled, and of furnishing new ideas for its greater fixity and extension; we do not say that minds, though young, should not, if already trained to steady thought, occupy themselves with its difficult problems: we only say that it is of all things the most preposterous to attempt to use it for either sex as an instrument for early training of the intellect instead of such things as arithmetic and geometry. The preponderating place assigned to it, and the idea of its serving as a substitute for mathematics, indicate truly the feminine tendency to give the slip to those duller things in which

girls really most want training, and to substitute for them something which shall be immediately interesting and admit of endless discussion.

It is not our object here to enter upon the question of non-domestic employment for women in its economical bearings. It is enough to say in passing, that the objection based on the tendency of their interference to lower the wages of male labour is untenable. The social and educational influences of such employment have, however, received an elaborate treatment in one of the books before us; and may properly give occasion for a few remarks in pursuance of what we have said above. The author complains, and justly, of the distinction which so early takes place between the studies of boys and girls, of social conventions which limit their free intercourse, of the ever-widening divergence of intellectual culture, especially in the middle classes, and of the too frequent perishing of all mental sympathy and intercourse of thought through pure inanition or want of common grounds of interest. But he is not less eloquent in his description of the evil than he is confident in his

posal of a remedy. The women must join the men in their work. Men and women of the higher classes, says our author, lead a life of leisure, and sympathise on the common ground of their amusements; men and women of the lower classes meet on the ground of their common labour. The men of the middle classes stand apart from the women; they are wrapped up in industry; all their ideas and their whole life are bound up in it; and before the women can enter into their feelings and share their thoughts, they too must be absorbed in industrial occupation. For this purpose it is that woman is to be educated, that she is to study science, that she is to mingle in the struggle of life; that she may be able to talk shop to her husband; that she may share the narrow-mindedness from which in reality it is her sphere to elevate him. His idea is that this is an industrial age, and that until