We

ster or widow without any resources.
fear we are driven, in spite of Miss Parkes,
and a writer in the Times, to the old-fashioned
view, that it is better for all parties--men and
women, for the state and for society-that wo-
men should not, as a rule, be taught some
useful art, and so be rendered independent of
the chances of life. We do not want our wo-
men to be androgynous. We had rather do
what we can for the Governesses' Institution.
and, if need be, subscribe to a dozen more such
institutions, than realize Miss Parkes' Utopia of
every middle-class girl taught some useful art.
For woman is not undevolpt man,

All that can be said of her is, she has failed
in business; and no social reform can prevent
such failures. The mischance of the dis-
tressed governess and the unprovided widow,
is that of every insolvent tradesman. He is
to be pited; but all the Social Congresses in
the world will not prevent the possibility of a
mischance in the shape of broken-down
tradesmen, old maids, or widows. Each and
all are frequently left without resources; and
each and all always will be left without re-
sources; but it would be just as reasonable
to demand that every boy should be taught
two or three professions because he may fail"
in one, as it is to argue that all our social hab-
its should be changed because one woman in
fifty-or whatever the statistics are-is a spin-

But diverse could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference."

of the same height and variety of capacity. If Adam Bede was written by a woman this is as great an achievement as the sex has ever reached; but it does not lend the least probability to the supposition that a woman could have written Don Quixote or Tom Jones, But we do not think that we need argue the point fully, for even supposing that the sexes are equal in intellect, it is evident that nature, besides this equality of mental wealth, has also bestowed on women certain special and peculiar qualities, which are very valuable to society at large. It may be merely a piece of good economy that the higher intellectual pursuits are generally reserved for men. Women might be equally fitted for these pursuits, but then there are also things for which they are exclusively fitted. In the first place, women have the power of pleasing. Accomplishments are cultivated as instrumental to the successful exercise of this power, and therefore are not to be rejected on the ground that they waste the time that might be given to mathematics. The common sense of the world has long ago settled that men are to be pleased and women are to please. Accord

From The Saturday Review. THE INTELLECT OF WOMEN. THERE is a set of persons who are always troubling themselves about the intellect of women, and who wish to persuade the world that women are laboring under some great wrong, which would be instantly remedied if men would but dispassionately consider the facts of the case. They urge that Lady Jane Grey learnt the classical languages, that Angelica Kaufmann and Rosa Bonheur have painted pictures that command a high price, and that Mrs. Somerville knows more science than most scientific men. The object of all this is not to establish the political rights of women. These disputants do not go in for female jurors or female senators, and therefore do not take us into a field of discussion where we should have to attack an opinion which, however opposed to our own, comes before us with the great authority of Mr. Mill's advocacy. To know what they want we must go to humbler sources. This talk about the intellect of women has lately found a representative in a Mr. Reeve, who has written a small volume on the subject, and who, although rather an unpretending cham-ingly, women acquire an agreeable expertness pion, says probably all that is to be said; and from his book we gather that the point aimed at is to introduce a change in the education of women. If it could be proved that the intellect of women is equally strong, solid, and large as that of men, it is supposed to follow that they ought to receive the same education. All men of sense take interest in the education of women, and like to examine the process by which their wives have been formed, and for the application of which to their daughters they have to pay. Any plausible view on the subject is, therefore, worth examining, and perhaps the view that a natural equality of intellect exists in women, and demands a similar education with that bestowed on men, may, in courtesy, be called plausible. The great argument against the existence of this equality of intellect in women is, that it does not exist. If that proof does not satisfy a female philosopher, we have no better to give. But we never heard its existence maintained, except by clever women talking for talking's sake to men, or by men of the stamp who write little books like Mr. Reeve's. The question is not whether some women have not done some things as well as some men, but whether they have ever given proofs

at the piano, and view the acquisition as a solemn duty; whereas a man who fiddles or flutes to please women is barely tolerated by the women to whom he is musically attentive, and is heartily despised by the rest of the world. Then, again, women have a wonderful fund of patience, which is denied to men. They can bear any kind and amount of pain without flinching. They can wait contentedly in a room as the twilight deepens, without longing for candles. They do not much mind sermons, or crossed letters, or morning calls. They are happy while waiting for hours at a railway station without any thing satisfactory to eat. Men can do none of these things; and, as society necessarily requires that a certain stock of patience should exist in it, it would be a great pity if women were to insist on absorbing themselves in the cultivation of their equal intellects, and thus forcing situations requiring patience on men, who are so very ill suited to fill them. There are many other points in which women have special excellences, and we cannot mention them all, We will, therefore, content ourselves with a.luding to that which is perhaps the most sig nal and valuable. Women recoil from being the victims of small frauds. They are en

dowed with a spirit of resistance to servants | the Fourth, and seem to have formed or im-
landladies, and shopkeepers. It is a mistake bibed a shrewd opinion as to the respective
to suppose that the encounters of ladies with merits of those two princes. In geography,
their domestics are a source of unmixed pleas- again, their acquirements are prodigious.
ure to them. They feel wearied and annoyed, When a man comes across the name of one
but then they do not give in. On the other of the great standing difficulties of geography,
hand, the vast majority of men are so con- such as the name of a South American re-
scious of a childish helplessness in such mat-public, or a Scotch county, he is at sea. He
ters that they never dream of entering into has a sense, closely resembling a vague sense
conflicts in which they know they must be
worsted. If, therefore, women were to with-
draw from household cares the time necessary
for the cultivation of their equal intellects, so-
ciety would be one vast playground for petty
larceny to revel in. We must not quarrel
with the appointed order of things. It has
pleased Heaven that there should be one sex,
and only one, that dare examine a lodging-
house bill or a cook's system of management.
Let us cling to the protection which this spe-
cial courage affords us.

of smell, that the places are somewhere in
South America and somewhere in Scotland.
But a woman is quite at home, and when she
reads of a shocking accident in Bolivia or
Cromarty, she knows perfectly, not only where
those territories are, but what are their chief
towns, and what their chief towns are most
famous for producing. We really cannot see
that English girls need any greater solidity of
education than they already possess. If a
change is required in any direction, it is prob-
ably in the direction of learning the Englis
language and literature more thoroughly.
French girls are made to devote a great por-
tion of their educational time to learning
French; and although the excess to which
this is carried springs mainly from the Catho-
lic notion of teaching girls only what is safe,
and cannot therefore be a precedent for Prot-
estants, yet the example might be advan-
tageously followed to some extent, and Eng-
|lish women might be forced to bestow more
attention than they do now on standard Eng-

pass, and niceties of the English language.

Mr. Reeve wishes that the education of girls should be made more solid and serious. So long as the solidity of education is limited by the consideration that the girls, when they have become women, must exercise their special gifts, there can be no objection to it. The education of women in England has greatly improved within the last twenty years, and nothing has contributed to the improvement so much as the employment of men to aid in their education. It is now a very common practice with girls' schools to have male lec-lish authors, and on the construction, comturers in history, astronomy, geography, and so forth. The classes instituted by distinguished foreigners in London for instruction in continental languages and literature have been very successful, and parents, by adopting a system so strange to English domestic habits, have shown how deeply they have the education of their daughters at heart. Then, the heads of the best schools show the keenest avidity to bring within the range of their instruction every new department of human knowledge. Directly any sets of facts, or supposed facts, have been brought into any sort of scheme, young ladies learn them. Men are half dazzled and half amused at finding how quickly female patience and female trustfulness are brought to bear on new fields of learning. It is wonderful, for example, to find what some young ladies know about Egyptian history. They can tell offhand when Thoth the Second succeeded Rameses

Perhaps it may be thought that the acquirements of women are rather too superficial and extensive. It is certainly necessary that they should learn some things thoroughly well, in order to gain a conception of what thorough knowledge is; but a certain superficiality of knowledge is by no means unsuited to them. Philosophers say that women have the deductive intellect, and not the inductive. By this is practically meant that they have great quickness in suggestion, in the detection of possible consequences, and in hazarding skilful remarks. In order to do themselves justice, they must therefore have a kind of notion of what the subject is that falls under discussion, and a general conception of the elementary facts on which it rests, and the technical expressions it carries with it. Directly they have got so much, their deductive intellect can begin to work. They do

not proceed by arriving at argumentative con- | novators recommend that girls should be acclusions from clearly defined premises, but customed to play at the same games and inthey throw out observations which they can- dulge in the same amusements as boys. If not tell how they came by, but which give the they are to do the same lessons, they must discussion a new turn, and open up new lines want, it may be thought, the same recreations; of thought. However equal, therefore, their and both sexes ought to balance the composiintellect may be, yet, as it works in a different tions of Latin Elegiacs by cricket and footway from that of men, their education must ball. We do not feel attracted by the probe accommodated to this difference. There is gramme. Young ladies surely can attain and also another very valuable quality which they preserve health without any thing like public possess, and by possessing which they greatly games; and if it is only meant that brothers aid the intellectual advance of the world. and sisters should play together at home, they This is enthusiasm. Nothing can be more do that already, and very wisely, without any pleasant or more useful than the enthusiasm philosopher being required to instruct them. which women feel for all literature and all in- We confess that neither in education, nor in tellectual powers, especially if displayed in a manners or ways of conducting themselves, way that appeals to the feelings. The stand- does there seem much room for improvement ard of society is raised by this noble admira- in ordinary good English girls. Humanly tion of something not material or sensual, speaking, the best sort of British young lady and men gain from it a source of strength and is all that a woman can be expected to bea power of recruiting their emotional faculties, civil, intelligent, enthusiastic, decorous, and, of which, if they were deprived, they would as a rule, prettier than in any other country. soon flag. In the absorption of professional We are perfectly satisfied with what we have pursuits, or business, or sport, or through an got. Even the characteristic foibles of young increasing acquaintance with the processes by ladies are to be imputed to the general tone which literature is made, men are very apt to of society rather than to themselves. They Lose their relish for poetry which once de- are certainly a little too much bent on exterlighted them, or which would have delighted nal show, but so is all English society; and them if they had read it in a different frame their talk is much worse than their acts. No of mind. There is a deficiency in their en- women bear privations, hardships, and diffithusiasm; but fortunately they have abundant culties of all sorts more cheerfully, unafwells from which the deficiency can be sup- fectedly, or bravely. They are also infected plied. Women are as ready to furnish en- with an unhappy taste for religious squabbles thusiasm as a hatter is to furnish a hat. In and ecclesiastical partisanship. But this is some measure their superiority in this respect one of the fancies they share with a large is due to their temperament and to the gen- portion of the world around them; and in eral cast of their minds; but it also greatly nine cases out of ten, they are simply guided proceeds from the character of their educa- by the opinions and prejudices of some man tion and their different habits of life, which whom they esteem, revere, or love. They are preserve them from being mentally used up. generally willing to be convinced by the suHere, again, are two precious qualities-un-perior attractions of some one of a different argumentative suggestiveness and enthusiasm -which are peculiar to women, and which society cannot afford to tamper with or lessen. It is only another side of Mr. Reeve's views about the intellect of women, when other in

school; and they usually take a very mitigated view of points that once seemed to realities of later life-children, bills, servants, them of overwhelming importance, when the and sickness-leave them time to attend to nothing but the essentials of religion.