■ ■ "': '■"■: '■;"'■■'■ :". ' . : J ■ ■ ■'■■■ ■■ ■' ■■ ;■;■■■■: ;-. ■■.-..■■.. '-. ; : :■ ' ".-■ . Cornell University Library HQ1423.D14 The college, the ***^£S£Efik° 3 1924 006 085 744 OLIN LI8RXRY-CIRCULAT DATE DUE ION MBtt^tU. q'?F "^^^^JflWWW SfF2' liS3i- **mk '■ , * , ADD r ^iPW A aw *4Ww» * * * OAYUOBO (HINTEOINU.S.* H Cornell University B Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006085744 THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET, AND THE COURT. THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET, THE COURT; WOMAN'S RELATION TO EDUCATION, LABOR, AND LAW. By CAROLINE H. DALL, AUTHOR OF " HISTORICAL SKETCHES," " SUNSHINE," " THE LIFE OF DR. ZAKRZEWSKA," ETC. '■ Let this be copied out, And keep it safe for our remembrance. Return the precedent to these lords again." — King John. 1 How canst thou make me thy friend who in nothing am like thee ? Thy life and dwelling are utider the waters ; but my way of living Is to eat all that man does ! " — Batrachomtomachia. BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPARD. 18G7. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by LEE AND SHEPARD, In. the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE : STEREOTYPED AMD PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. TO LUCEETIA MOTT, FOR MOKE THAN FIFTY YEARS A PREACHER AND REFORMER; SPOTLESS ALIKE IN ALL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RELATIONS; WHOSE CHILDREN'S GRANDCHILDREN RISE UP TO CALL HER BLESSED ; &f)is 38ook is 9Matci, SINCE SHE IS THE BEST EXAMPLE THAT I KNOW OF WHAT ALL WOMEN MAY AND SHOULD BECOME. " A woman Leading with sober pace an armed man, All bossed in gold, and thus the superscription : ' I, Justice, bring this injured exile back To claim his portion in his father's hall.' ' ; Seven against Thebes. A PREFACE TO BE READ AFTER THE BOOK. "\Y7~HEN, some years ago, I delivered nine lectures upon the Condition of Woman, I had no intention of printing them until time had matured my judgments and justified my conclusions. Pecu- liar circumstances afterwards induced me to modify this decision. The first course of lectures, now printed as " The College," had proved unexpectedly popular, and was many times repeated. At its close, I announced the second course upon Labor, involving the subject of Prostitution as the result of Low Wages ; and a very unexpected opposition ensued. My files can still show the large number of letters I received, beseeching me not to touch this subject; and private intercession followed, on the part of those I hold wisest and most dear, to the same effect. Why I did not yield to all the clamor, I cannot tell, — except that I was not working for myself nor of myself. I thought it, however, necessary to take unusual precautions to prevent these lectures from being mis- understood. I wrote private notes, enclosing tickets, [Yii] Vlll PREFACE. to almost all the leading clergymen, asking that they would attend them as a personal favor to myself. I believe I did not allude to the efforts which had been made to silence me, except when I wrote to those who had joined in the outcry. In that case, I de- manded the attendance as an act of justice. These notes were kindly responded to ; and grateful tears started to my eyes, when I found on the seats before me white-haired men, who set aside their prejudices for my sake. Whatever might have been thought before, the delivery of the lectures silenced all objec- tions. They were fully attended and frequently re- peated ; and I followed the delivery by the printing of this particular course, in order that misunderstand- ings should not have time to establish themselves. The book was well received, both at home and abroad. Letters came to me from the far shores of India and Africa, thanking me for its publication. The first edition was sold at once ; and I should have reprinted the book, but that I did not wish to re-issue these lec- tures in an isolated form. I wanted them reprinted, if at all, in their proper place, subordinated to my main thought. I smile a little as I look back. The remonstrances upon my file, dated less than ten years ago, would now be earnestly repudiated by the dear friends who wrote them. After the delivery of the third course, upon Law, local reasons decided the publication of that book. Many efforts were being made in the different States PREFACE. IX to change laws ; and it was thought that the lectures would give necessary information. Of the first course, nothing has ever been printed in this country. The second lecture was printed, by a sympathizing friend in England, as a tract, and widely circulated. Part of it was reprinted with approbation in the " Englishwoman's Journal." The whole of this course is now given to American read- ers in its proper connection, in which it is hoped, that its bearing upon the later lectures will be seen, and a new significance given to its suggestions. The his- tory of these volumes seems to make it necessary to reprint the original Prefaces in connection with the lectures on Labor and Law. In 1856, I conceived the thought of twelve lec- tures, to be written concerning Woman ; to embrace, in four series of three each, all that I felt moved to say in relation to her interests. No one knew better than myself that they would be only " twelve baskets of fragments gathered up ; " but I could not distrust the Divine Love which still feeds the multitudes, who wander in the desert, with " five loaves and two small fishes." In the first three of these lectures, I stated woman's claim to a civil position, and asked that power should be given her, under a professedly republican govern- ment, to protect herself. In them I thus stated the argument on which I should proceed : " The right to education — that is, the right to the education or X PREFACE. drawing-out of all the faculties God has given — involves the right to a choice of vocation; that is, the right to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The choice of vocation necessarily involves the protection of that vocation, — the right to decide how far legislative action shall control it ; in one word, the right to the elective fran- chise." Proceeding upon this formula, I delivered, in 1858, a course of lectures stating " Woman's Claim to Education;" and this season I have condensed my thoughts upon the freedom of vocations into the three following lectures. There are still to be completed three lectures on " Woman's Civil Disabilities." 1 should prefer to unite the twelve lectures in a single publication ; but reasons of imperative force have in- duced me to hurry the printing of these " Essays on Labor." Neither Education nor Civil Disability can dispute the public interest with this subject. No one can know better than myself upon what wide infor- mation, what thorough mental discipline, all consider- ations in regard to it should be based. I have tried to keep my work within the compass of my ability, and, without seeking rigid exactness of detail, to apply common sense and right reason to problems which beset every woman's path. At the very threshold of my work, I confronted a painful task. Before I could press the necessity of exertion, before I could plead that labor might be honored in the public eye, I felt that I must show some cause for the terrible earnest- PREFACE. XI ness with which I was moved ; and I could only do it by facing boldly the question of " Death or Dis- honor ? " " Why not leave it to be understood ? " some per- sons may object. " Why not leave such work to man ? " the public may continue. In answer to the first question, I would say, that very few women have much knowledge of this " per- ishing class," except those actually engaged in minis- tering to its despair ; and that the information I have given is drawn from wholly reliable sources, as the reader may see, but can be obtained only by hours — nay, days and weeks — of painful and exhausting study. Very gladly have I saved my audience that necessity : greatly have I abbreviated whatever I have quoted. But I meant to drive home the reality of that wretchedness : I wanted the women to whom I spoke to feel for those " in bonds as bound with them ; " and to understand, that to save their own children, male and female, they must be willing to save the children of others. It will be observed, that I have said very little in regard to this class in the city of Boston ; very little, also, that was definite in regard to our slop-shops. The deficiency is inten- tional. I would not have one woman feel that I had betrayed her confidence, nor one employer that I had singled him out as a victim ; and it is almost impossible to speak on such subjects without finding the application made to one's hand. I may say, in general, that a very wide local experience sustains Xll PREFACE. the arguments which I have based on published sta- tistics. It was also my earnest desire to prepare one arti- cle on this subject that might be put into the hands of both sexes; that might be opened to the young, and read in the family circle, without thrilling the reader with any emotion less sacred than religious pity. This cannot be true of the reports of any Moral Reform Society; for in them it is needful to print details so gross in character as to be fit reading for none but well-principled persons of mature age. It is not true of such a work as Dr. Sanger's ; for his historical retrospect furnishes every possible excuse to the vices of youth, and is open to question on every page. From the highest sources in this community — from the lips of distinguished clergymen, scholars, and men of the world — I have had every private assurance, that, in this respect, I have not failed. It would be unjust not to state, that two powerful causes co-operate, in the city of Boston, with low wages, to cause the ruin of women ; I mean the love of dress, and a morbid disgust at labor. The love of dress was a motive which obviously had no natural relation to my subject. A disinclina- tion to work, my readers may think, it was proper I should have treated; but it is the natural reflection of a state of things, in the upper classes, which would be a much fitter subject of rebuke. So long as a lady will allow_her guest to stand PREFACE. X1U exposed to snow and rain, rather than turn the han- dle of the door which she happens to be passing ; so long as neither bread nor water can be passed at table, except at the omnipresent waiter's convenience, — servants will naturally think that there is some- thing degrading and repulsive in work. This reform must begin in the higher classes. But, if this subject must be treated at all, why should it not be left to men ? Can women deal with it abstractly and fairly ? The answer is simple. In physics, no scientific observations are reliable, so long as they proceed from one quarter alone ; many observers must report, and their observations must be compared, before we can have a trustworthy re- sult. So it is in social science. Men have been dealing with this great evil, unassisted, for thousands of years. By their own confession, it is as unap- proachable and obstinate as ever. Conquered by its perpetual re-appearance, they have come to treat it as an " institution " to be " managed ; " not an evil to be abolished, or a blasphemy to be hushed. But these lectures are not written for atheists. The speculative sceptic has retreated before the broad sunlight of modern civilization : only two classes of atheists remain, — men of science, who fancy that they have lost sight of the Creator in his works, and talk of the human soul as the most noble result of material forces ; and people of fashion, who live " without God in the world." Why man should ever investigate the material universe without a XIV PREFACE. tender and reverent, nay, a growing dependence on "the dear heart of God," we will not pause to in- quire. The child does not let go his father's hand when he first comprehends the abundance of his resources. Neither the fountains of God's beauty, nor the perplexities of his nicely ordered law, loosen man's loving grasp. He clings all the closer in his joy, because he knows Him better. But why should not the denizens of the fashionable world be atheists ? When I go among them, and listen to their heartless fooleries ; when I see them absorbed by the vain nothings of their coterie, rapt in endless consultations about times and seasons, devoid of any real enjoy- ment, hopeless of noble occupation, with the days all empty and the nights all dark, — then I, too, shiver with doubt, and am ready to say in my heart, " There is no God." We can never believe in any spiritual reality of which our own souls do not receive some faint reflex. These people must do the will of the Father, before they can believe in his love. I do not write for them, but for thoughtful men and women, who rejoice in God's presence, deny the permanence of evil institutions, and are anxious to share with others the inheritance that belongs to the " child of the kingdom," — for those who have faith to remove mountains, and courage to confess the faith. For them I shall not have spoken too plainly. Shortly after these essays were written, — in June, 1859, — I received from London Mrs. Jameson's " Letter to Lord John Russell;" and I cannot refrain PREFACE. XT from expressing the deep emotion with which I read what she had written to him upon the same subject. Well may she wear the silver hairs of her sixty years like a crown, if, only through their sanction, she may speak such noble words. But — '' Earnest purposes do age us fast; " and many a true-hearted woman, far younger in years, would gladly bear witness with her. I would not write, if I could, an " exhaustive " treatise. All I ask for my work is, that it should be " suggestive.' 7 With that purpose, I have worked out my schemes, in the last lecture, far enough to provoke objection, to stimulate the spirit of adven- ture, to show how easily the " work " may wait upon the " will." May the " Opening of the Gates " be near at hand! It remains only to acknowledge my indebtedness to some English and American friends : and first to the " Englishwoman's Journal ; " not merely for its own excellent articles, but for references and suggestions, most valuable when followed out. The story of the young straw-braider was drawn from its pages ; and, disappointed in the arrival of original material from Paris, long expected, I have been compelled to depend upon it largely for my sketch of Felicie de Fauveau. To one of iis editors, Miss B. R. Parkes, and to Madame Bodichon in London, as well as to the Rev. Mr. Higginson, I am under pleasant private obliga- tions. I must rest content to seem largely indebted XVI PKEFACE. to the " Edinburgh Review," of April 1859, for con- densing the results of the census. My materials were collected and arranged, when the article on " Female Industry " reached me ; and the differences in treat- ment were so few, that I at once drew my pen through whatever was not sanctioned by its author- ity. The ladies who first directed my attention to the Waltham watch-factory, and to the inventors of artificial marble in France, will see from these few words that I am not forgetful. Boston, November, 1859. There seems, at first sight, a certain presumption in offering to an American public, at this moment, any book which does not treat of the great interests which convulse and perplex the United States. But expe- rience has shown, that neither the individual nor the national mind can remain continually upon the rack ; and both author and publisher have thought that a book upon a serious subject, popular in form and low in price, would find perhaps a more hearty wel- come, under present circumstances, than in those pros- perous days, when romances and poems, travels and biographies, were scattered over every table by the score. " Woman's Right to Labor " owed its warm wel- come, not to any power or skill in its author, but to the impatient interest of philanthropists in every thing relating to that subject. It remains to be seen whether as large a portion of the public and the press PREFACE. XVU are prepared to treat with candid consideration the subject of Law. Both these volumes have been given to the* world in their detached form, that they might receive the benefit of general criticism ; that errors, inaccuracies, or misapprehensions, might be perceived and rectified before they took a permanent position as part of a larger work. All criticism, therefore, which is honestly intended, will be received with patience and gratitude ; but a great deal falls to the lot of the author which cannot come under this head. If we are told that a " wider acquaintance with the history " of a certain era will modify our views, it is natural to expect that an honest critic will show where the acquaintance fails, and how the views should be modified. When we are told that certain scientific illustrations, " though true in the main, are not accu- rate in detail," we may reasonably hope to see at least one error pointed out. When neither of these things is done, we sweep such remarks aside, as alike unprofitable to us and our readers. A wide and generous sympathy in my aims has given me, thus far, all that I could desire of encour- agement and appreciation ; and this appreciation has come, in several instances, from a " household of faith " far removed from my own, and has been mingled in such cases with an outspoken regret, that one who " wrote so well, and felt so warmly," should not acknowledge on her pages the debt woman owes to Christianity, and unfurl an evangelical banner XviH PREFACE. above a Christ -like work. Because such friends have spoken tenderly, I answer them respectfully; because I never saw any church -door so narrow that I could not pass through it, nor so wide that it would open to all God's glory, I answer them without fear. And, first, I believe in God, as the tender Father of all ; as one who cares for the least of his children, and does not turn from the greatest; as one whose eye marks the smallest inequalities of happiness or condition, and holds them in a memory which does not fail. I believe in Christ as his authorized Teacher, anointed to reveal the fulness of God's love through his own life of practical good-will. I do not expect him to be superseded or set aside ; and I do expect, that in proportion as men grow wiser, humbler, and sweeter, their eyes will open only the more widely to the great miracle of his spotless life, to the heav- enly nature of his so simple teachings. And, next, I believe in my own work, — the elevation of woman through education, which is development; through labor, which is salvation ; through legal rights, which are only freedom to develop and save, — as part of the mission of Jesus on the earth, authorized by him, inspired of God, and sure of fulfilment as any portion of his law. If at any time I have lost sight of this in expression, it is because I have thought it impos- sible that the purpose and character of my work should be mistaken. I am a slow and patient worker, — patient, because one may well be patient, if God PREFACE. XIX can; and therefore no disappointment, no lack of appreciation, could sour or disturb me. If I have justified the publication of this essay at the present moment, it may be thought that I shall not be able to justify the principal presumption ; namely, that of a woman who undertakes to write upon law. Such a treatise as this would be valueless, in my eyes, if it were written by a man. It is a woman's judgment in matters that concern women that the world demands, before any radical change can be made. To understand the laws under which I must live, no recondite learning, no broad scholarship, no professional study, can be fitly required. Common intelligence and common sense are all that society has any right to claim of me. Because most women shrink from criticising this law, I have criticised it. Very recently, the " London Quarterly " said, in speaking of the republication of John Austin's work, that " English jurisprudence would be indebted for one of its highest aids to the reverential affection of a wife, and the patient industry of a refined and intelligent woman ; " and Mrs. Austin defends her undertaking on this very ground, — that, if she had not superintended the work, no one else would. If John Austin's firm and penetrating intellect could not hold a score of persons about his lecturer's desk, and if it found its fit appreciation only in the grave, a conscientious woman need not shrink from any branch of his great subject, only because her audi- ence will be small. XX PREFACE. In one of his lectures upon Art, John Kuskin says : — " Every leaf we have seen, connects its work with the entire and accumulated result of the work of its predeces- sors. Dying, it leaves its own small but well - labored thread ; adding, if imperceptibly, yet essentially, to the strength, from root to crest, of the trunk on which it. has lived, and fitting that trunk for better service to the next year's foliage." Let these words, printed on my titlepage, show the modesty of my aim, and the conscientious stead- fastness of my purpose. As the leaf is to the tree, so is the individual to society. Tear away a single leaf from the towering crest, and the trunk does not seem to suffer : nevertheless, one small thread withers, one channel dries up, one source of beauty and use fails ; and, from that moment, a certain sidewise tendency marks the growth. To compact carefully one " well-labored thread," is all that I have sought to do, — to write a little book, that women might be won to read, as conscientiously as if it were a heavy tome, to be endlessly consulted by the bench. In writing these three lectures, I feel quite sure that I must have made use of many significant expressions borrowed from those who have broken the way for me. For many years an extemporaneous lecturer on this and kindred topics, I have so wrought certain modes of expression into the fabric of my thought, that I do not know where to put my quotation-marks. PREFACE. XXI To Mrs. Hugo Reed, for instance, I know I must be under great obligations ; and I can only hope, that she will trust me with her thoughts and words as generously as I desire to trust all my readers with mine. It is little matter who does the work, so that it be done; but I owe to one author, in particular, something like an explanation. A few days before the third of these lectures was delivered in Boston (that is, before Jan. 23, 1861), a gentleman from Paris brought me from Madame d'HeVicourt a book called " La Femme Affranchie," an answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, and Comte, which its author kindly desired I should trans- late for the American market. Unable to comply with her request, some weeks elapsed before I opened the book. I was struck with the energy, self-pos- session, and rapidity with which she seized the various points of the subject, with the thoroughness of her assault, and the temper of her argument. I did not sympathize in all her methods or conclusions ; but I was interested to observe, that, in what I had then written and publicly spoken of the relations between suffrage and humanity, I had, in several instances, used her very words, or she had used mine. I did not alter my manuscript ; but, with better times, we may hope for a translation of her spirited volumes, and the public will then do justice to her precedence. I have been anxious to have positive proof of my conjecture in regard to the authorship of the " Lawe's Resolution of the Rights of Women ; " but persever- XXU PREFACE. ing endeavors in England, in several directions, have only left the matter as it stands in the text. It would be very interesting to know something of the private history of the man who wrote that book. In the first of the following lectures, I have ven- tured a rhetorical allusion to the blue-laws of Con- necticut. Since it went to press, I have seen it stated, on high authority, that any American writer who should " profess to believe in the existence of the blue- laws of New Haven would simply proclaim himself a dunce ; " and the " Saturday Review " has been handled without gloves for taking this existence for granted. I never supposed that the term "blue" applied to the color of the paper on which such laws were printed, any more than I supposed "blue Presby- terianism" referred to the color of the presbyters' gowns. I supposed it was the outgrowth of a popu- lar sarcasm, descriptive, not of a " veritable code," nor of a " practical code unpublished," but of such portions of the general code as were repugnant to common sense, and the genial nature of man. This I still think will be found to be the case ; and it is certainly to Connecticut divines and Connecticut newspapers that we owe the popular impression. It was in the forty-sixth year of the independence of the United States that S. Andrus & Co., of Hart- ford, published a volume purporting to be a compen- dium of early judicial proceedings in Connecticut, and especially of that portion of the proceedings of PREFACE. XX111 the Colony of New Haven commonly called the "blue-laws.'' Charles A. Ingersoll, Esq., testified to the correctness of these copies of the ancient record. As I quote this title wholly from memory, I am unable to say whether the colony ever fined a bishop for kissing his own wife on Sunday ; but I have read more than once of such fines ; and, if no laws remain unrepealed on the Connecticut statute-book quite as absurd in their spirit and general tendency, there are many on those of Massachusetts and New Hampshire : so I shall let my rhetorical flourish stand. To my English friends, to Mr. Herndon of Illinois, Mr. Higginson, and Samuel F. Haven, Esq., of Wor- cester, I owe my usual acknowledgments for books lent, and service proffered, with a generosity and graceful readiness cheering to remember. Nor will I omit, in what may be a last opportunity, to bear faithful testimony to the assistance rendered, in all my studies of this sort, by my friend, Mr. John Patton, of Montreal. No single person has helped me so much, so wisely, or so well. In order to secure technical accuracy, my manuscript and proofs have been subjected to the revision of my friend, the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall. The principal alteration which Mr. Sewall has made, has been the substitution of the word " suffrage " for that of " fran- chise ; " which latter I used in the Continental fashion. I prefer it to " suffrage," because it seems to have a broader signification; but I yield it to his sugges- tion. XXIV PREFACE. I would gladly have dedicated this volume to the memory of the late John W. Browne, whose pure purpose and eminent gifts made me rejoice, while he was living, to call him friend. As, however, he never read the whole of the manuscript, I have given it a dedication " to the friends of forsaken women," which no one, who knew him well, will fail to perceive in- cludes him. Boston, Sept. 1, 1861. Caroline H. Dall. 70, Warren Avenue, Boston, January, 1867. CONTENTS. THE COLLEGE. I. THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION. Original Proposition. Objections to Republicanism. No Retrograde Steps Possible. The Educational Rights of Women. A Share of Opportunities the only Effectual Way. Both Sexes need the Oversight of Women. Men need the Needle. Sydney Smith to Lady Holland. The Education not Won till its Privileges are attained. Kapnist and the Normal School. Low Wages. An Rlus- tration. The Social Position of the Teacher. The Spirit of Caste. Increase of Salaries. Is it Real or Nominal 1 What is the Stand- ard of Education? Niebuhr to Madame Hensler. Cousin and Madame de Sable. Examples of To-day do not Cheer. Opinion of the Druses. Charles Lamb on Letitia Landon. Coventry Pat- more. Mrs. Jameson on the English Deficiency. Standard of Italy. 500,000 Women in England. Dr. Gooch's Appeal. Oppo- sition to first School of Design. Note on Miss Garrett. B. L. Bodichon on Jessie Meriton White and Medical Colleges. Need of a Medical Society. John Adams on his Wife. Why has not the Standard advanced 1 Alice Holliday in Egypt. Hekekyan Effendi speaking for the Massachusetts Board of Education. Madame Luce in Algiers. Her Workshop Discontinued. The * [xxv] XXVI CONTENTS. Arlvance shown in such Lives. Mrs. Griffith. Janet Taylor. Miss Martineau. "Aurora Leigh." Maria Mitchell. Oread Insti- tute. New- York Schools. Vassar College. Michigan University. Duty of Literary Men and Women to invigorate Public Opinion. What is Public Opinion ? Mary Patton pp. 1-48. II. HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. Existing Opinion. Proverbs. The Novel kept Faith with the Clas- sics. Social Customs. Newspapers. All form this Opinion. In- dividual Influence must stem the United Current. The Classics. Aristophanes. Iscomachus. Euripides. College Slang. St. John. Margaret Fuller on her "Beloved Greeks.'' Buckle. From Greece to Rome. Ovid. No Need to end Classical Study. Rather sanc- tify it. Perversions of History in the Classical Spirit. Hypatia. Aspasia. Society in the Time of Louis XIV. and Charles II. Lady Morgan on Alfred de Vigny. Rousseau. Dr. Day, Dr. Gregory, and Dr. Fordyce. Margaret Fuller. Association of Ideas. Fanny Wright. Captain Wallis and the Queen of Otaheite. Peru and the Formosa Isles. African Customs. Mrs. Kirkland on the Strong Box. Sir John Bowring on Marriage. Mrs. Barbauld. The Newspapers. Impure Habits pp. 49-82. in. THE MEANING OF THE LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century. "Rights of Woman." "Not Empire, but Equality." Dr. Chan- ning on Mrs. Wollstonecraft. Her Unhappy Home. Fanny Blood. Breaks up her School. Saves the French Crew. Provides for her Brothers and Sisters. Translations. Answer to Burke. Fuseli. Paris. Imlay. Helen Maria Williams. Happiness. Deserted in CONTENTS. XXV11 Eighteen Months. Attempted Suicide. Goes to Norway. Final Separation. Marries Godwin. Birth of Mrs. Shelley. Death of Mary. Her Husband's Testimony. No Fair Statement recorded. Strength of Prejudice against her. A Republican and a Unitarian. The Judgment of her own Time upon her. The Right of Society to pass Judgment. Mr. Day and Maria Edgeworth. Lady Mor- gan. Always True to Freedom. Harriet Martineau. Thorough Work. Mrs. Jameson. Her Bravery and Truth. Woman's Rights Testimony. Mrs. Gaskell. Fredrika Bremer. The Brownings. "Aurora Leigh." Charlotte Bronte. "I Care for Myself." Our Abdiel. Margaret Fuller as a Person. " Woman in the Nineteenth Century." " Truth-teller and Truth-compeller." Rebuke to Harriet Martineau. Emerson's Misapprehension. Flor- ence Nightingale. Santa Paula. Mary Patton. Miss Muloch libels Women. The Popular Idea of Love. Woman's Entire Self- possession. Carlyle and Count Zinzendorf. Who refuses Strength must miss Beauty. The Best Brains make the Best Housekeep- ers. The Affections of the Woman prompt and dignify the Lahors of the Scholar pp. 83-130. THE MARKET. I. DEATH OR DISHONOR. The Attar of Cashmere. Moral Force must change the Results of History. Statement of Subject. Death or Dishonor the Practical Question. An Honorable Independence the Way of Safety. The Forcing Pump and Siphon. Women must Work for Pay. Success the Best Argument. Competition in Rural Districts. Duch&telet. Miss Craig. " Edinburgh Review." Dressmakers and Sir James Clarke. Lace-makers. Manchester Mantle-maker. 7,850 Ruined XXV111 CONTENTS. Women in New York. Society Eesponsible for this Evil. Gov- ernesses. Mr. Mayhew to the " Morning Chronicle." The Minis- ter's Daughter. The Power of a Divine Love. Noble Natures among the Fallen. The Glasgow Case. 1,680 Reformed French Women. The Straw-braider. Have Women Strength to Labor ? Marie de Lamourous. The Young Laborer to be Protected by Social Influences. Women Hard Workers from the Beginning. China. Hindostan, Bombay Ghauts. Australia. Africa. Greece. Bertha of the Transjurane. Tyrolese Escort of Women. Ger- many. Montenegro. Holland. France. Widow Brulow. Nelly Giles. Ignacia Riso. Factory Labor in France. Sale of Wives at Derby and Dudley. Women in the Coal-mines. Pinmakers. Anna Gurney. Honduras. American Indians. Santa Cruz. Ohio and Pennsylvania. New York. Women of Lawrence. Ship " Grotto.'' Thomas Garratt concerning Sarah Ann Scofield. That all Men support all Women, an Absurd Fiction. . pp. 131-177. II. VERIFY YOUR CREDENTIALS. Want of Employment lowers the Whole Moral Tone. Vigorous Women do not Ask what they shall Do. Idleness the Curse of Heaven. Organized Opposition on Man's Part. Mr. Bennett and the Watch- makers. Ribbon Looms at Coventry. The School at Marlborough House. Miss Spencer. Painting Crockery. Printing in America. Pennsylvania Medical Society, 1859. Want of Respect for Labor. Census of the United Kingdom. Agriculture. Mining. Fishing. Servants, &c. Reporters. Bright Festival. Metal Workers. Gillott's Pens. Jewelry. Screw-making. Button-making. Paper and Card Making. Engravers, Printers, &c, &c. The Lower Classes need the Brains of the Upper. Labor in the United States. Nantucket. Pennsylvania. Dr. Franklin's Sister-in-law. Mrs. Hillman. Mrs. Johnson. Martha B. Curtis. Ann Bent. Scien- tific Pursuits not Open. ^jClerks under Government. Census. CONTENTS. XXIX Waltham "Watch Factory. Dentists. School Committees. Post- mistresses. Olive Rose. Semi-professions and Artists. Shoe- making in Lynn. Condition of the Poor dependent on the Action of the Rich. Happy Homes the Growth of Active Lives. The Pine and iEnemone. Emily Plater. " Verify your Credentials." Encouragement from Men ; Faithfulness from Women. The Sor- bonne. Madame Sirault. That Career fated which Woman may not share. Influence of the Sexes on each other. Baron Toermer and Felicie de Fauveau pp. 178-220. ni. "THE OPENING OF THE GATES." The Drowning of Daughters. Teachers of Elocution and the Lan- guages. Inspectors. Physicians. Dr. Heidenreich. "Wood Car- ving. Properzia dei Rossi. Swiss Work. Elizahetta Sirani. Engravers. Barbers. Candied Fruit for Christmas. Pickles. Fruit Sauces. Dishmops. Gymnastics. Female Assistants in Jails, Prisons, Workhouses, not to be had till Public Opinion honors Labor. Florence Nightingale an Example. Parish Min- isters. Deaconesses. Marian of the Seven Dials. Beading Aloud to the Perishing Classes. St. Pancras. Mrs. Wightman. A Training School. A Public Laundry and Bleaching Ground. Ready-made Clothing. An Assistance to our Practical Charity. Knitting Factory. -Ornamental Work to he Avoided. Occupa- tion for the Young Ladies at the West End. Mrs. Ellen Wood- lock and her Industrial Schools. She takes Eighty Paupers out of the Poorhouse. Mr. Buckle's Position to be Questioned. Mistaken Moral Effort a Harm to Society. Want of Connec- tion between the Employer and the Employed. People who want " a. Chance Lift." Defects in our Present Intelligence- Offices. A Labor Exchange. The Argument Restated. Will you tread out the Nettles'? The Drosera. Purposes the Blos- soms of the Human Heart. ... ^ .... pp. 221-261. XXX CONTENTS. THE COURT. I. THE ORIENTAL ESTIMATE AND THE FRENCH LAW. The Seat of the Law the Bosom of God ? Of what Law ? Legal Restrictions constantly Outgrown. The Laws which relate to Woman. Vishnu Sarma : the Hindoo Wife must use the Dialect of the Slave. Ancient Chinese Writer. Kohl on Turkish Hus- bands. Convent to lock up Ladies. The Island of Coelebes. The Garrows in the North-east of India. The Muhar. Military Tribe of Nairs in Malabar. Later Proverbs ; used by the Satirists. The Four Points to Consider. ^'Discussion of Marriage and Divorce to be Deferred. v'The Public Opinion which has educated Wo- man, and her Approximation to it. Woman under Roman Law. Absence of well-tested Cotemporaneous Evidence. Theodora. French Law. Bonaparte's Opinion. The Estimate of a Double Character. Condition of the Peasant-woman. Need of Love in the Upper Classes. Business-freedom. George Sand. Rosa Bon- heur, and the Claimants for Civil Rights. The Dotal founded on Roman Law ; ■ the Communal founded on German. Dotal Law rejected throughout Europe. Protection means Subordination. As a "Public Merchant," Woman becomes a French Citizen. Position contradictory : not allowed to rule the Household, which is called her Sphere. Civil Position. No Right of Promotion. Laws of Louisiana. Estimate of Woman under the " Code Na- poleon : " tends to lower her Wages. List of Employments. The Needle-women of Paris pp. 263-286. II. THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW. It contains All to which we have any Need to Object. Literature. " The Lawe's Resolution jof Woman's Rights." Inquiries as to its CONTENTS. XXXI Author. Probability points to Sir John Doderidge. The Law, for Single Women, of Inheritance. Offices Open. Right to Vote, and Lady Paekington. Sheriff of Westmoreland. Lady Rous. Henry VIII. and Lady Anne Berkeley. As Constable, and Over- seer of the Poor. Female Voter in Nova Scotia. Law relating to Seduction : its Profanity. The French Law, as summed up by Legouve". Woman's Opinion of this Law. Objections. Laws concerning Married Women. Impossibility of Divorce, from Hope- less Insanity. Instances where Men have taken the Law into their own Hands. Impossibility of Woman's ever doing this. Marriage of a Minor. A Wife loses all her Rights. Satire in a London Court. Truth of this. Consequent Unwillingness of the Honest Poor to Marry, and of Single Women of Rank to relinquish Power. , Freedwomen at the South. The Descendant of Morgan the Buccaneer. Need of Equity. May make a Will by Permission. Nutriment of Infants. The Law resists Maternal Influence, and denies Natural Authority. Word not binding. Gifts Illegal. In- dictments in the Husband's Name. Divorces : only Three ever granted to Women. The Widow recovers her Clothes and Jewels, but need not bury her Husband. Christian on Suffrage. Moderate Correction. Property-laws. The Hon. Mrs. Norton. Hungarian Freedom. Right to Vote. Experience in America. Parisian Milliner. " Union is Robbery.'' The Heiress. Longevity of the Wife. Woman discouraged from Labor by the Influence of the Laws of Property. Sexual Legislation thoroughly Immoral. Man's Adultery even a more Serious Evil than Woman's, so far as State Morals and Interests are concerned. Canton Glarus. " Courts have never gone that Length." Debate on the New Divorce Bill. Man's Fidelity considered an Imbecility. The Compliments of the Law. The Husband's Vigilance. Duplicity the Natural Result of Slavery. The Right of Suffrage. Objections Answered. The Abstract Right and the Practical Question. Suffrage to be limited by Education, not Money nor Sex. The " Sad Sisterhood." Woman has never had a Representative. Her Suffrage would put an End to Three Classes of Laws. Harris vs. Butler. Delicate XXXU CONTENTS. Matters to be Discussed. The Duke of York's Trial, John Stuart Mill's Opinion. Dedication of his Essay on Liberty. "Women of Upsal. On Juries. Miss Shedden. Russell on Female Evidence. Eate of the "Bulwarks of the English Constitution." Power of Women not Disputed while it was dependent on Property. It should depend on Humanity. Louis XIV. and the Eish-women. Pauline Roland and Madame Moniot. Men borrow the Suffrages of "Women. Saxon Witas. Abbess Hilda. Council at Benconceld. King Edgar's Charter. Abbesses in Parliament. Peeresses in Parliament. East-India Stockholders. Stockholders in Banks. Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Mrs. Mill's Article. Elorence Nightingale's Evidence. Petition to Parliament, and its Signers. The New Divorce Bill. Buckle's Lecture. Cana- dian Changes. Inconsistencies. Canadian Women as Voters. Pitcairn's Island pp. 287-341. m. THE UNITED-STATES LAW, AND SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS. Condition of Women in Republics. Helvetia. Kent on the Law's Estimate. " The Man's Notion." Property-laws, and Natural Obligations of Husband and Wife. The Law's Indulgence. Mar- riage and Divorce in the Different States. Variety of the Laws. " Cruelty." What have the Woman's-Rights Party done ? — changed the Law in nineteen States. The Law of Illinois. Rhode Island on Property. Vermont. Connecticut. New Hampshire. Massachusetts, and what remains to be done. Maine. Ohio. Judge Graham's Decision. Mrs. Dorr's Claim. New- York Prop- erty-bill of 1860, and its Supplement. Relief to 5,000 Women. Mrs. Stanton before the Legislature. The Right of Suffrage in New Jersey. Wisconsin. Michigan. Ohio. Kansas. Connecti- cut. Kentucky in Reference to Suffrage. A Woman's Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Mrs. John Adams CONTENTS. XXXU1 and Hannah Corbin understood its Worthlessness. Eichard Henry Lee on a Woman's Security. "Woman's Eights,'' — a Phrase we all Hate: identical with "Human Eights," — a Phrase we all Honor. Eeception of Woman in the Lyceum. Labor to he honored through Woman. Trade to become a Fine Art. Property-holders must have Political Power. Mr. Phillips on Suffrage. The Lowell Mill. Dr. Hunt's Protests. Mean Men. Woman's Duty to the State a Moral Duty. Woman's Eight to Man as Counsellor and Friend. The Constitution of the Family. The Historical Develop- ment of the Question. Mary Astell in the Seventeenth Century. Mary Wollstonecraft in the Eighteenth, and the Customs of Aus- tralia. Eesponses to her Appeal. Margaret Fuller in the Nine- teenth. The great Lawsuit in 1844. Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. National Association in 1850. Profane Inanity. Chinese Women. Does Power belong to Humanity or to Property % Mahomet, and the Eight to Eule. Wendell Phillips and the Venetian Catechism pp. 342-374. TEN YEAES. Education. — Absence of Discussion Wise. American Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Lectures from the Lowell Institute. Eipley College. Howard University. Professor Bald- win at Berea. St. Lawrence University, N.Y. Lombard Univer- sity, 111. Oberlin. List of Colleges it has Organized. Lane Seminary. President Finney. Ladies' Library. Ladies' Hall. Miss Fanny Jackson. A Confession. Antioch. Way thither. Yellow Springs. The Glen. Matins. Necessities. Changes in Buildings, Books, &c. Missionary Work. The Professors. The Brigadier-General. Literary Societies. A Southern Eefugee. ^assar College. Lawrence University, Kansas. Letter from Miss Chapin. A Professor Elected. Michigan University. Miss Night- ingale's Training-School for Nurses, Liverpool. Schools in Cal- c XXXIV CONTENTS. cutta. Deaconesses. Kaiserworth. Strasburg. Basle. St. Loup. Geneva. Faubourg St. Antoine. Passevant Hospital. Bishop Kerfoot's Schools pp. 377-429. Medical Education. — New-York Medical Society. Medical Society in London. Hospital of the Maternity in Paris. Miss Garrett and Apothecaries' Hall. Dr. Zakrzewska and the Medical Society. Medical Lectures at Harvard. Women and the Cossacks. Women and the Algerines. Women in India. Cause of Cholera. Success of Female Physicians. Dr. Boss. A Medical College Needed. New-England Hospital pp. 429-434. Pulpit. — Amelie von Braum. Mamsell Berg. Kev. Olympia Brown. Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs. Booth. Mrs. Timmins. Ann Bexford. Nancy Gore Cram. Abigail H. Koberts. Mrs. Hedges. The Church at Amsterdam, and its Deaconesses. Besolution at Syracuse. Delegates to Local Conferences. Mrs. Dall. Counsel to Wo- men who desire to preach pp. 43 1 11 7. Art Schools. — Lowell Institute. Cooper Institute. Miss Boundtree and Miss Curtis. Coloring Photographs. Mrs. Elizabeth Murray and the London Society of Female Artists. . . . pp. 447-449. Labor. — Statistics of Eight-hour Movement. Factory Labor in Eng- land. Foreign Society for Employment of Women. Mending Schools. A Barber. Public Clerks. Fanny Paine. Musi- cal Careers. Charlotte Hill. Williston Button-factory. Madam Clarke. A Capitalist. Mr. Thayer's Lodging-house for Girls. Young Women's Christian Association. Lodging-house in New York. Miss Hill's Buskin Lodging-houses in London. Female Printers. A Notary Public pp. 450-468. Law. — Married Women in New York. Bight of an Ordained Woman to Marry in Massachusetts. School Committees. Bichmond. Are a Woman's Clothes her own ? State of Missouri. College. Where shall a Woman's Children go to Church ? Francis Jackson's Will. Conference at Leipsic. Petition to enable Widows, Potter's County, Pa. Women as Bank Directors pp. 468-472. CONTENTS. XXXT Suffrage. — Kansas. Missouri, in Congress. The Speaker of the House. Mercantile Library in Philadelphia. Voting in New- Jersey. Mr. Parker at Perth Amboy. A Petition to Kentucky. Equal-Eights Association, Petitions, &c. George Thompson's Objections. John Stuart Mill and the Franchise. English Peti- tion a Model. To be sustained by Able Men. Mrs. Bodichon's Pamphlets. Women Ejected. Austria. Swedish Reform Bill. Italian Law. The Hungarian Diet pp. 472-486. Civil Progress. — Australia. Moravia. Dublin. Aisne. Bergeres. Need of a Newspaper pp. 486-488. Obituaries, &o. — Merian. Baring. Farnham. Lemonnier. Dr. Barry. Mrs. Severn Newton pp. 488-491. The Ballot will secure All Things. A Glimpse of the "Wide West. Vassar and Miss Lyman. Oberlin and Mrs. Dascomb. Dr. Glass. Female Lecturers. Business Capacity of Women. The Ice in Fox River, HI. Cholera at Elgin. Quincy High School. Coloring Photographs at the Cooper Institute. Conclusion, pp. 491-499. THE COLLEGE; OR, WOMAN'S RELATION TO EDUCATION. IN THEEE LECTURES. I. — The Christian Demand and the Public Opinion. IT. — How Public Opinion is made. III. — The Meaning of the Lives that have modified it. Now press the clarion on thy woman's lip, (Love's holy kiss shall still keep consecrate,) And hreathe the fine, keen breath along the brass, And blow all class-walls level as Jericho's Past Jordan. . . . The world's old; But the old world waits the hour to be renewed. Aurora Leigh. Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, — Godlike erect, with native honor clad In naked majesty, —seemed lords of all: And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine The image of their glorious Maker shone, — Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure) Whence true authority in men. Milton. THE COLLEGE. I. THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND THE PUBLIC OPINION. " Since I am coming to that hoi}- room, Where, with the choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music ; as I come, I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before." Macdonald. r 1 10 propose an essay on education requires no -*• little courage ; for the term has covered, with its broad mantle, every thing that is stupid, perverse, and oppressive in literature. We will not tax our- selves, however, to consider exact theories, or suggest formal dissertations. In these lectures, let us take all the liberties of conversation ; pass, in brief review, a wide range of subjects ; comment lightly, not thor- oughly, upon them; and trust to quick sympathies and intelligent apprehension to follow out any really useful suggestions that may be made. Some time since, we laid down this proposition : " A man's right to education — that is, to the educa- tion or drawing-out of all the faculties God has given him — involves the right to a choice of vocation ; [3] 4 THE COLLEGE. that is, to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The choice of vocation involves the right and the duty of protecting that vocation ; that is, the right of deciding how far it shall be taxed, in how many ways legislative action shall be allowed to control it ; in one word, the right to the elective fran- chise." This statement we made in the broadest way; applying it to the present condition of women, and intending to show, that, the moment society conceded the right to education, it conceded the whole question, unless this logic could be disputed. Men of high standing have been found to question a position seemingly so impregnable, but only on the ground that republicanism is itself a failure, and that it is quite time that Massachusetts should insist upon a property qualification for voters. In this State, so remarkable for its intelligence and mechanical skill, — a State which has sent regiment after regiment to the battle-field, armed by the college, . rather than the court, — in this State, one somewhat eminent voice has been heard to whisper, that men have not this right to education ; that the lower classes in this country are fatally injured by the advantages offered them ; that they would be happier, more con- tented, and more useful, if left to take their chance, or compelled to pay for the reading and writing which their employers, in some kinds, might require. We need not be sorry that these objections are so stated. They are a fair sample of all the objections CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 5 that obtain against the legal emancipation of woman, an emancipation which Christ himself intended and prophesied, — speaking always of his kingdom as one in which no distinctions of sex should either be needed or recognized. Push any objector to the wall, and he will be compelled to shift his attitude. He says nothing more about women, but shields him- self under the old autocratic pretension, that man, collectively taken, has no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness; that republicanism itself is a failure. Our hearts need not sink in view of this assertion, apparently sustained by a civil war that fixes the sus- picious eyes of autocratic Europe in sullen suspense. A republic, whose foundations were laid in usurpa- tion, could not expect to stand, till it had, with its own right arm, struck off its " feet of clay." It is not free- dom which fails, but slavery. The course of the world is not retrograde. Massa- chusetts will not call a convention to insist upon a property qualification for voters, neither will she close her schoolhouses, nor forswear her ancient faith. The time shall yet come when she shall free herself from reproach, and fulfil the prophetic promise of her re- publicanism, by generous endowment for her women, and the open recognition of their citizenship. It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon facili- ties of school education. More conservative speakers will plead, eloquently as we could wish, in that behalf; and suggestions on other topics need to be made. 6 THE COLLEGE. We have already said, that the educational rights of women are simply those of all human beings, — namely, " the right to be taught all common branches of learning, a sufficient use of the needle, and any higher branches, for which they shall evince either taste or inclination ; the right to have colleges, schools of law, theology, and medicine open to them ; the right of access to all scientific and literary collections, to anatomical preparations, historical records, and rare manuscripts." And we do not make this claim with any particular theory as to woman's powers or possibilities. She may be equal to man, or inferior to him. She may fail in rhetoric, and succeed in mathematics. She may be able to bear fewer hours of study. She may insist on more protracted labor. What we claim is, that no one knows, as yet, what women are, or what they can do, — least of all, those who have been wedded for years to that low standard of womanly achievement, which classical study tends to sustain. Because we do not know, because experiment is necessary, we claim that all educational institutions should be kept open for her; that she should be (encouraged to avail herself of these, according to her own inclination; and that, so far as possible, she* should pursue her studies, and test her powers, in company with man. We do not wish her to follow any dictation ; not ours, nor another's. We ask for her a freedom she has never yet had. There is, between the sexes, a law of incessant, reciprocal CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 7 action, of which God avails himself in the constitu- tion of the family, when he permits brothers and sisters to nestle about one hearth-stone. Its ministra- tion is essential to the best educational results. Our own educational institutions should rest upon this divine basis. In educating the sexes together under fatherly and motherly supervision,* we avail our- selves of the highest example ; and the result will be a simplicity, modesty, and purity of character, not so easy to attain when general abstinence from each other's society makes the occasions of re-union a period of harmful excitement. Out of it would come a quick perception of mutual proprieties, delicate attention to manly and womanly habits, refinement of feeling, grace of manner, and a thoroughly sym- metrical development. If the objections which are urged against this — the divine fashion of training men and women to the duties of life — were well founded, they would have been felt long ago in those district schools, attended by both sexes, which are the * This does not mean the supervision of father and mother, but that into colleges, universities, medical schools, and whatever educational institutions may be named, the controlling and protecting influence of both sexes should be carried. I believe that every university should have a cultivated and ele- gant woman (not necessarily the wife of any of its officers), whose duty it should be to preside over its social life, and offer such allurements to virtuous pleasure that gambling-houses and worse shall lose their present fascinations. If young men could associate with virtuous and lovely women, under suitable sanction, in their college life, they would not, in general, go out of it in search of the vicious and unlovely. No one who lives within three miles of a large university need doubt the meaning of this paragraph. An age and a reli- gious faith which discards the cloister, should discard a cloisteral fashion, wherever it exists. 8 THE COLLEGE. pride of New England. The classes recently opened by the Lowell Institute, under the control of the Institute of Technology, are an effort in the right direction, for which we cannot be too grateful. Here- tofore, every attempt to give advanced instruction to women has failed; Did a woman select the most accomplished instructor of men, and pay him the highest fee, she could not secure thorough tuition. He taught her without conscience in the higher branches ; for he took it upon himself to assume that she would never put them to practical use. He treated her desire for such instruction as a caprice, though she might have shown her appreciation by the distinct bias of her life. We claim for women a share of the opportunities offered to men, because we believe that they will never be thoroughly taught until they are taught at the same time and in the same classes. The most mischievous errors are perpetuated by drawing masculine and feminine lines in theory at the outset. The God-given impulse of sex, if left in complete freedom, will establish, in time, certain distinctions for itself; but these distinctions should never be pressed on any individual soul. Whether man or woman, each should be left free to choose its own methods of development. We pause, there- fore, to show, that, when we spoke of a certain use of the needle as a matter to be taught to both sexes, we did so by no inadvertence. The use of the sewing machine is even now common to both ; CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 9 but men, as well as women, should be taught to use their fingers for common purposes skilfully. Per- sonal contact with the pauperism of large cities has sent this conviction home to many practical minds. The rough tippets, mittens, and socks imported into the British Colonies, are the work of the "Welsh farmers and the Shetland fishermen during the long tempestuous winter nights. In writing to Lady Holland, Sidney Smith pens some pleasant words on this subject. " I wish I could sew," he says. " I believe one reason why women are so much more cheerful than men is because they can work, and so vary their employments. Lady used to teach her boys carpet-work. All men ought to learn to sew." All men ! and so might the cares of many women be lightened. Let us candidly confess our own indebtedness to the needle. How many hours of sorrow has it softened, how many bitter irritations calmed, how many confused thoughts reduced to order, how many life-plans sketched in purple! Let us pass over that portion of our statement which hints at vocation, and confine ourselves, for the present, to that part of it which looks to an unrestricted mental culture. Nowhere is this syste- matically denied to women. It is quite common to hear people say, " There is no need to press that sub- ject. Education in New England is free to women. In Bangor, Portsmouth, Newburyport, and Boston, they are better Latin scholars than the men. Nothing 10 THE COLLEGE. can set this stream back : turn and labor else- where." We have shown to how very small an extent this statement is true. If it were true of the mere means of education, education itself is not won for woman, till it brings to her precisely the same blessings that it bears to the feet of man; till it gives her honor, respect, and bread ; till position becomes the right- ful inheritance of capacity, and social influence fol- lows a knowledge of mathematics and the languages. Our deficiency in the last stages of the culture offered to our women made a strong impression on a late Russian traveller. " Is that the best you can do ? " said Mr. Kapnist, when he came out of the Mason-street Normal School for Girls. "It is very poor. In Russia, we should do better. At Cambridge, you have eminent men in every kind, — Agassiz, Gray, Peirce. Why do they not lecture to these women? In Russia, they would go everywhere, — speak to both sexes. At a certain age, recitation is the very poorest way of imparting knowledge." To all adult minds, lectures convey instruction more- happily than recitation; and, when men and women are taught together, the lecture system is valuable, because it permits the mind to appro- priate its own nutriment, and does not oppress the faculties with uncongenial food. To those who are familiar with the whole ques- tion, no theme is more painful than that of the in- CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 11 adequate compensation and depressed position of the female teacher. There is no need to harp on this discordant string. Let us strike its key-note in a single story. A year ago, in one of the most beautiful towns of this neighborhood, separated by a grassy common, shaded with drooping elms, rose two ample build- ings, dedicated to the same purpose. They were the High Schools for the two sexes. They were taught by two persons, admirably fitted for their work. The man, uncommonly happy in imparting instruction, was yet deficient in mathe- matics, and considered by competent judges inferior to the woman. S7ie was an orphan, with a young sister dependent upon her for instruction and support. She had been graduated with the highest honors at one of the State Normal Schools. She was delicate and beau- tiful ; not in the least " strong-minded." Neither spectacles upon her nose, nor wooden soles to her boots, appealed to the popular indignation. All who knew her loved her ; and the man whom we have named was not ashamed to receive instruction from her in geometry and algebra. The two schools were equal in numbers. The man was a bach- elor, subject to no claim beyond his own necessity. What did common sense and right reason demand, but that these two persons should be treated alike by society, prudential committees, and so on ? You shall hear what was the fact. The man was engaged at 12 THE COLLEGE. a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. The wealthiest class in the community intrusted its sons to his charge without question. Single, he was made much of in society, invited to parties, and had his own cor- ner at many a tea-table, which he brightened with his pleasant jokes. He soon came to be a person in the town, — had his vote, was valued accordingly ; went to church, was put upon committees, had a great deal to do with calling the new minister, and so, out of school, had pleasant and varied occupa- tion, which saved his soul from racking to death over the ruts of the Latin grammar. Would we have it otherwise ? "Was it not all right ? Certainly it was, and our friend deserved it ; deserved, too, that when the second year was half over, and there were rumors that a distant city had secured his services, the committee should raise his salary two hundred and fifty dollars, and so keep him for themselves. But let us look at the reverse of the picture. The woman, burdened with the care of a younger sister, greatly this man's superior in mathematics and pos- sibly in other things, was engaged at six hundred dollars. It was not customary for the wealthy fami- lies in that neighborhood to trust their girls to the tender mercies of a public school; so she had a class of pupils less elegant in manner, of more or- dinary mental training, and every way more difficult to control. Still they were disciplined, and learned to love their teacher. A few of the parents called upon her, and she was occasionally invited to their CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 13 homes. But these homes were not congenial to her tastes or habits. There was no intellectual stimu- lus derived from them to brighten her life. They offered neither pictures, statues, books, nor the re- sults of travel, to her delicate and yearning appre- ciation. She talked, for the most part, of her pupils and their work ; and the strain of her vocation, always heavier on woman than on man, wore more and more upon her soul. Society, as such, offered her no welcome.* * " Society offered her no welcome." I am very well aware that this statement, taken with what I shall elsewhere indicate, will be considered an exaggeration ; but, with a somewhat wide and varied experience of the United States and of Canada, I maintain it to be true. I am not to say what is true in the eyes of others, but what is true in my own. " What ! " some one will exclaim, " education not a passport to social honor ! Where was there ever a country where the teacher was respected as she is in New England?" Theoretically, this is true ; and I have known a few instances in New Eng- land, in which teachers of private schools, of good family, successful in ac- quiring wealth (not necessarily through their schools), kept an eminent social position. Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to whom does 'the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers of the primary and the grammar schools ? Among these women, I have found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at least, these women are never in society. Their meagre salaries prevent them from dressing as ladies must 1 be dressed for a large company. For the same reason, their boarding-places are obscure and lonely. The middle class of artisans, &c, who send their children to the public schools, seek no intercourse with those whose refinement seems to isolate them; the upper class look down upon them very kindly, but never think of inviting them to meet distinguished people, of showing them rare books or pic- tures, of stimulating their worn-out faculties in any way. Why do we not make these teachers our first care? Should we not be more than repaid — if pay we must have — by the cheer and comfort added to the school- room in which our children are to be taught? I have tried the experiment of bringing these tired souls into contact with those who ought to refresh 14 THE COLLEGE. She was nothing to the town. She hired her seat,- and went to church. She had no vote, was never on a parish committee, had only one chance to change her position. That was to remove to a more con- them. It does marvellously well, until the crucial question is asked, " Who is she?" If I answer, " The teacher of a primary school," what a change of countenance, what a fading of the cordial smile, what passive indifference ! and this, in cases where, in refinement and delicacy of manner, the young lady might pass unchallenged anywhere. But let the subject of my experi- ment be a girl of genius; with such cultivation only as a Normal School could add to the education of a country home; deficient still in the minor graces of deportment ; too energetic and adventurous, perhaps, to be elegant ; and who will take a motherly interest in her, draw her within the charmed circle where she shall learn to carry herself with reserve and dignity, and to veil her flashing powers, that they may warm where they have hitherto consumed? No: I do not exaggerate. I believe we are all concerned to know in what sort of homes, under what influences, with what helps to health and happiness, these lonely and isolated girls pass the hours when they are not engaged in teaching. It concerns us, in the first place, of course, because theirs are the direct influences which mould our children ; but I scorn that argument. It concerns us far more because they are the children of the same Father, engaged in the most trying of human vocations, and enti- tled as women, especially as unprotected women, to the sympathy of all mothers. Some years ago, a lady not yet out of her teens, and suddenly reduced in fortune, went to Virginia to teach. She had letters from persons of distinc- tion, who had known her in her early home. The letters were delivered; but there the matter ended. But she was one of those persons who make a place for themselves ; and, after the neighborhood grew proud of her, she was called down one day to meet the wife of a lieutenant in the navy, to whom one of her letters had been addressed. '' I am sorry I have not called before," apologized the visitor; "but there are so many of these teachers!" She had no time to say more: the young girl's cheek kindled. " Madam." said she, springing to her feet, " I desire no attention from you which would not under any circumstances be accorded to your daughter's teacher; " and she left the room. It is a matter of small importance, that, in this case, the young teacher was soon placed in a position in which her good-will became important to the lieutenant's wife " This," you will say, "was at the South. It grew out of that spirit of ' caste ' which died with slavery*" Is it indeed dead? Is there no spirit of caste in Massachusetts ? CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 15 genial neighborhood, at a lower salary; but she thought of her young sister, and refused. If the com- mittee heard of it, they did not offer to increase her salary. They were men incapable of appreciating her rare and modest culture. There was a tendency to consumption in her frame. Had she been happy, she might have resisted it for years, perhaps for ever ; but with the restless pining at her heart, that mental and moral marasmus, the physical disease soon showed itself. In the commencement of the third year of her teaching, she began to cough ; and, in less than three months from the day when she heard her last class, she lay in an early but not unhonored grave. The deep affection of her classmates in the Normal School had always followed her ; and one who chanced to hear of her illness brightened its rapid decline. This woman, herself prematurely old, in consequence of twelve years of labor on the Red River of Louisiana, the only place open to her, where her abilities were appreciated to the extent of twelve hundred dollars a year, and would enable her to sup- port a widowed mother, — this woman, with her now- scanty purse, supplied the invalid with fresh flowers and sweet pictures; and, when her heavy eye grew weary of gazing, gently closed it in the sleep of death, scattered rare and fragrant blossoms over her unconscious form, and followed it to the grave. Those flowers! brought daily to her teacher's-desk by a friendly or loving hand, they might have fed a craving heart, and saved a precious life. 16 THE COLLEGE. It is no new story. You have heard it many times. Do not reply in the stale maxims of political econ- omy. Do not say that woman's labor is cheaper than man's, because it is more abundant. Unskilled labor, we will grant you, is more abundant ; but such labor as is here offered must always be rare and valuable. To the applicants who came to fill her vacant place the committee said, " We do not expect to find another capable as she was. We have only to select one that will do." Yet they had not been ashamed to use that capacity without paying for it! Only ignorance and prejudice and custom stood in the way of its appreciation ; only the want of that respect which a citizen can always command was at the bottom of her social isolation. She never complained ; but we complain for her, sadly conscious, that, until men themselves perceive what is fit, the remonstrances of women will be fruitless. One such word as that spoken by the Hon. Joseph White at Framingham, in July, 1864, is worth more than all that women can say. Nevertheless, we women have our duty. It is to convince and stimulate men. Be on the watch, then, for such women ; and claim for them their place and remuneration. Help society to understand its duty, to be frank and honorable. And if certain services are worth, as in this case, seventeen hundred and fifty dollars a year, pay for equal services, by whomsoever rendered, an equal sum. Since I first began to speak upon this subject, a very great change has taken place : women are put in places CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 17 which require higher culture and greater administra- tive capacity. They are also paid better wages : these wages are not yet in fair proportion to what are paid to men for the same work ; and the shameful argu- ment is still used, that we employ women, chiefly because men will not work for the same price. The Roxbury High School, the Shurtleff Grammar School in Chelsea, the Normal School at St. Louis, and the Normal School at Framingham, are now under the charge of women. In the list of teachers from the Oswego School, we find four who are paid one thousand dollars a year, and eleven who are paid seven hundred dollars. Our daily press is very well satisfied with this ; but, since 1860, what portion of a decent living will seven hundred dollars provide to a cultivated woman? "When the salaries of the St. Louis teachers were raised in 1866, the principal was obliged to express her indignation before her salary was raised to its present sum of two thousand dollars. Had she been a man, she would certainly have had as much as the principal of the High School ; namely, twenty-seven hundred and fifty doDars. A graduate of Antioch College, assisting in the High School at St. Louis, has twelve hundred dollars, where a man would have seventeen hundred dollars. Miss Brack- ett's own assistants in the Normal School have eleven hundred dollars. The appointment of Miss Johnson to the head of the Normal School at Framingham will open the way to a similar change in many quarters, if what 2 18 THE COLLEGE. Governor Bullock has not disdained to call the " policy of Massachusetts " is consistently carried out. I do not know what salary is offered to Miss Johnson; but, if it were equal to that of the man who preceded her, would not the newspapers have told us ? The comparative value of these salaries is not shown by the figures. It depends on the prices of gold, and of food and provisions, each year. It cannot be half as great as an inexperienced person would think. There is a great want of female teachers of Latin and French. School committees assure me, that pro- ficients in language would be certain of good pay in our high schools. For the most part, women prefer to devote themselves to mathematics. I used to say, with a smile, in the Western States, that all the women could read the " Mecanique Celeste ; " but they found Csesar and Te'le'maque equally uninteresting. Later, Colonel Higginson bears witness to the impossibility of getting good classical teachers. It is a common idea, that the standard of education is higher now than it was thirty years ago. It may be doubted. More things are taught in schools, — ologies, isms, and the like; but the most thorough teachers are not the most popular, and it may be questioned, whether in the best minds on the Conti- nent, in England, or this country, so great progress has been made as has been generally claimed. There is much more liberality in regard to the general ques- tion, but no more in regard to the ideal standard. In one of Niebuhr's letters to Madame Hensler, CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 19 he says, in speaking of Klopstock: "The character of the -women is a remarkable feature of the time of Klopstock's youth. The cultivation of the mind was carried incomparably farther with them than with nearly all the young women of our days ; and this we should scarcely have expected to find in the cotemporaries of our grandmothers. It was not, therefore, the influence of our native literature; for that first rose into being along with, and under the influence of, the love inspired by these charming maidens. For some time after the Thirty Years' War, the ladies of Germany, particularly those of the mid- dle classes, were excessively coarse and uneducated. This wonderful alteration must have taken place, therefore, during eighty years, — between 1660 and 1740 ; though we are quite ignorant how and when it began." Passing over to France, we encounter the reputa- tion of Madame de Sable' ; a woman, let me remark, for the benefit of those who are afraid that the march of education will deprive them of their dinners, as celebrated for her exquisite cooking and delicate confections as she was for her literary ability. In speaking of her, Cousin says : " All the literature of maxims and thoughts, including those of La Roche- foucauld, grew up in the salon of a ' lovely woman withdrawn into a convent. Having no earthly pleas- ure but that of reliving her life, she knew how to im- part her own taste to society, in which she met by chance an accomplished wit, whom she contrived to 20 THE COLLEGE. turn into a great writer." He is speaking of the early part of the seventeenth century ; and, in spite of the notorious dissipation of the period, many gifted and many virtuous women crowded her salon, — the Princess Palatine, the Princesses of Cond£, de Conti, de Longueville, and Schomberg, Anna de Rohan, and Mademoiselle herself. There the gentlemen carried the pages they wrote at home, and not only bore with, but accepted, the criticisms of the women. They had no compensation but their praises, unless, like La Rochefoucauld, they were cunning enough to demand a carrot pottage or some preserved plums in exchange for a page of literature. In England, it is not neces- sary to avail ourselves of an exceptional education, like that of Lady Jane Grey. Remembering the noble culture of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, of the sturdy women of the Commonwealth, we might surely expect a greater progress in the national idea. But, if its average could be found, neither the wife of John Hampden nor Lady Russell would ac- cept it. It would seem that our standard advances, if at all, by a series of Hugh Miller's parabolic curves. What we find, depends upon the point at which we happen to test the eccentric arc ; and, when we enter the nineteenth century, we are forced to take refuge in analogy, and ask, " If the ancient Egyptians ever mastered the Copernican idea, why should Galileo be imprisoned to-day for insisting that the sun does not move round the earth ? " The stimulating ex- amples of noble and educated women, which now CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 21 present themselves, do not cheer us as they should, while they remain exceptions. In making what Dick- ens would call an "indiscriminate and incontinent" excursion, into the regions of female thought and literature, we find its atmosphere in a somewhat unventilated condition, and are reminded of an opinion of the Druses which does not seem to have been wholly impertinent, that " literature is a mean and contemptible occupation, fit only for ivomen." Twenty years ago, when ties of an almost filial ten- derness linked us to the household of the late Judge Cranch, we have often followed him, unrecognized, of a Saturday afternoon, when, returning from the bench, he climbed Capitol Hill, one hand grasping the handle of some colored washerwoman's basket, or slinging her heavy bundle over his shoulder on a stick. The dear remembrance, sustained by all the sweet and delicate courtesies of his private life, has always lain side by side in our mind with that exquisite Essay of Elia to which he first directed our atten- tion, in which a noble reverence to woman is incul- cated, and we are taught to judge every man's respect for the sex by his demeanor towards its humblest representative. Yet, if Judge Cranch never swerved from his gracious dignity, Charles Lamb did. Wo- man had not gained, in his life-time, such a hold upon her intellectual rights, that a dinner company dared chide him, when he said of Letitia Landon, " If she belonged to me, I would lock her up, and feed her on bread and water, till she gave up writing poetry. A 22 THE COLLEGE. female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks be- low an actress, /think." We do not quote these words so much against Lamb himself, — for the lips of Mary Lamb's brother must have been thick with wine, when, with " stam- mering, insufficient sound," he included her in so sweeping a reprobation, — but to indicate the nature of that public opinion which is even now dwarfing the ideals of the best men ; to show how little re- liance is to be placed on the standard of the most generous, when a remark like this, uttered in a large literary circle, passes without criticism, and is record- ed without conscious mortification, — recorded, too, by the father of that Coventry Patmore, who has known how to offer us, in later times, sugar-plums of his own coloring — let us add of his own poisoning also — under the alluring names of " betrothals" and " espousals." How far the facts are from the ideal standard, Mrs. Jameson, in a lecture lately delivered, will help us to show. " With all our schools," she says, " of all denomi- nations, it remains an astounding fact, that one-half of the women who annually become wives, in this England of ours, cannot sign their names in the par- ish register ; and that this amount of ignorance in the lower classes is accompanied with an amount of ill-health, despondency, inaptitude, and uselessness in the so-called educated classes, which, taken together, prove that our boasted appliances are to a great ex- tent failures." CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 23 The ancient standard of Italy was very high, even in the fifteenth century, if we consider only the liter- ary skill or mathematical culture frequently desired and attained ; but Anna Maria Mozzoni may con- congratulate herself on having given a moral and social impetus to it, which it has never before received. Her wise, considerate, philosophical suggestions will meet the cordial welcome of all right-minded women. If followed out, they will create nobler women than Tambroni or Laura Veratti.* There was no institution in England for the proper training of sick nurses, when Florence Nightingale went to Kaiserworth, a small town near Diisseldorf, on the Rhine, to prepare herself to take charge of the Female Sanitorium. In Great Britain, at this mo- ment, the excess of the female population over the male amounts to five hundred thousand souls ; and from all directions we hear the cry, that men need educated assistants. What is the country doing to answer this cry, to educate her five hundred thousand women ? In 1825 Dr. Gooch made a noble appeal to the English public, in behalf of educating women to be nurses ; but there was no response. When the first school of design was started, a petition was drawn up and signed, praying that women might not be taught, at the expense of the Government, arts which would interfere with the employment of men, and " take the bread out of their mouths " ! * Un Passo Avanti nclla Cultur'a Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna Maria Mozzoni Mitano. 1866. 24 THE COLLEGE. Here was an absurd interference with the right of feeding, on the part of these petitioners ! As if wo- men did not want bread as well as men ; and being, according to authority, the less intelligent and weaker sex, one would suppose that to help them, to find it might be a part of that protection to which the Gov- ernment stands pledged, and for which their property is taxed. " But," says Mrs. Jameson, " if a petition were drawn up, and handed to medical men, praying that women should not be trained as nurses, nor taught the laws of health, I am afraid there are well-inten- tioned men, who would, at the time, be induced to sign it ; but I believe that twenty, nay, even ten years hence, they would look back upon their signatures with as much disgust and amazement as is .now ex- cited by the attempt to explode and sneer down the school at Marlborough House." Another noble English woman, Mrs. Barbara Leigh Bodichon, in a recent pamphlet called " Woman and Work," gives us the correspondence between Jessie Meriton White and the various medical schools to which she applied for admission. This lady had for several years had charge of two little lame children, one of them her own nephew. The latter, on account of some structural defect, had broken his leg sixteen times. Once, when suitable attendance was not to be had, his aunt set and splintered it herself. The physician who examined it advised her to apply for instruction. She applied to fourteen medical institu- CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 25 tions in the city of London, asking sometimes for private anatomical instruction. The correspondence with four colleges in the year 1856 is given, — from the St. George's, the Royal College of Surgeons, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and the University of Lon- don. It amply bears out her assertion, that she was nowhere met with solid objections, or with sensible and logical replies. Sometimes she was told of the in- delicacy of her request! The University of London, which was legally bound by its charter to receive her, treated her as coolly as the rest ; and in no case was any individual regret expressed for the official de- cision. Indelicacy, forsooth ! Where can we find it, if not in the impure nature which raises the objection, and the low manner of thinking in general society which consents to receive it? May not the mother, who re- ceives her naked new-born child from the hand of God, fitly ask to understand the liabilities of its little frame ? May not the wife, called in seasons of sick- ness to the most delicate and trying duties, modestly ask for that thorough culture which alone can make those duties easy ? And who make this objection ? Men who go shuddering and half-drunken into the dissecting room, to scatter vile jests above that pros- trate temple of the Holy Ghost! Men who see nothing in the exquisite development of God's crea- tion, but the reflection of their own obscene lives! Students who know no better way to steel their courage to the use of the scalpel than to play at 26 THE COLLEGE. foot-ball on the college green with a human skull, holding its dignity to the level of their own honor ! * The best hope that Jessie Meriton White has for England is, that some of the most distinguished pro- fessors shall consent in time to take classes of female students. The office of the physician is as holy as that of the priest : formerly they were one ; now, at least, the physician should be priest-like. Irreverence and im- purity should be banished from medical ranks. The science of medicine stands in great need of the in- tuitive genius of woman. In pursuing it, she will need the steady caution of man. In this country and in France, earnest and devoted students of both sexes have stood in the dissecting room to the benefit of both. So let them continue to stand, till the spirit is known by its fruits. An impure man is no better than an impure woman; but impurity among men may be concealed. Let it come between the two sexes, and it will be brought at once into antagonism with society, and will meet its true desert. The objec- tion reveals the secrets of the medical college, and is the strongest argument ever offered for the medical education of women. If women are to practise as physicians, some means should be taken to protect society against those who are imperfectly educated. What a degree means will * I would gladly expunge the bitter reproof of these lines ; but they re- cord a fact which occurred at a medical school, where such an application was made, and must stand as history. CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 27 always be doubtful, until men and women receive their degrees in the same way and from the same hands. America stands greatly in need of this pro- tection. Crowds of unauthorized, half-educated wo- men, some of whom have not been ashamed to cross the Atlantic, and have attracted such sympathy abroad as only a different class of students deserve, are thronging the valley of the Mississippi, as well as haunting with their empirical pretensions the purlieus of the seaboard cities. If men had received properly trained women into their colleges and medical socie- ties, this would not have happened. Cannot such physicians as Dr. Zakrzewska, Dr. Blackwell, Dr. Sewall, Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Ross of Milwaukie, unite to organize a Woman's Medical Society, with an examining board whose diploma shall attest the char- acter of the member? Dr. Storer's admirable pam- phlet entitled " Why not ? " points out an evil, which will never be remedied by thrusting empirical women into the positions now held by unscrupulous men.* * The three parts of this book have been made to conform to the census and statistics of the year 1850. To bring them up to the year 1860 would require a repetition of all the labor originally devoted to the question. That would be unwise if it were possible, for it could not alter the bearing of any statements; and it is not possible, because we have now no certain values in America. I had from the first intended to indicate in notes any important changes that had taken place in this decade. I had earnestly hoped to be able to contradict here the statements in the text in regard to medical opportuni- ties for women, and the proper training of sick nurses, in England. But my English correspondents assure me that I have no occasion to change any thing ; that the facts remain substantially what they were when my manu- script was written. "But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her de- 28 THE COLLEGE. And what have we to say of our own country? Has the American standard reached a safe altitude, or must we admit that it has the same limitations ? A popular width of view we have certainly gained in the last half-century ; but have we made secure progress in the right direction ? Some eighty years ago, John Adams wrote of his wife, " This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a brighter genius, more information, and more refined taste, and was at least her equal in virtues of the heart, in fortitude and firmness of character, in resignation to gree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been trained as sick nurses?" There is still no institution for the training of sick nurses, as the text asserts. Some few have been trained in hospitals and the like, on conditions of service, or to supply the need of such institutions themselves. How does the matter stand with Miss Garrett ? The press has made the most of her success : it lies with us to exhibit the naked truth. After applying in vain to the various medical colleges, Miss Garrett went to Apothecaries' Hall. Here they refused her; but she looked up their charter. She found the word in- dicating to whom degrees should be granted indeterminate, with no character of sex attached to it. Lawyers told her the hall must grant her a degree, or surrender its charter. She was wealthy, and in earnest. She pushed her advantage. " The Apothecaries' Hall " prescribed certain courses of instruc- tion to be pursued and certified before the degree could be granted. These she pursued in private, paying the most exorbitant rates for her instruction. In one instance, for a course of lectures, to which a man's fee would have been Jive guineas, she paid ffty; and I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps must have amounted to two thousand pounds. All honor to .Miss Garrett! Should her genius as a physician equal her energy and her wealth, she may gain something for the cause she has espoused, by the honor and consideration she will win for her sex. Apart from this, it will be seen, she has gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to ordinary mortals ; and the conditions of the degree, in the present state of public feeling, would make it wholly impracticable. The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement, that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win with it its legitimate re- CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 29 the will of Heaven, and in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady Russell, she never discouraged her husband from running all haz- ards for the salvation of his country's liberties ; she was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous con- sequences we had to hazard." Will America ever offer to the world a nobler pic- ture ? Is it at this moment above or below our aver- age ideal ? " With such a mother," said John Quincy Adams, in Boston, less than twenty years ago, " with suits. For their opportunities as things now stand, all over the "world, women pa} T a premium on the terms offered to men. Let them take these opportuni- ties as tools, and try to win their bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident, — only the common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text. In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in Mary- lebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute, established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses on the request of clergy- men. Several sisters give their whole time to it. King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St. John's Home. St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months. The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool. Since the above was written, in January, 1867, three ladies have taken their degrees at Apothecaries' Hall, having passed a good examination, in Euclid, arithmetic, English history, and Latin. The cost of these degrees has not transpired. 30 THE COLLEGE. such a mother, it has been the perpetual instruction of my life to love and reverence the female sex ; but I have been taught also — and the lesson is still more deeply- impressed — I have been taught not to flatter them." Noble words! Gentlemen to whom it falls to de- liver annually Normal-school addresses would do well to take a lesson from them. They would wince a little, could they hear the criticisms of the indignant girls upon their actual advice and praise. How would these men have liked it, if at fifteen they had been addressed as fathers of an unborn generation, whose especial duty it was to adapt themselves to this sphere ? And why should men complain, that women look to marriage, and marriage only, as salvation, if the whole tenor of their own influence is used to em- phasize it as woman's " manifest destiny " ? " Are there not two married, and where is the one ? " What propriety is there in assuming, in advance, that the sphere which married life opens has a stronger hold on one sex than the other ? "We have said enough to show, that in Germany, France, England, and America, the ideal standard of education was sufficiently high over a century ago. Why has not such actual progress been made as might have been expected ? Because public opinion has constantly thwarted the ideal growth. Educated women have, for the most part, wanted courage to do what is right, un- less sustained by men. In education, for the duties of which they are acknowledged to be superior, CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 31 they have never insisted on the changes they knew to be necessary, but have uniformly succumbed to the masculine idea. Shall we blame them ? Is a conflict in the heart of a family a pleasant thing? Certainly, the hand which the magnanimous sympathy of men has set free cannot cast the first stone. The slowness and faithlessness of men too often paralyzes the best efforts of women. The faith which Isabella showed Columbus, would be, at this moment, a grate- ful return from them. Charles Lamb has shown us how valueless to the working woman the support of delicate sentiment maybe. The ringing of the glasses round a table dulled his exquisite ear to the fine spheral harmonies it had once caught. He broke, in an after-dinner tilt, the very lance with which he had pierced to the heart of the enemy's shield. If the ideal standard makes no headway against public opinion, what encouragement to our hopes does com- mon life offer ? As exquisite beauty of water, hill, and dale lies hid- den in many a country hamlet, unheeded by the guide- book, unsuspected by the traveller on the turnpike road; so, in society, self-sacrifice, noble daring, and saintly perseverance, nestle behind the prominent fail- ure. We find them everywhere, except where we should most naturally look for them. There is in England a Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. It undertakes to do abroad precisely the work that its individual members refuse to assist the community to do at home. Con- 32 THE COLLEGE. sequently, their printed schemes read like satires on their individual convictions. In the year 1835, Miss Alice Holliday called the attention of this society to the condition of women in Egypt and Abyssinia. She asked their sanction to her attempt to educate the women of Egypt, with an ultimate view to those of Abyssinia, whose condition chiefly interested her. She had pursued a severe course of study, unfriended and alone, before she asked this help. She had studied the severe sciences, the antiquities and customs of the countries themselves, and the Arabic and Coptic lan- guages. She was fortunate also in stirring the enthu- siasm of a certain Miss Rogers, who, unable to teach, was yet willing to accompany her friend, and devote her fortune to their mutual support. As these ladies wanted no money from the society they consulted, they were received as agents without difficulty, and reached Alexandria in the autumn of 1836. At this time Miss Holliday wrote : " The condition of the Coptic women is truly lamentable. Their abodes are like the filthiest holes in London ; yet their persons are decked out in the most costly apparel. I have seen ladies sitting at their latticed windows, their heads and necks adorned with pearls and diamonds of the highest value, their bodies covered with the richest silks and velvets, while the room they occupied was the most disgusting scene you can imagine. Smoking and sleeping occupy their time. Female schools have never had an existence, and the prejudice against them is very strong." CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 33 We can recall the argument used in those Eastern lands, and the answer which civilization offered. " I am afraid to teach my women," said the Turk : " they are already crafty and impure. To gather them into public places is to offer a premium on immodesty, and a temptation to misconduct." The Christian answered proudly, " We can trust our women ; yes, even in Paris and London." Soon after their arrival, Miss Rogers died ; but her friend was not discouraged. In the following March, an officer of state, Hekekyan Effendi, came to inquire whether she would take charge of the royal women, one hundred in number, and the nearest relatives of the sovereign. Much depended, it was thought, upon the co-operation of the oldest daughter, Nas-lee Hanoom ; and it was His Highness's desire that the heads of the family should be formed into a committee to extend female schools. See how this Mohammedan officer writes to Miss Holliday. " You have no doubt read much about hareems," he says, " yet little, I fear, that resembles the truth. We pay great respect to women and aged persons, what- ever may be our own rank. Our children, however, are uneducated, in the European sense of the term. Besides being illiterate, they know nothing of do- mestic economy; and, in the middling and lower classes of the community, this ignorance is so pro- found as to endanger, by its dire consequences, do- mestic health, peace, and prosperity. This want is the first cause of slavery and its concomitant vices. 3 34 THE COLLEGE. In seconding the illustrious efforts of Mehemet Ali, I have been able to trace our debasement as a nation to no other cause than the want of a useful and efficient moral education for our women. In giving to them enlightened education, we shall be striking at the root of the evils that afflict us ; we shall diminish the dan- gers and misfortunes which proceed from ignorance and idleness. Habits of industry, cleanliness, order, and economy, by increasing happiness, make us mor- ally better, and will secure that moral training to our children which no subsequent effort is sufficient to replace." So true is it that the value of words is compara- tive, that all this might have been written by some Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachu- setts. The arguments of the Turk and Effendi are very familiar to us. Modern civilized society shuts women out of schools to protect their modesty. Modern professors tell us how much they respect wo- men, and value material training, at the very moment when they bar the gates of life against her. On the 27th of March, 1838, Miss Holliday went in state to the hareem. She was preceded by the two janis- saries attached to the English Consulate, bearing their silver wands of office, and accompanied by the wife of Hekekyan. In the ante-room they were regaled with coffee out of golden cups set with diamonds. Young Georgian girls of great beauty brought sherbet and massive pipes with amber mouth-pieces. They were then introduced to the Princess Nas-lee, a little CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 35 woman about forty, simply dressed; and, before the interview ended, Alice had promised to spend four hours of every day in the hareem. She began with instruction that tended to civilize daily life ; and boxes of embroidery and baby-clothes, made for patterns in England, excited the first lively interest. She declined all invitations to take up her abode in the hareem, although promised entire liberty. She was humble, and, as a consequence, wise. She did not expect great results, or look for much enthusiasm, in the hareem. In August, she writes : " My visits have been attend- ed 'with the most cheering success. I am received and honored with every possible distinction ; but, added to my school, it is a great fatigue." Her character in every way sustained the effect of her teaching. She was offered thirty pounds a month for her attendance at the hareem, but thought ten pounds sufficient, and would accept no more. In October, a box of presents was received from England. When Hekekyan was invited to look into this box, he seized upon some scientific plates sent to the young princess. " Ah ! " said he, " these are the things we need." The Pacha was captivated, in his turn, by an orrery, and a model of the Thames Tunnel. The hareem sent back a sim- ilar box, and Nas-lee herself worked a scarf for the queen. Miss Holliday was soon ordered to translate some of her books into Turkish ; and her princesses wrote touching letters to their English friends. Soon after, we find this indefatigable woman teaching Eng- lish, French, drawing, and writing, in the hareem of a. 36 THE COLLEGE. late Governor of Cairo. Education must begin with languages ; for Egypt has no literature to offer to her children. In 1840 Victoria sent to the hareem a por- trait of herself, which was carried in procession and hung with proper honors by the side of that of the pacha. Very soon came an Egyptian Society for the Promotion of Female Education. Scientific instru- ments and books were ordered. An infant school be- gan with one hundred and fifty children. The hareem demanded another teacher, and Mrs. Lieder was sent out. In 1844 a male school was formed, and Euro- pean teachers imported. The young girls, who had begun with needle-work eight years before, were now studying Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, geography, arithmetic, and drawing. " What a change," writes Alice in 1846, — " what a change within the last ten years ! When I came to Egypt, there was not a wo- man who could read ; and now some hundreds have not only the power, but the best books. Year after year, I have been permitted to see the growth of a new civilization. What a change has come over the royal family since I first entered it ! The desire for trifles is preparing the way for our noblest gifts ; and a fatal blow has been struck at the whole system of hareems.'' It would be pleasant to trace this de- voted woman farther, to know whether she still lives, and if she has reached the Abyssinian plains. In this humble way began the great educational movement in Egypt, which gave strength and vitality to Me- hemet Ali's best-considered plans, which has sent CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 37 scores of young princes to Paris, and will eventually change the face of the whole land. Alice Holliday succeeded, because the " sinews of war" — namely, the "purse-strings" — were in her own hands. Very similar in spirit was the enterprise of Madame Luce in Algiers, of which Madame Bodichon has given an interesting account. Madame Luce went to Algiers, soon after the conquest, about 1834, and was probably a teacher in the family of one of the resident functionaries. In 1845, nearly nine years after Alice had begun her Egyptian labors, Madame Luce was a widow, with very little money to devote to the work on which she had set her heart ; namely, a school to civilize the women of Algiers. Government was already beginning to instruct the men ; but the Mohammedan dread of proselytism stood in their way. The women were in the worst state, — closely veiled, taught no manual arts, having no skill in housekeeping even, — for the simple life of a warm climate, the scanty furniture, give no scope for such skill. To wash their linen, to clamber over the roofs to make calls, to offer coffee and receive it, to dress very splendidly at times, very untidily always, was the synopsis of their lives. They did not know their own ages, yet were liable to be sold in marriage at the age of ten. Upon such material, and at such a time, — when the value of a Moorish woman was esti- mated, like that of a cow, by her weight, — Madame Luce undertook to work. She had a Christian cour- age in her heart, which might put many a man to shame. 38 THE COLLEGE. While laying her plans, she had perfected herself in the native tongue, and now commenced a campaign among the families of her acquaintance, coaxing them to trust their little girls to her for three or four hours a day, that they might be taught to read and write French, and also to sew neatly. Her presents, her philanthropic tact, her solemn promise not to interfere in matters of religion, won for her, at length, four little girls, whom she took to her own hired house without a moment's delay. As the rumor of her success spread, one child after another dropped in, till she had more than thirty. Finding the experiment answer beyond her hopes, she was compelled to demand assistance of the local government. Men have no faith in quixotic undertakings. As might have been expected, they .complimented Madame Luce upon her energy, saw no use in educating Moorish women, and declined to assist her. She waited, in breathless suspense, till the day on which the Council were to meet, bribing the parents, clothing the children, and pursuing her noble work. " Surely," she thought, " they will devise some plan;" but the twilight of the 30th of December closed in, and they had not even alluded to her school. On the 1st of January, 1846, it was closed. Nine hundred miles from Paris, without the modern con- veniences of transport, what do you suppose this woman did ? Could she give up ? She scorned an offer of personal remuneration made by a few gentlemen, and told them that what she wanted was adequate support for a national Avork. She pawned her plate, CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 39 her jewels, even a gold thimble, and set off for Paris, where she arrived early in February, and sent in her report to the Minister of War. She went in person from deputy to deputy, detailing her plans. Poor Madame Luce ! her success was not quite so speedy as Alice Holliday's, whose schools had doubtless stimulated her efforts. Everywhere she had to com- bat the scepticism, the indifference, the inertia, of worldly men. There was no Miss Rogers, with a kind heart and a long purse, to help her on her way. Nor did Madame Luce desire that there should be. She knew that individual efforts of such a kind can never last long ; and she was determined to make the government adopt and become responsible for her work. Then it would outlive her. Then it might redeem the nation. At last, daylight began to dawn. The government gave her three thousand francs for her journey, and eleven hundred more on account of some claim of her deceased husband. They urged her return to Algiers, and promised still farther sup- port. So perseveringly had she wrought, that, early in June, she was able to re-open her school, amid the rejoicings of parents and children. It was seven months before the government contrived to put the school on a better foundation. During this time, her pupils constantly increased, and she was put to the greatest straits to keep it together. The Curs' of Algiers gave her a little money and a great deal of sympathy. -The Count Guyot, high in office, helped her from his own purse. When she was entirely 40 THE COLLEGE. destitute, she would send one of her negresses to him, and he would send her enough for the day. On one occasion, he sent a small bag of money, left by the Due de Nemours for the benefit of a journal which had ceased to exist. She found in this two hundred francs, which she received as a direct gift from' Heaven. Thus she got along from hand to mouth. She engaged an Arab mistress, who was remarkably cultivated, to assist her, and to train the children in her own faith. Pledged as she was not to instruct them in Christianity, she had the sense to see, what few would have admitted, that such instruction was not only necessary, but desirable. It gave them the knowledge of one God, and made clear distinctions between right and wrong. At last, in January, 1847, the school was formally adopted, and received its first visit of inspection. The gentlemen were received by thirty -two pupils, and the Arab mistress unveiled; a great triumph of common sense, if we consider how short a time the school had been opened. Since that time, the work has steadily prospered. In 1858 it numbered one hundred and twenty pupils, between the ages of four and eighteen. The practical wisdom of Madame Luce led her to establish a workshop, where the older pupils learned the value of their labor, and earned a good deal of money. They had always a week's work in advance, when the wise, slow government put an end to it, whether to save the thirty-five pounds a year, which the salary of its superintendent cost, or to prevent competition with CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 41 the nunneries, Madame Luce has never known. She thought it the best part of her plan, — far better than teaching the girls to turn a French phrase neatly for the satisfaction of inspectors. The govern- ment are now beginning to understand her value. They have established a second school ip Algiers, and several in the provinces. The results are not miraculous, but they plant new germs of moral power and thought in every family circle which they touch. Such names as those of Alice Holliday and Madame Luce have a great value. These women and their labors are permeated by the Christian idea of self- surrender. The preponderance of this idea in these examples distinguishes them above women of the past, whether German exaltadas, brilliant adventurers amid the perils of the Froude, or witty loiterers in the salon of Madame de SabKS. La Rochefoucauld, who was proud of Mademoi- selle and her princesses, would only have sneered at Madame Luce ; nor would Lady Russell, nor Mrs. John Adams, have followed Alice to Egypt cheerfully. Nor do these two women belong to the army of saints and martyrs. A religious devotee has in her a mis- taken enthusiasm, and goes away from the world. These women are doing the work of saints and mar- tyrs with a far higher appreciation of God's provi- dence, of the uses of this world, and with all the hindrances that fall to the lot of simple human beings. It is not our intention to multiply such instances here : they belong, rather, to the illustrations of individual 42 THE COLLEGE. power. We must not forget, however, the existence, in England, of that circle of women, of whom Mrs. Bodichon, Mrs. Hugo Reid, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Jameson, and Bessie Raynor Parkes, are honorable examples. We have such lives as those of Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Evans ; the scientific reputa- tion not alone of Mrs. Somerville, but of Mrs. Grif- fith, to whose masculine power of research English marine botany may be said to owe its existence, and who still survives, at an advanced age, to see that knowledge becomes popular, in her cheerful and hon- ored decline, which she pursued, for many a year, unassisted and alone. We have Mrs. Janet Taylor, one of the best and most popular teachers of naviga- tion and nautical mathematics in all England. Her classes have been celebrated and numerously attended by men who have been long at sea, as well as by youths preparing for the merchant service ; and, still farther, we have in cultivated circles, to balance the old prejudice, an encouraging liberality. A review, published in the Westminster, after the issue of Miss Martineau's pamphlet on the future government of India, shows conclusively that any woman who will do good work may feel sure of honest appreciation. If she does poor work, she will only the more provoke the enemy. Nothing could have been more ambitious than Miss Martineau's theme ; but, when she showed herself well qualified to handle it, no one had any disposition to consider the choice unwomanly. Such criticisms are the exponents of the century's expe- CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 43 rience. They betray the unconscious drift of the public mind. A book is modest by the side of a pamphlet. The former may wait its day : the latter aspires to immediate influence, if i ( t does any thing, — must mould the hour. It was once the chosen weapon of Milton and Bolingbroke, later of Ward and Brougham. Is it nothing, that a woman of advanced years, writing from an invalid's chamber, feels herself competent to wield it? Was it nothing, when, by her tracts on political economy, she gave an impulse to the middle classes of her native land, for which busy political men could not find time ? Is it not Godwin who says that " human nature is better read in romance than history " ? Every actual life falls short of its ideal ; but a poem dares demand some approximation to its standard from the whole world. In this way, " Aurora Leigh," into which Mrs. Browning confesses she has thrown her whole heart, is a wonderful indication of human thought and feel- ing. In this country, there are many significant signs of progress. The name of Maria Mitchell in astron- omy ; of the women engaged in the Coast Survey ; of the professors at Antioch, Vassar, and Oberlin, — are familiarly known, and have their own power. Only lately, a Nashua factory-girl takes the highest honors at the Oread Institute ; and its principal is willing to put her and two other graduates into competition with any three college graduates in New England for examination according to the curriculum. When she finished the education she had first earned the money 44 THE COLLEGE. to procure, she left her Worcester home, and, with quiet right-mindedness, went back to Nashua to labor for an indigent family. As she tends her loom on the Jackson Corporation, she will have leisure to investi- gate her right to these acquisitions. In support of this " exception," the superintendent of the New- York City Schools, long ago, reported, that its female schools, whether by merit of teachers or pupils or both, are of a much higher grade than the male schools. Eighteen girls'-schools are superior, in average attainment, to the very best boys'-school. He goes on to speak of the rapidity with which women acquire knowledge, in terms which remind us of Margaret Fuller, when she remarks of Dr. Chan- ning, that it was not very pleasant to read to him ; " for," said she, " he takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking, diving, or flying for truth." In speaking of her classes at Vassar College, Miss Mitchell says (1865) : " I have a class of seventeen pupils, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. They come to me for fifty minutes every day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by them daily. They show more mathemati- cal ability, and more originality of thought, than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College who take mathematical astronomy, do you think ? " At the session of the Michigan Legislature, held in CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 45 1857-8, petitions were received, asking that women might be permitted to enjoy all the advantages of the State University. The committee to whom the sub- ject was referred, took counsel with the older colleges at the Bast, whose whole spirit and method is as much opposed to such an idea as that of Oxford. The result was, that they reported against any change for the present, — a report the more to be regretted, as Ann Arbor has a broader University foundation than any institution within the limits of the United States. The University has lately petitioned for a larger en- dowment, and again an effort has been made to secure its advantages for women ; Theodore Tilton pleading before the committee in their behalf, in February, 1867. We know of twenty-seven colleges in the United States, open to men and women, of which Oberlin was the noble pioneer.* The highest culture has been claimed for women : it has been shown, that, for two centuries, the ideal of such a culture has existed, but has been depressed by an erroneous public opinion. There has, however, been a steady growth in the right direction, which en- titles us to ask for a " revised and corrected " public opinion. The influence of mental culture is a small thing by the side of that insinuating atmospheric power and the customs of society which it controls. All educated men and women, all liberal souls, there- fore, should do their utmost to invigorate public opin- * See Appendix. 46 THE COLLEGE. ion. To allow no weakness to escape us, to challenge every falsehood as it passes, to brave every insinuation and sneer, is what duty demands. Can you not bear to be called " women' s-rights women " ? To whom has the name ever been agreeable ? Society gives the lie to your purest instincts, and you bear it. It calls the truths you accept hard names, and you are dumb. It throws stones, and you shrink behind some ragged social fence, leaving a few weak women to stand the assault alone. What influence has the highest literary character of America, at this moment, on the popular idea of women ? " How much is there that we may not say aloud" wrote Niebuhr to Savigny, " for fear of being stoned by the stupid good people ! " and upon this principle the thinkers of our society act ; not a word escaping from their guarded homes to cheer the more exposed workers. Prescott stabbed Philip II. to the heart without a qualm. Ticknor could give a life to the romance of old Spain. Froude has defended Henry VIII. Our best poets sing verses that enslave, since the song of beauty echoes always among tropical delights. " Barbara Frietchie " alone has been written for us. When George Curtis blows his clarion, a courtly throng come at the call. We yield with the rest to the charm of the lips on which Attic bees once clus- tered. What honor do we pay the fair proportions of the simple truth? How can we settle questions of right and wrong for CHRISTIAN DEMAND AND PUBLIC OPINION. 47 remote periods, without knowing the faces of either in the street to-day ? How shall any one honor Marga- ret of Parma, and pity poor crazy Joan in Spain, and have no heart for the heroism of Mary Patton ? How unravel with patient study the tracasseries of Eliza- beth Tudor and Mary Stuart, yet ignore the compli- cations of the life he himself lives ? When Mary Patton had carried her ship round Cape Horn, — standing in a parlor where the air was close, though the breezes that entered at its open casement swept the Common as they came, a woman told, with newly kindled enthusiasm, the story of that wonderful voyage. She gave her, in warm words, her wifely and womanly due. " She saved the ship, God bless her ! " she said as she concluded ; and an- other voice, that once was sweet, responded, " More shame to her ! " " ' More shame to her ! ' " repeated the first speaker, as if she had been struck a sudden blow ; and turning quickly towards the girl, beautiful, well educated, carefully reared, who, in the fulness of her twenty summers, found time for church-going, for clothing the poor, for elegant study, for every thing but sym- pathy, — "More shame!" she repeated: "What! for saving life and property?" — "Better that they should all have gone to the bottom," returned her friend, "than that one woman should step out of her sphere!" Ah! the Infinite Father knows how to educate the public opinion that we need. Now and then he lifts a woman, as he did Mary Patton, 48 THE COLLEGE. against her will out of her ordinary routine; and, while all the world gaze at her with tender sympathy, they half accept the coming future. Does it sadden you, that we should repeat such words ? They did not shock the ears on which they fell ; they met no farther rebuke than one astonished question. Yet what did they represent? Not the public opinion of Mary Patton. The New- York un- derwriters, when they voted her a thousand dollars, were a fit gauge of that. It was the public opinion of the " right of vocation " that the young girl uncon- sciously betrayed. Harsh words die on our lips, as we think, " This girl's life is aimless. She would gladly do some noble work, but society does not help her. She lacks courage to stand alone, and envies the very woman she decries." " Public opinion is of slow growth," you retort : "do not charge its corruptions on the people of to- day." The people of to-day are responsible for any cor- ruptions which they do not reject. We have seen that the standard of womanly education does not lead where it should, because controlled by a public opinion which demands too little. It becomes us here to investigate the origin of that public opinion, and to ask the meaning of the lives which have been lived in its despite. HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 49 II. HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. " A governed thought, thinking no thought but good, Makes crowded houses, holy solitude." Sanscrit Booh of Good Counsels, PT^HE existing public opinion with regard to woman -*- has been formed by the influence of heathen ages and institutions, kept up by a mistaken study of the classics, — a study so pursued, that Athens and Rome, Aristophanes and Juvenal, are more responsible for the popular views of woman, and for the popular mis- takes in regard to man's position toward her, than any thing that has been written later. This influence pervades all history; and so the study of history becomes, in its turn, the source of still greater and more specious error, except to a few rare and original minds, whose eccentricities have been pardoned to their genius, but who have never influenced the world to the extent that they have been influenced by it. The adages or proverbs of all nations are the out- growths of their first attempts at civilization. They began at a time which knew neither letter-paper nor the printing-press; and they perpetuate the rudest ideas, such as are every way degrading to womanly virtue. The influence of general literature is impelled 4 50 THE COLLEGE. by the mingled current. For many centuries, it was the outgrowth of male minds only, of such as had been drilled for seven years at least into all the hea- thenisms of which we speak. Women, when they first began to work, followed the masculine idea, shared the masculine culture. As a portion of general literature, the novel, as the most popular, exerts the widest sway. No educational in- fluence in this country compares with it ; even that of the pulpit looks trivial beside it. There are thousands whom that influence never reaches; hardly one who cannot beg or buy a newspaper, with its story by some " Sylvanus Cobb." From the first splash of the Atlantic on a Mas- sachusetts beach to the farthest canon which the weary footsteps of the Mormon women at this mo- ment press; from the shell-bound coast of Florida, hung with garlands of orange and lime, to the cold, green waters of Lake Superior, in their fretted chalice of copper and gold, — the novel holds its way. On the railroad, at the depot, in the Irish hut, in the Indian lodge, on the steamer and the canal-boat, in the Fifth- avenue palace, and the Five-Points den of infamy, its shabby livery betrays the work that it is doing. Until very lately, it has kept faith with history and the classics ; but it is passing more and more into the hands of women, — of late into the hands of noble and independent women ; and there are signs which indicate that it may soon become a potent influence of redemption. It has thus far done infinite harm, by HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 51 / ") g false distinctions between the masculine and term, ine elements of human nature, and perpetuating, through the influence of genius often intensifying, the educational power of a false theory of love. Social customs follow in the train of literature ; and sometimes in keeping with popular errors, but oftener in stern opposition to them, are the lives and labors of remarkable individuals of both sexes, — lives that show, if they show nothing else, how much the res- olute endeavor of one noble heart may do towards making real and popular its own convictions. The influence of newspapers sustains, of course, the general current derived from all these sources. Public opinion, then, flows out of these streams, — out of classical literature, history, general reading, and the proverbial wisdom of all lands ; out of social conventions, and customs and newspapers. These streams set one way. Only individual influences re- main, to stem their united force. "We must treat of them more at length, and first of the classics. Until very lately, there were no proper helps to the study of Egyptian, Greek, or Roman mythology. It was studied by the letter, and made to have more or less meaning, according to the teacher who interpreted it. Lempriere had no room for moral deductions or symbolic indications ; his columns read like a criminal report in the " New- York Herald." The Egyptian mythology was, doubtless, an older off- shoot from the same stem. Many of its ceremonies, its symbols, and its idols, must be confused by the un- 52 THE COLLEGE. instructed mind with realities of the very lowest, per- haps we should not be far wrong if we said, of the most revolting stamp. The Greek classics, so far as I know them, present a singular mixture of influ- ences ; but, where woman is concerned, the lowest certainly preponderate. We should be sorry to lose Homer and JEschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, from our library ; but of how many poets and dramatists, from the few fragments of Pindar and Anacreon down through the tragic poets, — down, very far down, indeed, to Aristophanes, — can we say as much ? There need be no doubt about Aristophanes. The world would be the purer, and all women grateful, if every copy of his works, and every coarse inference from them, could be swept out of existence to-morrow. When we find a noble picture in Xenophon, it had a noble original, like Panthea in Persia, as old perhaps as that fine saying in the Heetopades which all the younger Veds disown. When we find an ignoble thought, it seems to have been born out of his Greek experience. Transported by a fair ideal, Plato asks, in his " Republic," " Should not this sex, which we con- demn to obscure duties, be destined to functions the most noble and elevated ? " But it was only to take back the words in his " TimsBus," and in the midst of a society that refused to let the wife sit at table with the husband, and whose young wives were not "tame" enough to speak to their husbands, if we may believe the words of Xenophon, until after months of" mar- HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 53 riage. When Iscomachus, the model of an Athenian husband, and the friend of Socrates, asked his wife if she knew whether he had married her for love, " I know nothing," she replied, " but to be faithful to you, and to learn what you teach." He responded by an exhortation on "staying at home" which has come down to posterity, and left her, with a kiss, for the saloon of Aspasia ! Pindar and Anacreon, even when they find no better representatives than Dr. Wolcott and Tom Moore, still continue to crown the wine-cup, and impart a certain grace to unmanly orgies. A late French writer goes so far as to call Euripides " a woman-hater, who could not pardon Zeus for having made woman an indispensable agent in the preservation of the species." In his portraits of Iphigenia and Macaria, Euripides follows his concep- tion of heroic, not human nature. They are demi- goddesses ; yet how are their white robes stained ! Iphigenia says, — " More than a thousand women is one man Worthy to see the light of day ; " a sentiment which has prevailed ever since. " Silence and a chaste reserve Is woman's genuine praise, and to remain Quiet within the house," proceeds Macaria, and still farther : — " Of prosperous future could I form One cheerful hope ? A poor forsaken virgin who would deign To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons From one so wretched? Better, then, to die Than bear such undeserved miseries ! " 54 THE COLLEGE. Here is the popular idea which curses society to-day, — no vocation possible to woman, if she may not be a wife, and bear children : and these are favorable speci- mens ; they show the practical tendencies of the very best of Euripides. The heroic portions are like Miri- am's song, and have nothing to do with us and our experiences. In speaking of Aristophanes, I do not speak igno- rantly. I know how much students consider them- selves indebted to him for details of manners and customs, for political and social hints, for a sort of Dutch school of pen-painting. But if a nation's life be so very vile, if crimes that we cannot name and do not understand be among its amusements, why permit the record to taint the mind and inflame the imagination of youth ? Why put it with our own hands into the desks of those in no way prepared to use it ? Would you have wit and humor? Sit down with Douglas Jerrold, or to the genial table spread by our Boston Autocrat, and you will have no relish left for the coarse fare of the Athenian. One of the most vulgar assaults ever made upon the movement to elevate woman in this country was made in a respectable quarterly by a Greek scholar. It was sustained by quotations from Aristophanes, and concluded by copious translations from one of his liveliest plays, offered as a specimen of the " riot and misrule " that we ambitious women were ready to inaugurate. Coarser words still our Greek scholar might have taken from the same source HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 55 to illustrate his theory. He knew very well that the nineteenth century would bear hints, insinuations, sneers, any thing but plain speaking. We have limits : he observed them, and forbore. Women some- times talk of Aristophanes as if they had read his plays with pleasure ; a thing for which we can only account by supposing that they do not take the whole significance of what they read, — and this is often the case with men. But a college furnishes helps. The mysteries of the well-thumbed English key are trans- lated afresh into what we may call " college slang," illustrated oftentimes by clever if vulgar caricatures, where a few significant lines tell in a moment what a pure mind would have pondered years without perceiving; and if, perchance, some modest woman finds her friend or lover at this work, society says only : " You should not have touched the young man's book. What harm for him to amuse himself? — only women should never find it out! Keep them pure, no matter what becomes of men. What busi- ness had you to know the meaning of those pencil marks ? " Even St. John does not hesitate to condemn Aris- tophanes* " With an art in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient," he begins, " he opens up a more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteries of iniquity with a fearless * Manners and Customs of Greece, vol. i. p. 337. 56 THE COLLEGE. and by no means an unreluctant hand. He ventures fearlessly on themes which few before or since have touched, despising the stern condemnation of pos- terity. He evidently shared in the worst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists, availed him- self joyfully of the mask of satire to entertain his own imagination with his own descriptions. No one, with the least clear-sightedness or candor, can fail to perceive the depraved moral character of Aristo- phanes. Only less filthy than Rabelais, his fancy runs riot among the moral jakes and common sewers of the world, over which, by consummate art and the matchless magic of his style, he contrives unhappily to breathe a fragrance which should never be found save where virtue is." When I first took up my pen, knowing well that I should speak of Margaret Fuller's beloved Greeks in a tone somewhat different from hers, I did not know that I should have the sympathy of a single eminent scholar. It was with no common pleasure, therefore, that, opening her Life at random, one day, I chanced upon these words from her own pen. She is speaking of a class of private pupils : — " I have always thought all that was said about the anti-religious tendency of a classical education to be 'auld wives' tales.' But the puzzles (of my pupils) about Virgil's notions of heaven and virtue, and his gracefully described gods and goddesses, have led me to alter my opinions ; and I suspect, HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 57 from reminiscences of my own mental history, that, if all teachers do not think the same, it is from the want of an intimate knowledge of their pupils' minds. I really find it difficult to keep their morale steady, and am inclined to think many of my own sceptical sufferings are traceable to this source. I well remember what reflections arose in my childish mind from a comparison of the Hebrew history, where every moral obliquity is shown out with such ndivetS, and the Greek history, full of sparkling deeds and brilliant sayings, and their gods and goddesses, the types of beauty and power, with the dazzling veil of flowery language and poetical imagery cast over their vices and failings." * We may be permitted also to quote, from the com- petent pen of Buckle, the following words : — " We have only to open the Greek literature,", he says, in his lecture on " The Condition of Women," " to see with what airs of superiority, with what se- rene and lofty contempt, with what mocking and biting scorn, women were treated by that lively and ingenious people, who looked upon them merely as toys.' 1 Alas ! we need no prophet to show that what pol- lutes the mind of youth and lover, by polluting the ideal of society, must soon pollute the mind of maiden and mistress. Is that a Christian country which permits this style of thinking? and how many * Memoirs of S. M. Fuller, vol. i. p. 337. 58 THE COLLEGE. men of the world accept the stainless virginity of Christ as the world's pattern of highest manliness ? Passing from Greece to Rome, you will see that even as we owe to Roman law, before the time of Justinian, almost all that is obnoxious in the English, retaining still the strange old Latin terms which were applied to our relations in a very barbarous state of society ; so we owe to the time of Augustus, to the influence of satirists like Horace and Juvenal, almost all the wide-spread heresies in regard to human na- ture : if we had but time to look at it, we might say Calvinism among the rest. The views of women are still lower. Caesar and Cicero may be abstract nullities to our young student ; but what can he learn from Ovid? It is not delicate to name the " Art of Love." In simple, honest truth, it is the same to read the Metamorphoses. You cannot ventilate a gross man's atmosphere ; all the Betsy Trotwoods must toss their cushions on the lawn when he leaves the room. It is the old difference be- tween " Don Juan " and " Childe Harold," only less. In the first, the unvarnished play of passion may disgust you until it instructs; in the second, you have the despairing misanthropy, the false philosophy, the devil in Gabriel's own garment, which is always fascinating to the young, morbid with the stimulus of growth, and which you might mistake for piety if you did not know it was born of the lassitude left by excess. Latin mythology was but the corruption of the HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 59 older types. What was beauty once became here undisguised coarseness or worse. The gods who once endured sin now patronized and made money by it. These things are not without their influence. Above all, low images, witty slang, and sharp satire, have force beyond their own, when slowly studied out by the help of the lexicon. The women to whom I speak know this very well. They know that the Mo- liSre, the Dante, the Schiller, studied at school, are never forgotten. They smile to hear men call them hard to read : for them they glow with clear and sig- nificant meaning. Striking passages are indelibly impressed by associations of time or place or page, which can never be forgotten. I would not put an end to classical study ; I would only direct attention, through such remarks, to the dangers attendant on the present manner of study. Classical teachers should not be chosen for their learning alone. No Lord Chester- field should teach manners, but some one whose daily " good morning " is precious. So no coarse, low-minded man should interpret Greek or Roman, but some noble soul, not indifferent to social progress, capable of dis- criminating, and of letting in a little Christian light upon those pagan times. Where men and women are taught together, this thing settles itself; and this is a very strong argument for institutions like Antioch and Oberlin. Then might the period passed at the Latin school and the college become of the greatest moral and in- tellectual use. Then would no graduating students 60 THE COLLEGE. run the risk of hearing from their favorite doctor of divinity, instead of sound scriptural exhortation, some doctrine whisked out of Epicurus, by a clever but unconscious leger-de-plume. Do not tell us, O excellent man! that you have gone through all this training, and come out with your soul unstained. We look at you, and see a temperament cold as ice, passions and imagination that were never at a blood-heat since you were born, that never translated the cold paper image into the warm deed of your conscious mental life; and you shall not answer for us, nor for our children. In leaving this branch of our subject to be more fitly pursued by others, we ought to add that men- tal purity is not enough insisted upon for either sex. It is only by the greatest faithfulness from the beginning in this respect that we become capable of " touching pitch " at a mature age, in a way to benefit either ourselves or the community. How desirable it is to .keep the young eye steadily gazing at the light till it feels all that is lost in darkness, to keep the atmosphere serene and holy till the necessary conflicts of life begin! For such a dayspring to existence no price could be too high; and, if desirable to all, it is essential to those who inherit degrading tendencies. We must speak now of history. For the most part, it has been written by men devoid of intentional injustice to the sex ; but, when a man sits in a certain light, he is penetrated by its color, as the false shades in our omnibuses strike the fairest bloom black and HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 61 blue. If the positive knowledge and Christian candor of the nineteenth century cannot compel Macaulay to confess that he has libelled the name of William Penn, what may be expected of the mistakes occa- sioned by the ignorance, the inadvertence, or the false theories of the past? Clearly that they also will re- main uncorrected. If men start with the idea that woman is an inferior being, incapable of wide interests, and created for their pleasure alone ; if they enact laws and establish customs to sustain these views ; if, for the most part, they shut her into hareems, consider her so dangerous that she may not walk the streets without a veil, — they will write history in accordance with such views, and, whatever may be the facts, they will be interpret- ed to suit them. They will dwell upon the lives which their theories explain : they will touch lightly or ignore those that puzzle them. We shall hear a great deal of Cleopatra and Messalina, of the mother of Nero and of Lucretia Borgia, of Catharine de Medicis and Marie Stuart, of the beautiful Gabrielle and Ninon de L'Enclos. They will tell us of bloody Mary, and that royal coquette, Elizabeth ; and possibly of some saints and martyrs, not too grand in stature to wear the strait-jacket of their theories. If they think that purity is required of woman alone, and all license permitted to man, they will value female chastity for the service it does poetry and the state, but never maidenhood devoted to noble uses and conscious of an immortal destiny. 62 . THE COLLEGE. Hypatia of Alexandria, noble and queenly, so queenly that those who did not understand, dared not libel her, — Hypatia, a woman of intellect so keen and grasping, that she would have been eminent in the nineteenth century, and may be met in the circles of some future sphere, erect and calm, by the side of our own Margaret Fuller, — she, who died a stainless vir- gin, torn in pieces by dogs, because she tried to shelter some wretched Jews from Christian wrath, and could even hold her Neo-Platonism a holier thing than that disgraced Christianity, — what do we know of her ? Only the little which the letters of Synesius preserve, only the testimony borne by a few Christians, fathers of the Church now, but outlawed then by the popular grossness! Yet, a pure and fragrant waif from the dark ocean of that past, her name was permitted to float down to us, till Kingsley caught it, and, with the unscrupulousness of the advocate, stained it to serve his purpose.* It would have been no matter, had not genius set its seal on the work, and so made it doubtful whether history has any Hypatia left. We must not fail to utter constant protest against such unfairness ; and to assert again and again, that not a single weakness or folly attributed to Hypatia by the novelist — neither the worship of Venus Anadyomene nor the prospective marriage with the Roman governor, neither the super- stitious fears, the ominous self-conceit, nor the half * I have sustained this assertion in two articles on Hypatia, published in "Historical Sketches," 1855. HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 63 conscious personal ambition — is in the least sus- tained by the facts of history. She was pure and stainless : let us see to it that such memories are rescued. And there is still another name, deeply wronged by the prejudice and party spirit of the past, which it is quite possible to redeem : I mean that of Aspasia. For many centuries, the very sound of it suggested an image of all womanly grace and genius, devoid of womanly virtue; the insight of a seer, the elo- quence of an orator, but the voluptuousness of a courtesan. Very lately, the manly justice of Thirl- wall and Grote, and the exquisite taste and imagina- tion of Walter Savage Landor, have striven to repair the wrong. Her reputation fell a victim to the gross puns of Aristophanes, himself the hired mouth-piece of a political party that hated her, and whose misrep- resentations were so contemptible in the eyes of Peri- cles, that he would not interfere to prevent them. Would you have the history of that immortal mar- riage written truly ? Imagine the Greek ruler married, for some years, to a woman of the noblest Athenian blood, already the mother of two children, but one who, if irre- proachable in conduct, was utterly incapable of tak- ing in the scope of his plans, or sharing his lofty, adventurous thought. After years of weariness passed in her society, with no rest for his heart and no inspi- ration for his genius, there came to Athens a woman and a foreigner, in whom he found his peer, — a 64 THE COLLEGE. woman who gathered round her in a moment all that there was of free and noble in that world of poetry, statesmanship, and art. She was from the islands of the Archipelago, and, like the, women of her country, walked the streets with her face unveiled. Hardly had she come, before Socrates and Plato, and Anaxagoras the pure old man, became her frequent guests, and honored her with the name of friend. In such a society, Pericles saw that his own soul would grow; so sustained, he should be more for Athens and himself. He was no Christian to deny himself for the sake of that unhappy wife and children, — a wife whose discontent had already infected the state. The gods he knew — Zeus and Eros — smiled on the step he took. What if the laws of Athens forbade a legal marriage with a foreigner ? Pericles was Athens ; and what he respected, all men must honor. Aspasia had, so far as we know, a free maiden heart ; and Pericles shows us in what light he regarded her, by divorcing his wife to consolidate their union, and subsequently forcing the courts to legitimate her child. Had he omitted these proofs of his own sin- cerity and her honor, not a voice would have been raised against either. What need to take these steps, if she were the woman Aristophanes would have us see? This divorce created or strengthened the political opposition to Pericles. This opposition was headed by his two sons and their forsaken mother, joined by the pure Athenian blood to which theirs was akin, HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 65 and gained all its strength and popularity from the wit and falsehood of Aristophanes and the players. Follow the story as it goes, and see Aspasia, at last, summoned before the Areopagus. What are the charges against her ? The very same that were pre- ferred against her friends, Socrates and Anaxagoras. " She walks the streets unveiled, she sits at the table with men, she does not believe in the Greek gods, she talks about one sole Creator, she has original ideas about the motions of the sun and moon ; therefore her society corrupts youth." Not a word about vice of any sort. Is it for abandoned women that the best men of any age are willing to entreat before a senate? The tears which Pericles shed then for Aspasia glitter like gems on the historic page. When the plague came, his first thought was for her safety ; and, after his death, her name shares the retirement of her widowed life. There was a rumor that she afterward married a rich grazier, whom she raised to eminence in the state. Not unlikely that such a rumor might grow in the minds of those who had not forgotten the great men she made, when they saw the success of Lysicles ; but other authors assert that his wife was the Aspasia who was also known as a midwife in Athens. It is a noble picture, it seems to me ; and when we consider the prejudice of a Christian age and country, the mob that a Bloomer skirt will attract in our own cities, we need not wonder that slander followed an unveiled face in Athens. 5 66 THE COLLEGE. What do we know of the women of the age of Augustus ? — of the galaxy that spanned the sky of Louis XIV.? Do you remember, as you read of those crowds of worthless women, what sort of public opinion edu- cated them, — what sort of public opinion such histo- ries tend to form ? Do you ever ask afiy questions concerning the men of the same eras, — how they employed their time, and what part they took in those games of wanton folly? It is time that some one should : and I cannot help directing your attention to the significant fact, that while the word " mistress," applied to a woman, serves at once to mark her out for reprobation, there is no corresponding term, which, applied to man, produces the same effect; and this because the interests of the state are still paramount to the interests of the soul itself. In speaking of the court of Charles II., Dr. William Alexander says, in 1799 : " Its tone ruined all women : they were either adored as angels, or degraded to brute beasts. The satirists, who immediately arose, despised what they had themselves created, and gave the character to every line that has since been written concerning women," down to the verses of Churchill, and that often-quoted, well-remembered line of Pope, with which we need not soil our lips. We may quote here a criticism upon the " Cinq- Mars " of Alfred de Vigny, taken from Lady Morgan's "France." You will find it especially interesting, because it bears on what has been suggested of the HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 67 influence of history, and may be compared with a portion of one of Margaret Fuller's letters, in which she criticises the same work, and makes, in her own way, parallel reflections. " I dipped also," says Lady Morgan, " into the ' Cinq-;Mars ' of Alfred de Vigny, a charming produc- tion. It gives the best course of practical politics, in its exposition of the miseries and vices incidental to the institutions of the middle ages. Behold Riche- lieu and Louis XIII. in the plenitude of their bad passions and unquestioned power, when — ' Torture interrogates and Pain replies.' Behold, too, their victims, — Urbain, Grandier, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, and the long, heart-rending' list of worth, genius, and innocence immolated. With such pictures in the hands of the youth of France, it is impossible they should retrograde. How different from the works of Louis XV.'s days, when the Mari- vaux, Crebillons, and Le Clos wrote for the especial corruption of that society from whose profligacy they borrowed their characters, incidents, and morals! Men would not now dare to name, in the presence of virtuous women, works which were once in the hands of every female of rank in France, — works which, like the novels of Richardson, had the seduction of innocence for their story, and witty libertinism and triumphant villany for their principal features. " With such a literature, it was almost a miracle that one virtuous woman or one honest man was left 68 THE COLLEGE. in the country to create that revolution which was to purify its pestiferous atmosphere. Admirable for its genius, this work is still more so for its honesty." In the praise given to this new literature is implied the censure passed upon the old. Of direct educa- tional literature, we may say, that all writers, from Rousseau to Gregory, Fordyce, and the very latest in our own country, have exercised an enervating influence over public opinion, and helped to form the popular estimate of female ability. Rousseau's influence is still powerful. Let me quote from his " Emilius : " " Researches into abstract and specula- tive truths, the principles and axioms of science, — in short, every thing which tends to generalize ideas, — is out of the province of woman. All her ideas should be directed to the study of men. As to works of genius, they are beyond her capacity. She has not precision enough to succeed in accurate science ; and physical knowledge belongs to those who are most active and most inquisitive." Alas for Mary Somerville, Janet Taylor, and Maria Mitchell, as well as for the popular idea that women are a curious sex ! He goes on : " Woman should have the skill to incline us to do every thing which her sex will not enable her to do of herself. She should learn to penetrate the real sentiments of men, and should have the art to communicate those which are most agreeable to them, without seeming to intend it." This sounds somewhat barefaced; but it is the HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 69 model of all the advice which society is still giving. It is refreshing to catch the first gleam of something better from the author of " Sandford and Merton." " If women," says Mr. Day, " are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious in- dolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy. Instead of hardening their minds by the severer prin- ciples of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts which terminate in vanity or sensuality. They are taught nothing but idle postures and fool- ish accomplishments." Dr. Gregory recommends dis- simulation. Dr. Fordyce advises women to increase their power by reserve and coldness ! When we hear of the educational restraints still exercised, of the in- nocent amusements forbidden, the compositions which may be written, but not read, lest the young girl might some time become the lecturer, — we cannot but feel that the step is not so very long from that time and country to this, and wonder at the folly which still refuses to trust the laws of God to a natural development. It is mortifying, too, to listen to the silly rhapsodies of Madame de Stael. " Though Rousseau has endeavored," she says, " to prevent women from interfering in public affairs, and acting a brilliant part in political life, yet, in speaking of them, how much has he done it to their satisfaction! If he wished to deprive them of some rights foreign to their sex, how has he for ever asserted for them all those to which it has a claim ! What signifies 70 THE COLLEGE. it," she continues, "that his reason disputes with them for empire, while his heart is still devotedly theirs ? " What signifies it? It signifies a great deal. It signifies all the difference between life in a solitary seraglio, and life with God's world for an inheritance ; all the difference between being the worn-out toy of one sensualist, and the inspiration of an unborn age ; all the difference between the butterfly and the seraph, between the imprisoned nun and Longfellow's sweet St. Philomel. When we read these words, we thank Margaret Fuller for the very criticism which once moved a girlish ire. " De Stael's name," she wrote, " was not clear of offence ; she could not forget the woman in the thought. Sentimental tears often dimmed her eagle glance." What a grateful con- trast to all such sentimentalism do we find in Mar- garet's own sketch of the early life of Miranda! " This child was early led to feel herself a child of the spirit. She took her place easily in the world of mind. A dignified sense of self-dependence was given as all her portion, and she found it a sure anchor. Her relations with others were fixed with equal security. With both men and women they were noble ; affectionate without passion, intellectual with- out coldness. The world was free to her, and she lived freely in it. Outward adversity came, and inward conflict ; but that self-respect had early been awakened, which must always lead at last to an out- ward security and an inward peace." Here is the HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 71 great difficulty in the education of woman, to lead her to a point from which she shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help. Old prejudices extin- guish her as an individual, oblige her to renounce the inspiration in herself, and yield to all the weaknesses and wickednesses of man. Look at Chaucer's beau- ideal of a wife in the tale of Griselda, dwindled now into the patient Grissel of modern story. In her a woman is represented as perfect, because she ardently and constantly loved a monster who gained her by guile, and brutally abused her. Put the matter into plain English, and see if you would respect such a woman now. No : and therefore is it somewhat sad, that, in Tennyson's new Idyll, he must recreate this ideal in the Enid of Geraint; and that, out of four pictures of womanly love, only one seems human and natural, and that, the guilty love of Guinevere. The recently awakened interest in the position of woman is flooding the country with books relating to her and her sphere. They have, their very titles have, an im- mense educational influence. Let me direct your attention to one published in Boston by a leading house last winter, and entitled " Remarkable Women of Different Ages and Nations." Let us read the names of the thirteen women with whose lives it seeks to entertain the public: — Beatrice Cenci, the parricide. Charlotte Corday, the assassin. Joanna Southcote, the English prophetess. Jemima Wilkinson, the American prophetess. 72 THE COLLEGE. Madame Ursinus, the poisoner. Madame Gottfried, the poisoner. Mademoiselle Clairon, the actress. Harriet Mellon, the actress. Madame Lenormand, the fortune-teller. Angelica Kauffman, the artist. Mary Baker, the impostor. Pope Joan, the pontiff. Joan of Arc, the warrior. Look at the list ! Assassins, parricides, and poison- ers, fortune-tellers, and actresses ! Let us hope they will always remain remarkable I In this list we have the name of one woman who never lived, and of four at least who in this country would owe all their celeb- rity to the police court ; and this while history pants to be delivered of noble lives not known at all, like the women of the House of Montefeltro, or little known, like the pure and heroic wife of Conde', Clem- ence de Maille'. And by what black art, let us ask, are such names as Beatrice, and Charlotte Corday, sweet Joan of Arc, and dear Angelica Kauffman, a noble woman, whose happiness was wrecked upon a fiendish jest, juggled into this-list? As well might you put Brutus who killed great Cassar, and Lucretia of spotless fame, and Andrea del Sarto who loved a faithless wife, into the same category. Such associ- ation, however false, helps to educate the popular mind. Of the power of adages, and that barbaric experi- ence and civilization of which they are generally the exponent, we might write volumes; but the subject HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 73 must be dismissed in this connection without a word. We must pass on to consider the force of social in- stincts and prejudices which underlie this general literature, and are as much stronger than it as the character of a man is stronger than his intellectual quality. A lecturer once said, " that the first prejudice which women have to encounter is one which exists before they are born, which leads fathers instinctively to look forward to the birth of sons, and to leave little room in their happy or ambitious schemes for the coming of a daughter." Not long since, a highly educated Englishman told me that this remark smote him to the heart. •" I never expected to have any thing but a son,'' he declared ; " and, when my little Minnie was born, I had made no preparation for her. I had neither a thought nor a scheme at her service." Fanny Wright, in some essays published thirty years ago, says, " There are some parents who take one step in duty, and halt at the second. Our sons," they say, " will have to exercise political rights, and fill public offices. We must help them to whatever knowledge there is going, and make them as sharp- witted as their neighbors. As for our daughters, they can never be any thing; in fact, they are nothing. We give them to their mothers, who will take them to church and dancing-school, and, with the aid of fine clothes, fit them out for the market. " But," she goes on to say, " let possibilities be what they will, no man has a rigid to calculate on them for his sons. He has only to consider them as human 74 THE COLLEGE. beings, and insure them a full development of all the faculties which belong to them as such. So, as re- spects his daughters, he has nothing to do with the injustice of law, nor the absurdities of society. His duty is plain, — to train them up as human beings, to seek for them, and with them, all just knowledge. Who among men contend best with the difficulties of life and society, — the strong-minded or the weak, the wise or the foolish ? Who best control and mould opposing circumstances, — the educated or the igno- rant ? What is true of them is true of women also." In the customs of nations, women find the most discouraging educational influences. While with us these customs all set one way, they are easily broken through by the untutored races, who still rely on the force of their primal instincts. When Captain Wallis went to see the Queen of Otaheite, a marsh which crossed the way proved a formidable obstacle to the puny Anglo-Saxon. No sooner did the queen per- ceive it, than, taking him up as if he were a meal-bag, she threw him over her shoulder, and strode along. Nobody smiled ; even Captain Wallis does not appear to have felt mortified. These people were accustomed to the physical strength of their queen. It would be well if civilized nations could imitate them, far enough at least to remember, that wherever strength, whether mental or physical, is found, there it certainly belongs. In Peru and the Formosa Isles, it is the women who choose their husbands, and not the men who HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 75 choose their wives; and, from the moment of mar- riage, the man takes up his abode in his wife's family. Lord of creation in every other respect, he still owes to her whatever social standing and privileges he may possess. Such an exception is valueless, save that it shows us that sex does not absolutely, of itself, deter- mine such customs. The African kings are permitted to have many wives ; but they respect the chastity of women, and require it. Dr. Livingstone tells us of an instance in which the royal succession finally lapsed upon a wo- man. Her counsellors forbade her to marry a single husband, telling her that it would create jealousies and divisions in the tribe. She must follow the royal custom. But pure womanly nature spoke louder than the counsellors. The poor queen renounced marriage altogether, and associated a half-brother in the govern- ment, upon whose children she settled the succession. Let this beautiful fact shame those coward souls who fear to trust to the instinctive purity of the sex. He goes on to state, in a recent letter, that he has found nothing more remarkable, among the highly intelligent tribes of the Upper Sambesi, than the re- spect universally accorded to women. " Many of the tribes are governed by a female chief. If you demand any thing of a man," remarks the in- trepid explorer, " he replies, ' I will talk with my wife about it.' If the woman consents, your demand is granted. If she refuse, you will receive a negative reply. Women vote in all the public assemblies. 76 THE COLLEGE. Among the Bushwanas and Kaffirs, the men swear by their fathers ; but among the veritable Africans, occu- pying the centre of the continent, they always swear by their mother. If a young man falls in love with a maiden of another village, he leaves his own, and takes up his dwelling in hers. He is obliged to provide in part for the maintenance of his mother-in-law, and to assume a respectful attitude, a sort of semi-kneeling, in her presence. I was so much astonished at all these marks of respect for women, that I inquired of the Portuguese if such had always been the habit of the country. They assured me that such had al- ways been the case." If women were unwise managers of money, — a statement frequently made, but which we may safely deny, — it would be owing to the custom which has, through long ages, put the purse in the hands of " their master;" a custom so old, that to "husband" one's resources is a phrase which expresses man's pecuniary responsibility, and is always equivalent to locking one's money up. " It will be time enough," says Mrs. Kirkland, " to expect from woman a just economy when she is permitted to distribute a portion of the family resources. Witness those proud subscription- lists where one reads, ' Mr. B., twenty dollars ; ' and, just below, ' Mrs. B., ten dollars,' — which ten dollars Mrs. B. never saw, and would ask for in vain to dis- tribute for her own pleasure." And this custom has such educational force, that very liberal men refuse the smallest pecuniary inde- HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 77 pendence to their wives to their very dying day. " The Turk does not lock up his wife with more care than the Christian his strong box. To that lock there is ever but one key, and that the master carries in his pocket. The case is not altered when the wife is about to close her weary eyes in death. She may have earned or inherited or saved the greater part of their common property, but without his consent she cannot bequeath a dollar." This passage reminds us of a criticism on the marriage service attributed to Sir John Bowring. This eccentric man considers it wicked from beginning to end. " Look at it," he says : " ' with this ring I thee wed,' — that's sorcery ; ' with my body I thee worship,' — that's idolatry ; ' and with all my worldly goods I thee endow,' — that's a lie ! " It is the long customs of mankind which stand in the way of educating women to trades and profes- sions. These matters are mainly in woman's own hands. One is glad to see in the English Parliament certain statements made in this connection, and others also in a London pamphlet on the nature of muni- cipal government. In reply to the common argument that women ought not to enter certain vocations, because they would ultimately find themselves incom- petent, it is stated, that, in all delicate handicrafts, men do the same. Thus, of those who learn to make watches and watchmakers' tools, not one-fifth con- tinue in the trade ; and, in the decoration of that delicate ware called Bohemian glass, by far the greater 78 THE COLLEGE. portion of apprentices give it up on account of natural unfitness. It is the customs of society which sustain the pre- judice against literary -women. When Dr. Aikin published his " Miscellaneous Pieces," Fox met him in the street. " I particularly admire," said the orator, complimenting him, " your essay on Inconsistency." — " That," said Aikin, " is my sister's." — "Ah! well, I like that on Monastic Institutions." — " That is also hers," replied the honest man ; and, in a tumult of confusion, Fox bowed himself away. Had public feeling been right, how gracefully he might have con- gratulated the brother on his sister's ability, how gladly might that brother have seen her excel himself! This sister was that Mrs. Barbauld who afterward did such womanly service, that we feel tempted to forgive the early fit of sentimentality which found vent in that rhymed nonsense, concluding, — " Your best, your sweetest empire is to please." The manners of men have their educational influ- ence. The quiet turning-aside from women when matters of business, politics, or science are discussed; the common saying, " What have women to do with that? let them mind their knitting, or their house affairs ; " the short answer when an interested ques- tion is asked, " You wouldn't understand it, if I told you," — all these depress and enervate, and, even if not spoken, the spirit of them animates all social life. " Men are suspicious," wrote Dr. Alexander in 1790, HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 79 " that a rational education would open the eyes of women, and prompt them to assert the rights of which they have always been deprived." But education could not be withheld nor eyes closed for ever ; there- fore the time has come to claim these rights. The Sorbonne is already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all literature and scientific opportuni- ties, if all societies devoted to natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries the world over, were thrown open to woman ? In inferior circles, where no leading minds preside, it would be as it is now : there would be much idle prating, much foolish delay, much inconsequent dis- cussion ; but woman is quick to recognize genius, to listen when wisdom speaks. She chatters, to be sure, in the presence of fools ; but, when earnest men come to know the value of her enthusiasm, they will never be willing to lose it. When the great door of the scholarly and scientific retreat is once thrown open, you will be surprised to see the crowd ready to enter ; and, when the sexes kindle into intellectual life to- gether, many a woman's coals will be modestly laid upon an honored altar, and the flames will rise all the higher because they have been so fed. How can we estimate sufficiently the corrupting in- fluence of the newspapers of the land ? We may hope your prejudices will defend woman 80 THE COLLEGE. here, and you will acknowledge that the minds cannot be kept pure before whom their details are set. Let us go farther, and say that they cannot be kept pure, coming in contact as they do with minds among men that gloat over such records. God is just, and his compensations are terrible. If you do not spare the purity of the lowest in the land, you cannot save that of your wife and daughter. If you will not pro- tect the vulgar against themselves, you cannot protect the refined against the vulgar. He is not a pure man, who, among his fellows, thinks a thought or utters a word he would blush to have his sister hear. She is not a pure woman, who, in the seclusion of her chamber, or gossip with her household, omits one of the proprieties which delicacy requires. She has no title to our respect, who is not secure in her own. How can we reach such a standard as this, if we invite pollution daily across our threshold, and call it harmless because it dresses in printer's ink? It is not enough that much of the obscenity is pure inven- tion. The profit of the scandal overbalances the cost of the libel. The simplest item is turned to gross account. Even the intimation that the postmaster has placed a woman at the ladies' window in New York has to be coupled with the insinuation that she would have " done better at the gentlemen's." What business have you or I with details that concern only judge and jury ? "What good does it do society to quote high legal authority upon " flirtation," unless, indeed, we learn thereby to estimate aright the cor- HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE. 81 rupting power of the first wrong step? Police reports, vulgar anecdotes, shocking accidents, and trivial gossip a child might be ashamed to repeat, make up the mass of our daily sheets. Happy is the editor who offers three columns of common sense daily to his readers. When, alas ! shall we have a public willing to pay for common sense and pure reading alone ? A woman ought to turn like a flash of light from a foul page, a coarse and vulgar word. No wit should ever tempt her to read the one, or repeat the other ; and what I say of woman, I mean of man. I have not two separate moral standards for the sexes. Margaret Fuller speaks somewhere of certain habits of impure speech which she had heard attributed to ladies in a New- York hotel. What foundation that story had, we may never find ; but all of us know some women before whom we keep the coldest re- serve, and with whom we would never touch many a subject we should be willing to discuss with any pure- minded man. Ladies ! Not all the gold of Pactolus, not all the beauty of Anadyomene, not all the wisdom of Minerva, could make such women ladles ! We cannot redeem the poor denizens of Five Points till we have redeemed those of the Fifth Avenue. Our own children must prattle oaths, if we will not hush the drunken brawler in the streets. Note. — When this lecture was first delivered, in 1858, it excited more discussion than any "revolutionary notions" of which I have ever been sus- pected. Since then, the same ideas, as applied to other questions, have been expressed in various quarters. I think a thorough classical education neces- sary to a college bred man. As far as I have any opinions to express, 82 THE COLLEGE. they coincide with those recently uttered by John Stuart Mill at St. An- drew's. I wish to sustain the remarks of the text by the following quotations : — " Many things with the Greeks and Romans most venerable have not merely lost their sanctity in our eyes, but present contemptible and even ludi- crous ideas to us. Hence, any allusion to them, or any expression of the feel- ings connected with them, or even a reference to the habits of thinking which those feelings have produced, must have an operation most unpropitious." — Loed Bkougiiam. "The fictions constituting the epic poetry of Homer, Virgil, and their imitators, so far from being consonant with the taste and sense of modern readers, are, on the contrary, often annoying, from the absence of all moral or poetical justice." — "The gods who preside in this scenic exhibition are tainted with every vice which has since degraded their supposed subordinates of the human race. Cruelty, revenge, deceit, hatred, unrelenting rancor, and unbridled lust, are the qualities which call for approval in a generation pro- fessing to feel and practise virtues of an opposite nature. An exterminating war is undertaken for the sake of a vacillating adulteress, and its heroes quarrel implacably about the possession of their female slaves. Ulysses, on his return home, winds up the ' Odyssey ' by a wholesale slaughter of his disor- ganized subjects, hangs up a dozen censurable females in a row, and puts Melanthius to a lingering death by gradual mutilation." — "In their social relations, the Greeks were licentious and exquisitely depraved. In their domestic habits, they were primitive, destitute, and uncleanly." — Dk. Jacob Bigelow. These words represent the re-action of Christian morality against the abuses of classical study, to which I allude in my text. But let the classics be taught properly, and morality will have no complaint to make. We can- not understand the history of the world, without an intelligent investigation of its beginnings ; but we should be carefully protected against assuming, as reasonable and proper, either the habits and opinions or the sarcasms of an extinct experience. LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 83 III. THE MEANING OF THE LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. " Speak ! or I go no further. I need a goal, an aim. I cannot toil, Because the steps are here; in their ascent, Tell me The End, or I sit still and weep." Naturliche Tochter. Al7"E have considered the controlling influence ex- ' T ercised by consolidated public opinion con- cerning women. We have asked from what sources this opinion was derived. We have now to consider some individual lives which have set it at defiance, and in that way done something towards' its recon- struction. Mary Wollstonecraft is chiefly known in this coun- try as the wife of Godwin, and the author of a " Vin- dication of the Rights of Woman." This book is often accused of the most irreligious and libertine tendencies ; and, for many years, her name stood in my own mind as the representative of an unfortunate woman of genius, unbalanced in character, and only to be remembered by the obstacles she had laid in the path of her sex. I turned instinctively from the idea I had somehow conceived of her; nor was it till a singular literary fact, the exponent of her individual power, arrested my attention, that I was tempted to take up the " Rights of Woman." 84 THE COLLEGE. In making a rapid survey of English literature, to ascertain how many women had made a decisive mark upon it, and how many works had been pub- lished especially bearing upon woman's advancement, I at first experienced a bitter disappointment. Upon approaching the year 1800, however, I found a stream of literature rushing in, for which I could not ac- count. It united many rivulets of thought and life. Some volumes were heavy and oppressive in a double sense ; some were light as pamphlets ; some consisted of translations from other languages ; some were bi- ographies ; many were attempts at reconstruction on a rotten foundation; others, an attempt at the re- building of society from its very base. But these works all bore the same stamp, an impress powerful, but healthy. It seemed as if one thought had ani- mated all these workers who had taken society by surprise; for the prejudice and bigotry they must have aroused had left no corresponding trace. The prefaces generally began, " On account of the interest lately excited," " The public mind seeming now to be interested;" and I read very few volumes before I discovered that the power which had aroused and in- terested was no other than Mary Wollstonecraft's " Rights of Woman." These books ranged onward from 1790, and the force of the influence was not spent for twenty years. Among them, I recall, at this moment, Dr. Alexander's " History of Women " in two quarto volumes ; Matilda Bstham's " Biographical Dictionary," an honest, if not LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 85 a valuable, attempt to supply a want still felt in English literature; and Cotton's translation of the mathematical works of Maria Agnesi. These were born of a common mother. I read the " Vindica- tion," therefore, with persistent care ; looking with fruitless question for the second and third volumes that were promised. Could this be the book which had been so abused for half a century? The Amer- ican edition had been published before garbling became the fashion; but I took pains to collate it carefully with the English. It was all in vain. I found only a simple, determined, eloquent plea for a proper education for women, urged on social, moral, and religious grounds; an earnest protest against Rousseau and Dr. Gregory; and a demand that men should be subject to the same moral laws as women. Very revolutionary this! Reprint it, under modern sponsorship, and you would find it perhaps too heavy to read. It would only repeat what you all know, and you would miss the fanatical spice of our later speech. Yet this book was so much needed when it appeared, that it acted on the under-current of English thought and life like a subsoil plough, and brought all manner of abominations to the surface. The preface alone contains any allusion to woman's political rights. It is dedicated to Talleyrand, who, in publishing a pamphlet on national education, had admitted the inconsistency of debarring women from their exercise. From this preface, the world took fright, and we may judge in what manner she intended 86 THE COLLEGE. to follow up her plea for education. Let me quote a few passages. " I earnestly wish," she says, " to point out in what true dignity and human happi- ness consist. I wish to persuade women to acquire strength both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, ' susceptibility of heart,' ' delicacy of sentiment,' and ' refinement of taste,' are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt." — "An air of fashion is but a badge of slavery." — " It follows," she says farther on, " that women should either be shut up, like Eastern princesses, or educated in such a manner as to think and act for themselves." — " Sup- pose a woman trained to obedience, married to a sensible man, who directs her judgment, without per- mitting her to feel the servility of her position. She cannot ensure the life of her protector. He may die, and leave her at the head of a large family." — " It is not empire, but equality, woman should contend for. When women are sufficiently enlightened to discover their real interests, they will be very ready to resign all those prerogatives of love which are not mutual for the calm satisfactions of friendship and the tender confidence of habitual esteem. Before marriage, they will not assume any insolent airs, nor afterwards abjectly submit; but, endeavoring to act like reasonable creatures in both relations, they will not be tumbled from a throne to a stool." LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 87 This is the character of the whole book. It con- tains nothing more subversive of morality than these words. You cannot do better than read it, and receive, as I did, a lasting lesson on the folly of prejudice. As a work of art, it is irregular in method, and impul- sive in execution ; facts not to be wondered at, since it was written and printed in the brief space of six weeks. Dr. Channing once wrote of her : " I have lately read Mary Wollstonecraft's posthumous works. Her letters towards the close of the first volume are the best I ever read. They are superior to Sterne's. I consider her the greatest woman of the age. Her ' Rights of Woman ' is a masculine performance, and ought to be studied by her sex; the sentiments are noble and generous." What, then, was the character of the woman ? Was it as strong and generous as the sentiments she advo- cated? Her life broke down some social barriers, and, though noble and heroic when viewed from within, looks hampered and unsatisfactory from the common stand-point. Godwin has erected an ex- quisite monument to her memory, in a sketch writ- ten soon after her decease. Mary Wollstonecraft was born near London in the year 1759. She came into an unhappy and uncongenial home. Her father was a passionate tyrant; her mother, compelled to submit to his caprice, became like every other slave, a tyrant where she had the power, and ruled her children with a rod of iron. By defending her mother from her husband's violence, Mary early ex- 88 THE COLLEGE. torted some degree of affection from the one, and respect from the other. Her father had some prop- erty, which he seems to have squandered by frequent changes of abode ; and a day school at Beverley, in Yorkshire, gave her her principal advantages of edu- cation. An eccentric clergyman at Hoxton, named Clare, added some farther instruction. Under his roof, she formed an intimacy with Frances Blood, destined to influence her whole life. This girl was remarkably accomplished, and, at the age of eighteen, supported her father and mother and their family of younger children. She was delicately neat and proper in all she did ; and her influence was of the greatest benefit to Mary, who had often desired to assist her family, but was deterred by the helpless condition of her mother. She now went as com- panion to a family at Bath, but soon relinquished the position, on account of her mother's serious illness. Mrs. Wollstonecraft was exacting and troublesome. Mary nursed her with devoted care, but, after her death, bade a final farewell to her father's roof. His affairs had become wretchedly involved; and, with Fanny Blood and her two sisters, she proceeded to open a day school. At first, she had looked upon Fanny as her superior, but her own force of character soon found its rightful position. The health of her friend broke down under her unnatural burden, and Mary's devotion to her for years was beautiful to see. Her marriage and removal to Lis- bon, in a vain search for health, soon put this devo- tion to the test. LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 89 At this point, Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation was unsullied. She was an admirable manager, an efficient and successful teacher ; yet, when Fannie be- came seriously ill, she did not hesitate to risk her only means of support, the prosperity of her school, to go to her. Her friend, Dr. Price, the Unitarian minister, and Mrs. Burgh, were annoyed at what they consid- ered a quixotic devotion ; but they supplied her with money, and she went. A few days closed in death an intimacy of more than ten years, which had been, until this time, Mary's tenderest interest in life. On her way home, her moral energy saved the lives of a French crew in a sailing vessel which she encoun- tered, just about to founder. Her school had suffered by her absence ; and the pressing necessities of Fan- ny's family, in which she still took an interest, in- duced her to have recourse to literature. The first ten pounds received from her " Thoughts on the Edu- cation of Daughters " went to their relief. Nothing can be sadder than to see a young girl placed as Mary Wollstonecraft now was, — compelled to fulfil the duties of a father and mother to younger brothers and sisters. The position is unnatural. Gratitude might be expected, but envy is more often felt. The personal advantages sought for their sakes, and not to be transferred except as a pecuniary profit, she is supposed to seek for her own. Affection partly yields, and enthusiasm does not replace it; while she is urged by necessities which make it difficult to bear the errors and intractabilities of those she is providing 90 THE COLLEGE. for. Still loving, and desiring to provide for her sis- ters, Mary thought it better to live apart from them, and accepted a temporary position as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family. When they left Eng- land, she went to Bristol, and published a novel, which, founded on her ten years of friendly devo- tion, took the highest rank as a work of senti- ment. The next three years were spent in her own house, in London, in the active service of the pub- lisher, Johnson. She translated from French, Ger- man, and Italian, wrote several books for children, and took a large share in the conduct of the " Ana- lytical Review." Her translation of Salzman's " Elements of Mo- rality " led to an interesting correspondence with its author, who repaid the service, subsequently, by translating into German her " Rights of Woman." These occupations, if they did little towards the dis- cipline of her powers, served to rouse her from the dejection into which the death of her friend had plunged her. Her earnings were now devoted to her own family. One sister she kept at Paris for two years to qualify her as a governess; another she placed as parlor-boarder at a London school. Her brother James she sent to Woolwich ; afterward pro- curing for him a position in the navy, where he soor rose to be a lieutenant. Her favorite, Charles, she placed with a farmer for instruction ; and then fitted him out for America, where he grew wealthy on the basis she provided. This brother must have left a LIVES THAT HATE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 91 large family in the State of New York. Her brothers and sisters thus established, she attempted to rescue a support for her father from his broken and confused fortunes. This proving impossible, he was supported by her own labor, until his death. The very great demands made upon her by such natural obligations did not prevent her from assuming others. She adopted for her own the child of a dead friend, the niece of John Hunter. Her brilliancy, her personal beauty, her unselfish devotion, could not fail to win for her many loving friends ; and among them the French Revolution found her. The work which first gave her her proper literary rank was her answer to Burke's Reflections upon that movement. She wrote rapidly : her pamphlet was the first of the many that appeared, and obtained extraordinary success. The public applause warmed her, and her next production was her celebrated " Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The startling energy with which she ex- ploded the system of gallantry, a miserable relic of the Stuart courts, roused the popular indignation. It was hard to reconcile the vigor of her rebuke to the tender sentiment which trembled through the book, and also to the impression produced by Mary her- self, lovely in person, and, in the most engaging sense, feminine in her manners. Her intimacy with the his- torical painter, Fuseli, followed. He was a man of powerful genius and strong prejudices. His influ- ence upon Mary, if it was sometimes refreshing, could not always have been beneficial. The reader 92 THE COLLEGE. of Haydon's Autobiography will remember this man. A wider knowledge of the world would have pro- tected her from his influence: as it was, she pur- sued the intimacy with unsuspecting delight; for Fuseli was a contented husband, and his wife was her friend. She was now in her thirty-second year ; she had arrived at a period when domestic happi- ness of some sort becomes essentia] to the strongest woman. The fullest-fruited laurel then withers be- fore her eyes, if it has not taken root at her own hearth. At the close of the year 1792, Mary took refuge in Paris from the chagrin and restlessness which began to oppress her. Her years of toil had left her sad and lonely : she needed to rest for a little while in human affection. She could not even write to her own satisfaction; for her morbid fatigue led her to reproduce Fuseli's cynicism, and she dared not trust herself. She entered the best circles of Parisian society, and became intimate with the leaders of the Revolution. In four months after her arrival oc- curred the most untoward event of her life, — her marriage to a worthless American named Gilbert Imlay ; a name rescued from oblivion only by his temporary attachment to her. I say her marriage, for Imlay offered himself in marriage, and was accepted as a husband ; but, taking advantage of a custom not unusual at Paris in those disorderly times, Mary re- fused to consummate the legal forms. Mr. Imlay had no property. Mary had a large family to support; and she neither wished to become answerable for LIVES THAT HATE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 93 his debts, nor to make him responsible for hers. She took the name of Imlay ; and, expecting to follow her brother to America, she obtained from our ambassa- dor at Paris a certificate of American citizenship, to serve as a temporary protection. In order that you may comprehend the precise significance which this step had in that place and at that time, let me remind you, that Helen Maria Williams, her personal friend, and the ward of Dr. Rees of cyclopedic memory, was married in the same way to a Mr. Edwards, then in Paris. She was a well-known writer of that period ; and we are still indebted to her for some of the best hymns sung in our churches, — among them, that well-known hymn, beginning, " While thee I seek, protecting Power." But her husband was worthy of the trust she had reposed in him, and she never turned a ready pen against the follies of society : so her character has never stood in the public stocks. It will be impossible to consider Mary's attach- ment to Imlay in any degree rational, if we look only at her character, and keep out of sight her peculiar personal history. The dawdling inefficiency and brutal temper of her father had disgusted her alike with " men of spirit " and " men of straw." In her husband, she saw, as she thought, a certain democratic manliness ; and his dar- ing speculations seemed to be inspired by courage and genius. The affections which had been roused by her admiring intercourse with Fuseli kindled gladly on this new shrine, where no social duty, nor 94 THE COLLEGE. stern sense of personal honor, contended against her warming fancy. For the first time in her life, she found herself happy; and happiness gave her back the beauty of early youth. She was playful, gentle, sympathetic. Her eyes had new brightness, her cheeks new color, and the bewitching tenderness of her smile fascinated the very women who approached her. She had been married eighteen months, her love braving all the trials that must have come, when Imlay left her for London. She had expected his quick return ; but delay followed delay, and Mary passed a year with a new-born child, learning, by slow and painful degrees, that she had trusted this man beyond his worth. At last, he sent for her to London, where his misconduct affected her mind to such an extent, that she twice attempted her own life, and was rescued the second time with difficulty. As soon as she recovered from the fever which had in- duced delirium, her native strength told her what she ought to do. Imlay had business in Norway, which required a confidential and judicious agent. She determined to take this upon herself; and hoped, by absence and success, to regain the affection she had lost. The man was, in no sense, worthy of her. On her return, she tried, for the sake of their child, to remain in the same house with him. It was not pos- sible; and, very soon, a final separation took place. It would have taken place long before, but that Imlay was a man who could not wholly escape from a fasci- nation he had once felt. After he became involved in LIVES THAT HATE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 95 low connections, he could never re-enter her presence, without resuming, for the time, the sympathetic deli- cacy befitting her lover. During all this time, Mary had occupied herself with literary work. She never spoke of Imlay, and would allow no one to blame him in her presence. Conscious of her own upright intentions, it must have been no small mortification to find her insight and generosity baffled. She felt that she was herself to blame for having placed an impul- sive man in a position to which he was wholly une- qual. She was everywhere received and treated as a married woman, and lost none of the respect and affection she had well deserved. In April, 1797, she was married to Godwin, the author of " St. Leon ;" and this marriage deprived her of two new friends, whom she held very dear. Godwin was so artless, that he imagined his wife's social position would be improved by an honorable marriage ; but it obliged Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons to admit that the nature of her marriage to Imlay allowed her to take her divorce into her own hands. Wonderful inconsistency of society, which, having interpreted truly her upright nature through years of desertion, now condemned her, — whether for her first wrong step, for assuming her own divorce, or for loving a man of undoubted probity, who could tell ? A short year of undisturbed happiness followed, when the birth of their only child — the late Mrs. Shelley — suddenly put an end to her life. A beautiful memorial survives her, in these words 96 THE COLLEGE. of her husband. " This light," he says, " was lent me for a very little while, and it is now extinguished for ever. The strength of Mary's mind lay in her intuition. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft. When it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my oscillation and scepticism were often fixed by her boldness." I am very well aware how much courage is required of any woman who shall seem to defend Mary Godwin from the popular conception of her. I know that the woman should herself be spotless who would attempt to rec- tify that conception, yet two circumstances seem to compel explanation. In the first place, there is no question, that if the views of woman which are now beginning to move society originated with her schol- arly, republican friend, Mrs. Catharine Macaulay, yet the fire and eloquence of Mary's own words were needed to give them currency. Society has been just so far as this, that it has identified her with the sub- ject of " Woman's Rights ; " and all of us who are carried forward by a momentum which she imparted, must desire to understand the nature of the impulse which controls us. In the second place, Godwin's short Life of her has been long out of print, and has now become very rare; and I have not been able to find a single en- cyclopaedia or biographical dictionary which gives the facts correctly. Turn to them, and you will find that Mary Wollstonecraft had a criminal but fruitless at- LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 97 tachment for Fuseli ; that she formed another, of the same hind, for an American, who deserted her. I brand these statements as malicious falsehoods, carelessly- repeated now that they have been long exploded: and, as I write these statements, the tears rush to my eyes ; for where are the descendants of the brothers and sisters whom she reared ? where are the kindred of Fannie Blood and John Hunter, whose lives her generous efforts gladdened? Nay, might not one man of the drowning crew she forced the captain of her ship to rescue, speak a noble word in her behalf? I have narrated her life with some detail, for you must understand the facts upon which you pass judg- ment; and these details are many of them gathered from private sources. To understand the strength of the prejudice against Mary Wollstonecraft, you should see that from all the autobiographies of the period her name is excluded ; as if the friends of those who had been intimate with her while living, would not permit the association of names after death. I have said, that, until her mar- riage to Godwin, she kept her place in English society ; and women of the most sensitive propriety, such as Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Inchbald, admitted her to their intimacy. How, then, did such a prejudice grow up ? It was probably forming in the popular mind while she was happy in the affection of her friends; and, the moment they found it conventionally needful to sacrifice her, the outbreak was unrestrained. In the first place, she was an ardent republican ; a 7 98 THE COLLEGE. thing no less antagonistic to English feeling in her day, than we have seen it prove in ours. In the second, she was a Unitarian; and Unitarians were radicals in politics as well as in religion. In the third place, being a republican, and a resident of Paris in its troubled times, she was supposed to share the disorder of its morals; an impression which her at- tempted suicides no doubt confirmed. We shall not share in this country in any prejudice which republicanism or Unitarianism excited. We are, I trust, ready to admit that an attempt at suicide could only come with delirium, for which she would be as free from responsibility as for a typhoid fever or an Asiatic cholera. What we have to do, then, is to understand her relation to the laws of marriage, and to see how far her second marriage can be justi- fied. When she met Imlay at Paris, I do not think she had ever considered the social bearing of these laws, except so far as her mother's experience had pained her. That experience made her willing to do what other women about her were doing, with no bad result that she could see, to keep herself free from pecuniary entanglement. In one way, this was pru- dent ; in an other way, it was extremely imprudent ; and the imprudence touched a more vital point than the prudence : but that it was never considered crimi- nal by wise and candid judges, that she was never compromised in any relation up to this, the intimacies we have recorded prove. Had she been a weak, im- moral woman, she would have continued to live with LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 99 Imlay for her child's sake, but availing herself of the shelter of a connection from which she recoiled. At this moment, she wrote to her husband, " Your reputation shall not suffer. I shall never have a con- fidant. I am content with the approbation of my own mind ; and, if there be a Searcher of hearts, mine will not be rejected." And again: "My child may have reason to blush for her mother's want of pru- dence; but she shall never despise me." These are not the words of a weak or irreligious woman. So far, then, all was well, except that society had no efficient outlawry for the man who had deserted her. She still occasionally met him, but bore the unexpect- ed trial, when it came, with dignity and sweetness. When Godwin sought her in marriage, he knew, of course, that no legal ties bound her. Mary saw no harm in using the liberty that remained to her. " Why could she not have remained single ? " said the world; but had the world been so just and kind to her, that we could expect her to resist the influence of a generous and courageous love ? Had she lived in this country, and been divorced by the laws of Indiana, society would have been silent ; but the real evil would have been the same. " Never did there exist a woman," said her hus- band, " who might with less fear expose her actions, and call upon the universe to judge them." I be- lieve this to be true so far as her own relations were concerned ; and I believe, that, by her second mar- riage, she meant to exercise a right of protest against 100 THE COLLEGE. existing laws, which two of the most gifted children of the nineteenth century have exercised again in our own time with emphasis. It requires a philosophic mind to see the relation of the individual to the state : heroic, indeed, is the spirit which, perceiving it, braves the common expectation by a defiant life. On the other hand, it is by no prejudice that we demand this account; of each person's private affairs. It is a demand born of an ill-defined, dimly entertained, but still a just idea of the relations of God, the family, and the state. I ought not to say so much, without adding that no one in this country can ade- quately judge of the pressure of the marriage laws as they still exist in England. What is resisted, is, in most instances, what no American woman would be expected to bear; but for England, as for this country, I rest in the confident hope that a right adjustment of woman's relation to society will change healthfully all existing legislation. Such le- gislation as that of Indiana does not seem to me an advance, although it may have been demanded by an advancing public sentiment. I have said this honestly, with a tender pity in my heart, to clear the memory of a much-abused woman. Does any one ask me if I would justify the position in which she stood? I answer, frankly, No. "We do not live to ourselves alone ; and if we are ever tempted to take a step against the moral convictions of the world, believing that we can do as we will with our own, one would think the possibility that children LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 101 may be born to inherit the obloquy we excite, with- out themselves deserving it, would be enough to deter any right-minded woman. No love or care, or abject self-sacrifice, can reconcile a child to the stain of ille- gitimacy. " What does the Lord thy God require of thee ? " — " To do justly, love mercy, and walk hum- bly." It is not walking humbly to set up our own conception of fitness against the accumulated expe- rience of mankind. Still farther : It is of very little importance what others may think of us, when we are acting conscientiously ; but what we think of others, our own mood of mind towards God and man, — that is of the very greatest. The influence of the " Vindication of the Rights of Woman " was greatly aided by the efforts of Mr. Day, and of Maria Edgeworth, whose literary career began about the time of its publication. Following closely upon these, and so nearly parallel in effort, and equal in varied ability, that we hardly know in what order to name them, are Lady Morgan, Harriet Martineau, and Mrs. Jameson. Sydney Morgan, sit- ting alone at the age of fourscore in her tiny house at Dublin, filled like a museum with the accumulation of her years of travel, projecting the publication of her last work, was lately, like Mrs. Somerville at Florence, a pensioner of Queen Victoria. But, from the hour of her first appearance as the author of the " Wild Irish Girl," she has exercised a generous ' womanly influence. Under the disguise of novels, books of travel, and the like, she has published an immense 102 THE COLLEGE. number of volumes, filled with information which may be a little too crowded for convenience, but always accurate, always original, and, for the most part, received from historic sources, in personal in- tercourse. Her warm hatred of tyranny made friends for her, wherever she went. When a young girl, she took up the cause of her own country with a vehe- mence which won the liberal party, and made her fashionable before she was approved. " The wild Irish girl " and her harp were essential to the success of every entertainment ; and invitations lay two or three deep for every evening. She entered society with beauty, wit, and prestige. She might have done what she would. She chose to remain faithful to un- popular opinions. After her marriage to Sir Charles Morgan, they went, for economical reasons, to the Continent, where they eventually spent many years. In France, Lafayette, S3gur, Denon, and L'Aguisseau were her intimate friends ; and in the salon of the Princess de Salm she was always a welcome guest. In Germany, Flanders, and Italy, not only the liberal youth, but the learned eld, crowded her apartments, gave her minute information, and became devoted cicerones. The friendship of cardinals and princes did not dim her natural democracy of view ; and her last words were as true to liberty as her first. Her works on France and Italy were proscribed in both countries ; yet " Young France " and " Young Italy " contrived to obtain and read them. She came into fashion in Paris whenever the Bourbons went out; LIVES THAT HAVE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 103 and, when she dined with Rothschild, his famous cook acknowledged her friendship for the people in autographs of spun sugar! "We shall meet at the breakfast of the Austrian ambassador," said a Parisian fop, as he made his bow. " Not we, 1 ' she laughed in answer : " it would be as much as his place is worth to ask me. " Wherever she went, and what- ever she did, her ears were always open to a woman's name ; and, with the most loyal interest, she gathered up every thing relating to their lives, their influ- ence, and their disabilities. What she was told as gossip, was retained, studied out, and digested, before, with the piquancy of a French woman and the warmth of an Irish, it was given to the world. The first two volumes of her " History of Woman " do not touch a period of universal interest ; but, had she been able to complete the work, it would have exhausted the subject. In the B^guine, she says : " Women meddle with politics as well as tent-stitch, and, like Madame de Maintenon, bring their work-bags to the Privy Council, and direct the affairs of Europe while they trace patterns for footstools. The influence of woman will ever be exercised directly or indirectly in all good or evil. It is a part of the scheme of nature. Give her, then, such light as she is capable of receiving. Educate her, whatever her station, for taking her part in society. Her ignorance has often made her interference fatal ; her knowl- edge, never." The cordial sympathy of her husband has made Lady Morgan's life beautiful. His legal 104 THE COLLEGE. knowledge and antiquarian taste added their own charm to whatever she undertook. How great and worthy is the literary position of Harriet Martineau, we all know. Its retro-action- ary influence in favor of the ability and freedom of her sex is what we are to indicate here. For whatever immediate purpose she writes, her words bear indirectly on the widest womanly emancipa- tion. May this remark stimulate your curiosity, and keep you on the alert for pregnant sentences ! Such sentences tell more of the progress of human thought than some of us suspect:- they indicate its natural, habitual poise. " "Women especially," she writes, " should be allowed the free use of whatever strength their Maker has seen fit to give them. It is essential to the virtue of society, that they should be allowed the freest moral action, unfettered by ignorance, and unintimidated by authority ; for it is an unquestioned and unquestionable fact, that, if women were not weak, men would not be wicked, and that, if women were bravely pure, there would be an end of the dastardly tyranny of licentiousness." This passage will have all the more power over ob- servant readers, because it occurs unexpectedly, and marks the opportunity seized to speak a necessary if unwelcome truth. What noble service Mrs. Jameson rendered in the field of art or letters did not leave her indiffer- ent to the interests of her sex. She was placed in circumstances to make her see quickly and feel LIVES THAT HATE MODIFIED PUBLIC OPINION. 105 deeply all that relates to womanly position and development. An early martyr to the prejudices of society ; married, I think at sixteen, to a man far beyond her own rank in life, who left her at the altar, — she bore the title of wife, and led the life of a celibate : but her first word for her sex was as strong and true as her last, while her own path lay between lines of living fire. Only lately did we hear of her as a lecturer and reformer; but, nearly thirty years ago, we might have, cut from her pages the following words : " We are told openly by moralists and politicians, that it is for the general good of society, nay, an absolute necessity, that one- fifth part of the female sex should be condemned as the legitimate prey of the other, predoomed to die in reprobation in the streets, in hospitals, that the virtue of the rest may be preserved, and the pride and the passions of men both satisfied. But I have a bitter pleasure in thinking, that this most base and cruel conventional law is avenged upon those who made and uphold it; that here the sacrifice of a certain number of one sex to the permitted license of the other is no general good, but a general curse, a very ulcer in the bosom of society." Can you guess how brave and pure a woman was needed to write those words ? All the indirect tendency of her works is in keeping with them ; and we recognize