Literature, poetry, painting, have
always been fields open to woman. But two names exhaust the roll of
women of the highest rank in letters--Sappho and Jane Austen. And
"when did woman ever yet invent?" In "arts of government" Elizabeth
had courage, and just saving sense enough to yield to Cecil at the
eleventh hour, and escape the fate of "her sister and her foe," the
beautiful unhappy queen who told her ladies that she dared to look on
whatever men dared to do, and herself would do it if her strength so
served her." {6} "The foundress of the Babylonian walls" is a myth;
"the Rhodope that built the Pyramid" is not a creditable myth; for
exceptions to Knox's "Monstrous Regiment of Women" we must fall back
on "The Palmyrene that fought Aurelian," and the revered name of the
greatest of English queens, Victoria. Thus history does not
encourage the hope that a man-like education will raise many women to
the level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that the
enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity of
a man-like education. A glance at the numerous periodicals designed
for the reading of women depresses optimism, and the Princess's
prophecy of
"Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss
Of science, and the secrets of the mind,"
is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not "love the
Metaphysics," and perhaps has not yet produced even a manual of
Logic.
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