e highest triumph
of which such a book is capable; namely--that years hence young men will
not care to read it, because they take it all for granted.

There are those who for years past have held opinions concerning women
identical with those of Mr. Mill. They thought it best, however, to keep
them to themselves; trusting to the truth of the old saying, 'Run not
round after the world. If you stand still long enough, the world will
come round to you.' And the world seems now to be coming round very fast
towards their standing-point; and that not from theory, but from
experience. As to the intellectual capacity of girls when competing with
boys (and I may add as to the prudence of educating boys and girls
together), the experience of those who for twenty years past have kept up
mixed schools, in which the farmer's daughter has sat on the same bench
with the labourer's son, has been corroborated by all who have tried
mixed classes, or have, like the Cambridge local examiners, applied to
the powers of girls the same tests as they applied to boys; and still
more strikingly by the results of admitting women to the Royal College of
Science in Ireland, where young ladies have repeatedly carried off prizes
for scientific knowledge against young men who have proved themselves, by
subsequent success in life, to have been formidable rivals. On every
side the conviction seems growing (a conviction which any man might have
arrived at for himself long ago, if he would have taken the trouble to
compare the powers of his own daughters with those of his sons), that
there is no difference in kind, and probably none in degree, between the
intellect of a woman and that of a man; and those who will not as yet
assent to this are growing more willing to allow fresh experiments on the
question, and to confess that, after all (as Mr. Fitch well says in his
report to the Schools Inquiry Commission), 'The true measure of a woman's
right to knowledge is her capacity for receiving it, and not any theories
of ours as to what she is fit for, or what use she is likely to make of
it.'

This is, doubtless, a most important concession. For if it be allowed to
be true of woman's capacity for learning, it ought to be--and I believe
will be--allowed to be true of all her other capacities whatsoever. From
which fresh concession results will follow, startling no doubt to those
who fancy that the world always was, and always will be, what it was
yesterd