flaunts on the pier, bedizened in garments
which, for monstrosity of form and disharmony of colours, would have set
that Greek Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average Hindoo woman
now. Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs and benches all the weary
afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the
"Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the
fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid
fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who
think about the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad
sight to see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has
done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by your old
mother, who has done good work in her day--among the rest, that heaviest
work of all, the bringing you into the world and keeping you in it till
now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk enough, and not inefficient in their
own calling; though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish
Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force,
could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not
a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside benches,
looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and the sunlight, and
enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing.
It is not the old for whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is your
vitality? Where is your "Lebensgluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of
superfluous life and power? Why can you not even dance and sing, till
now and then, at night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, but
when the weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused
itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure? What
there is left of it is all going into that foolish book, which the
womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights in; because it
places you in fancy in situations in which you will never stand, and
inspires you with emotions, some of which, it may be, you had better
never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old, some men think, before you have been
ever young.

And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your share in
"the higher education of women," by making you read more books, and do
more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night after
stooping over some other employment all day;