he cannot withdraw himself from the feminine
influence about him. By degrees he comes to sympathize with the little
social disappointments of his family group, and to take pleasure in
their little social triumphs, which appear to be so productive of
satisfaction and enjoyment to those to whom they fall. But the effect on
his character is not usually wholesome. His eye is no longer single.
Feminine influence has engrafted on his nature the defects of feminine
character, without engrafting on it also its many virtues.

Women usually fail in communicating to men their self-devotion, their
gentleness, their piety; all that they manage to communicate amounts to
little more than a respect for the observances of religion, and a
nervous sensibility to social distinctions.

While the mental development of women continues to be so little studied,
it is not surprising that the intellectual influence of the sex should
be almost _nil_, or that such a modicum of it as they possess should be
exerted within a very narrow sphere. It is the fault, no doubt, of our
systems of female education that the mental power of the cleverest women
really comes in England to very little. In its highest form it amounts
to a capacity for conversation on indifferent matters, a genius for
music or some other fine art, a turn for talking about the poets of the
day, and perhaps for imitating their style with ease, coupled, in
exceptional cases, with a talent for guessing double acrostics. To be
able to do all this, and to be charming and religious too, is the whole
duty of young women.

It would be difficult possibly to fit out an English young lady with the
various practical accomplishments that are of use in matrimony, and to
make her at the same time an intellectual equal of the other sex. But it
would surely be possible to train her to understand more of the general
current of the world's ideas, even if she could not devote herself to
studying them in detail. What woman has now any notion of the broad
outline of history of human thought? All philosophy is a sealed book to
her. It is the same with theology and politics. She has not the wildest
conception, as a rule, of the grounds on which people think who think
differently from herself; and all through life she is content to play
the part of a partisan or a devotee with perfect equanimity.

While, however, feminine influence in intellectual subjects is, as it
deserves to be, infinitesimal, in pract