have
not created one, because they found a highly advanced literature
already created. If there had been no suspension of the knowledge of
antiquity, or if the Renaissance had occurred before the Gothic
cathedrals were built, they never would have been built. We see that,
in France and Italy, imitation of the ancient literature stopped the
original development even after it had commenced. All women who write
are pupils of the great male writers. A painter's early pictures,
even if he be a Raffaelle, are undistinguishable in style from those
of his master. Even a Mozart does not display his powerful
originality in his earliest pieces. What years are to a gifted
individual, generations are to a mass. If women's literature is
destined to have a different collective character from that of men,
depending on any difference of natural tendencies, much longer time
is necessary than has yet elapsed, before it can emancipate itself
from the influence of accepted models, and guide itself by its own
impulses. But if, as I believe, there will not prove to be any
natural tendencies common to women, and distinguishing their genius
from that of men, yet every individual writer among them has her
individual tendencies, which at present are still subdued by the
influence of precedent and example: and it will require generations
more, before their individuality is sufficiently developed to make
head against that influence.

It is in the fine arts, properly so called, that the _prima facie_
evidence of inferior original powers in women at first sight appears
the strongest: since opinion (it may be said) does not exclude them
from these, but rather encourages them, and their education, instead
of passing over this department, is in the affluent classes mainly
composed of it. Yet in this line of exertion they have fallen still
more short than in many others, of the highest eminence attained by
men. This shortcoming, however, needs no other explanation than the
familiar fact, more universally true in the fine arts than in
anything else; the vast superiority of professional persons over
amateurs. Women in the educated classes are almost universally taught
more or less of some branch or other of the fine arts, but not that
they may gain their living or their social consequence by it. Women
artists are all amateurs. The exceptions are only of the kind which
confirm the general truth. Women are taught music, but not for the
purpose of composin