; as he appears, by the place he
gives to "George Sand" and "Rachel," to be profoundly ignorant on the
subject of the "intellectually greatest women of modern times," we will
intimate to him two or three about whom it might be well for him to gain
some information, were it only to avoid blunders. We will not be so
exacting as to perplex him with Mrs. Somerville, for we are aware it is
not every one who can invent a slander whose mind could appreciate "The
Connection of the Physical Sciences;" neither will we refer him to Mrs.
Barrett Browning, whose "genius," as pronounced by grave and reverend
critics, "is of the highest order, strong, deep-seeing, enthusiastic,
and loving," because such divine poetry and deep science would be
evidently out of his line; but Miss Edgeworth, the author of "Frank" and
"Harry and Lucy;" surely he might understand her lessons, if he would
read them: these lessons always inculcate _truth_, are sound, improving,
and elevating, and the intellect must have been great that could see
moral truths so clearly.

The author of the paragraph appears to consider stage-playing as
wonderfully intellectual, and his pattern of this greatness in "modern
times" is Rachel. Was there not a certain Mrs. Siddons, whose genius in
the histrionic art was superior to that of any living actress, and whose
character was unimpeachable? According to the best French critics, men
of taste and literary fame, who do not write anonymously, but subscribe
their articles with their names, Rachel is only good in one line, which
is passion or violence. In tender heroines, they say, she fails, and
they seem to consider her powers altogether limited; for these opinions
we refer the writer in the "International" to the "Revue des Deux
Mondes." Were Rachel the intellectual prodigy he pronounces her to be,
still the poor despised child, who sang in the streets and was brought
up without law or Gospel, must have fallen into vice rather from the sad
want of training than from having a good understanding, as he, in Irish
parlance, intimates.

A similar remark is also true of Madame Dudevant: her intellectual
greatness did not plunge her into licentiousness; she fell before she
ever wrote a book; and though we do not wish to screen her from the
odium her reckless course has deserved, yet it should be recorded in
pity that her fine powers of mind were misdirected by a false and
frivolous education, that the examples and flatteries of the