present themselves, do not cheer us as they should, while they remain exceptions. In making what Dickens would call an "indiscriminate and incontinent" excursion, into the regions of female thought and literature, we find its atmosphere in a somewhat unventilated condition, and are reminded of an opinion of the Druses which does not seem to have been wholly impertinent, that "literature is a mean and contemptible occupation, fit only for women." Twenty years ago, when ties of an almost filial tenderness linked us to the household of the late Judge Cranch, we have often followed him, unrecognized, of a Saturday afternoon, when, returning from the bench, he climbed Capitol Hill, one hand grasping the handle of some colored washerwoman's basket, or slinging her heavy bundle over his shoulder on a stick. The dear remembrance, sustained by all the sweet and delicate courtesies of his private life, has always lain side by side in our mind with that exquisite Essay of Elia to which he first directed our attention, in which a noble reverence to woman is inculcated, and we are taught to judge every man's respect for the sex by his demeanor towards its humblest representative. Yet, if Judge Cranch never swerved from his gracious dignity, Charles Lamb did. man had not gained, in his life-time, such a hold upon her intellectual rights, that a dinner company dared chide him, when he said of Letitia Landon, "If she belonged to me, I would lock her up, and feed her on bread and water, till she gave up writing poetry. A

Wo

female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks below an actress, I think."

We do not quote these words so much against Lamb himself,-for the lips of Mary Lamb's brother must have been thick with wine, when, with "stammering, insufficient sound," he included her in so sweeping a reprobation, but to indicate the nature of that public opinion which is even now dwarfing the ideals of the best men; to show how little reliance is to be placed on the standard of the most generous, when a remark like this, uttered in a large literary circle, passes without criticism, and is recorded without conscious mortification,-recorded, too, by the father of the Coventry Patmore, who has known how to offer us, in later times, sugar-plums of his own coloring-let us add of his own poisoning also under the alluring names of "betrothals" and "espousals." How far the facts are from the ideal standard, Mrs. Jameson, in a lecture lately delivered, will help us to show.

"With all our schools," she says, "of all denominations, it remains an astounding fact, that one-half of the women who annually become wives, in this England of ours, cannot sign their names in the parish register; and that this amount of ignorance in the lower classes is accompanied with an amount of ill-health, despondency, inaptitude, and uselessness in the so-called educated classes, which, taken together, prove that our boasted appliances are to a great extent failures."

The ancient standard of Italy was very high, even in the fifteenth century, if we consider only the literary skill or mathematical culture frequently desired. and attained; but Anna Maria Mozzoni may congratulate herself on having given a moral and social impetus to it, which it has never before received. Her wise, considerate, philosophical suggestions will meet the cordial welcome of all right-minded women. If followed out, they will create nobler women than Tamborni or Laura Veratti.*

There was no institution in England for the proper training of sick nurses, when Florence Nightingale went to Kaiserswerth, a small town near Düsseldorf, on the Rhine, to prepare herself to take charge of the Female Sanitorium. In Great Britain, at this moment, the excess of the female population over the male amounts to five hundred thousand souls; and from all directions we hear the cry, that men need educated assistants. What is the country doing to answer this cry, to educate her five hundred thousand women? In 1825 Dr. Gooch made a noble appeal to the English public, in behalf of educating women to be nurses; but there was no response. When the first school of design was started, a petition was drawn up and signed, praying that women might not be taught, at the expense of the Government, arts which would interfere with the employment of men, and "take the bread out of their mouths"!

* Un Passo Avanti nella Cultura Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna Maria Mozzoni Milano. 1866.

Here was an absurd interference with the right of feeding, on the part of these petitioners! As if women did not want bread as well as men; and being, according to authority, the less intelligent and weaker sex, one would suppose that to help them to find it might be a part of that protection to which the Government stands pledged, and for which their property is taxed.

"But," says Mrs. Jameson, "if a petition were drawn up, and handed to medical men, praying that women should not be trained as nurses, nor taught the laws of health, I am afraid there are well-intentioned men, who would, at the time, be induced to sign it; but I believe that twenty, nay even ten years hence, they would look back upon their signatures with as much disgust and amazement as is now excited by the attempt to explode and sneer down the school at Marlborough House."

Another noble English woman, Mrs. Barbara Leigh Bodichon, in a recent pamphlet called "Woman and Work," gives us the correspondence between Jessie Meriton White and the various medical schools to which she applied for admission. This lady had for several years had charge of two little lame children, one of them her own nephew. The latter, on account of some structural defect, had broken his leg sixteen times. Once, when suitable attendance was not to be had, his aunt set and splintered it herself. The physician who examined it advised her to apply for instruction. She applied to fourteen medical institu

tions in the city of London, asking sometimes for private anatomical instruction. The correspondence with four colleges in the year 1856 is given,-from the St. George's, the Royal College of Surgeons, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and the University of London. It amply bears out her assertion, that she was nowhere met with solid objections, or with sensible and logical replies. Sometimes she was told of the indelicacy of her request! The University of London, which was legally bound by its charter to receive her, treated her as coolly as the rest; and in no case was any individual regret expressed for the official decision.

Indelicacy, forsooth! Where can we find it, if not in the impure nature which raises the objection, and the low manner of thinking in general society which consents to receive it? May not the mother, who receives her naked new-born child from the hand of God, fitly ask to understand the liabilities of its little frame? May not the wife, called in seasons of sickness to the most delicate and trying duties, modestly ask for that thorough culture which alone can make those duties easy? And who make this objection? Men who go shuddering and half-drunken into the dissecting room, to scatter vile jests above that prostrate temple of the Holy Ghost! Men who see nothing in the exquisite development of God's creation, but the reflection of their own obscene lives! Students who know no better way to steel their courage to the use of the scalpel than to play at