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 'ygmr": "V 
 
WITn KIND REOAlim 
 
 OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 EDUCATED WOMEN. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 DELT> SIGM> SOCIETY OF McGILL UpEHSlTY, 
 
 Decembeh, 1889. 
 
 «-' 
 
 _j& 
 
\-y- 
 
[FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.] 
 
 EDUCATED WOMEN 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE DELTA SKiMA SOCIETY OF McGILL 
 
 UNIVERSITY, DECEMBER, 1889. 
 
 Bv PRIN'CIPAI, SIR WILMAM DAWSON, LL.D., &c. 
 
 Miss Derick and Ladiks: — 
 
 I have very much pleasure in contributing my quota to the 
 useful work of this Society, beHeving it to be an important agent in 
 promoting good education ; since what you do in this way for your- 
 selves necessarily has more value as a means of culture than anything 
 that others can do for you. In selecting a subject I have been guided 
 by the consideration that to produce educated women in the true 
 and best sense is the object of the course of study established here ; 
 and it is mAinly in this relation that I shall discuss the questions 
 which it raises, and with especial reference to the nature and uses of 
 general academical education. 
 
 It is a trite remark, but one ever needing repetition, that education 
 as an art is not the superadding of something to the man or woman, 
 but the cultivation or development of the powers inherent in the 
 student or learner. On this truth hang certain practical rules which 
 are applicable to all kinds of education and alike to both sexes. One 
 of these is that education should advance as the powers naturally 
 develop themselves. It is absurd to attempt to teach anything at an 
 age too early, and unwise to neglect to teach, at each successive age 
 the kinds of learning which that age is fitted to receive and assimilate. 
 Another is that at every, age education must be a gradual process — 
 every kind of learning being received little by little like the daily food 
 which nourishes the body, and which must be taken as appetite and 
 powers of digestion will permit ; or, to adopt a still plainer and very 
 ancient figure, like pouring water into a very narrow-necked bottle, 
 
which must be done drop by drop or in a very slender stream. 
 Another is that the educator must consider the various capacities 
 inherent in the pupil, and must develop these symmetrically, or 
 in such a manner as to produce a perfect and harmonious form, 
 not dwarfed in one direction and exaggerated in another. It is 
 to be feared that the educator is in this respect sometimes no 
 more successful than the hairdresser and dressmaker, who in their 
 attempts to please so often produce strange and misshapen car- 
 icatures of poor humanity Still another of these principles is that 
 the general and symmeterical development of the whole man or 
 woman sliould proceed some length before the bias is given to 
 engrossing specialties. Not that the youngest minds and bodies 
 have not their si)ecial powers and gifts ; but these are often of a 
 merely temporary character, and can be wrought in harmoniously 
 with the general process of education. These principles being 
 accepted, we have next to inquire as to the special directions in 
 which we must educate, and this more particularly with reference 
 to woman, and to woman in our present state of society. 
 
 First, then, we^may place Physical Education — the training of the 
 outward bodily frame for work and enjoyment in the world. Here it is 
 to be feared there is a serious failure, more especially among those who 
 are in the upper and middling ranks of the social scale. Want of air 
 and exercise,, late hours, unwholesome diet, cramping and unsuitable 
 dress are the fertile seeds of a rank harvest of indigestion, lassitude, 
 irritability, unfitness for useful exertion, and resort to unhealthy stimuli 
 for relief. Let nothing here satisfy short of the full healthy develop- 
 ment of the physical frame, fitting it first for the [crformance of the 
 duties of the wife, the mother and the worker ; and then for the 
 indwelling of a strong active intellect and rightly-balanced will. Phy- 
 sical training is in some sense the lowest of all ; but for that very 
 reason it is a foundation, lacking which any superstructure of mental 
 culture may be a mere castle in the air — a phantom baffling all our 
 calculations with illusive hopes. The means of such training are 
 easy, and within the reach of most. They grow in the first place 
 naturally out of the wise direction and guidance of the spontaneous 
 physical vigour of childhood, and may be carried on later by judi- 
 ciously selected gymnastic exercises, along with suitable dress and 
 abundant vital air, or by any kind of useful work calling for muscular 
 exertion in moderate and regulated amount. If there are those who, 
 
from inherrted defects of constitfition, or the hard requirements of 
 unfavourable conditions of Ufe, are more or less shut out from this 
 great blessing, there is the more need to devote in their case especial 
 pains to this matter, and the more reason why others should hold 
 forth the hand of help from their superabundant resources. Here I 
 would further say that the constitution and physiological habitudes 
 of woman — her excitable nervous temperament, and special liability 
 to be unduly stimulated by emulation, love of approbation, and shall 
 I say ambition, to undue exertion — should be taken into account in 
 every system of education for women. At the same time I would 
 express the belief that a certain morbid irritability in these directions 
 has been the result of the action of our modern civilization on the 
 physique of woman, and that a healthier physical culture would re- 
 move some at least of the present inequality in these respects of the 
 sexes. 
 
 Rising above the physical nature, with its roots interwoven in 
 it, but producing results as different as the flowers and fruit are 
 different from the soil from which they are nourished, is the Mental 
 or Intellectual Nature. Its culture naturally presents itself in three 
 aspects — the scientific, the literary, and the aesthetic — diverse in their 
 aims, but not to be separated practically in their pursuit. 
 
 Scientific Cuhure, in its broad sense, is no doubt the widest of these 
 — embracing as it does all that relates to the systematised knowledge 
 
 the outer world of matter and the inner world of mind. So vast 
 and varied is this field, that it is hopeless for any one mind to grasp 
 the whole of it in detail. Fortunately, however, it is possible to 
 single out the parts of it that of right belong to general and those 
 that belong to special education. Every educated person should 
 know something of mathematical science — enough to have some good 
 preception of the laws of form and number, and of their uses in prac- 
 tical life and in unravelling the mysteries of thenmiverse, and to these 
 mathematical elements should be added the study of some one of 
 the departments of physical science proper, or of natural philosophy. 
 Again, every education should embrace the elements of the knowledge 
 of the atomic constitution of matter, its elementary substances, and 
 the laws which regulate their combination and decomposition. This 
 chemical key unlocks most of the great treasuries of nature, and 
 opens the way to the acquisition of untold wealth. Thirdly, every 
 educated person should have some training in the laws of thought, 
 
and in what is known of our own mental constitution. For man or for 
 woman these three foundations of mathematics, chemistry and logic 
 are those which alone can support any sound knowledge of nature, 
 or adequate culture of the poweis we must employ in order to gain 
 the mastery of the world around us, and occupy our place therein as 
 the image of God. The great practical difficulty is the right teach- 
 ing and proportioning of these studies. The teaching of them may 
 be begun in ordinary schools, if well managed, but for their higher 
 and practical pursuit we must have specialists as teachers — men or 
 women knowing these subjects thoroughly, enthusiastic in them, able 
 to tell what they know, and with sufficient good sense and general 
 culture to appreciate the relation of their several departments to other 
 spheres of mental action and to the mind of the learner. Rare 
 men or women these, in our imperfect world, and, as yet, half-civilized 
 age. I would not here be supposed to bespeak for women precisely 
 the same education in these pursuits accorded to our young men in our 
 existing colleges, but something better. The claims of these elements 
 of scientific cultivation have as yet scarcely been fully acknowledged 
 in our; colleges for men, either in matter or manner. They have 
 not yet — unless we except mathematics — been given their true place 
 as groundworks of knowledge, though in this University we have 
 epdeavoured at least to give to them an early place in our course of 
 study. We may not for a long time be able to remedy these defects 
 in our colleges for men. Perhaps they do not admit of any remedy 
 in this generation. But the thorough scientific education of women 
 should be conducted under improved methods, and with all the aids 
 and appliances that our time can furnish. We already have some 
 models in elementary science teaching in the best English and 
 American colleges for women, like Nevmham, Girton, Wcllesley and 
 Vassar. It is right to say, however, that both in the Universities of 
 Montreal and'Toronto we have to some extent broken through the 
 trammels which have cramped some of the older universities, aod, in 
 so far as limited means will permit, have approached to the ideal of 
 suitable science education for junior students. 
 
 I have spoken of three subjects that lie at the threshold of the 
 temple of science, but beyond these the lady learner may go on to 
 other scientific learning — into the sciences which relate to minerals, 
 plants, animals, and the earth itself, into the grand fields of physics 
 and astronomy, into the equally attractive domain of organic chemistry 
 
and physiological science, or still more profoundly into the science of 
 mind. These should be cultivated as time, talents, and opportunity 
 permit, but the elements I have mentioned open the way and are 
 essential to solid success. In the education of wom'en hitherto, much 
 has been lost in efforts to teach advanced subjects in a superficial 
 manner without knowledge of their elements. Much evil. has also 
 resulted from the attempt to teach science by mere cramming of text- 
 books, which is in reality not teaching science at all, and by the 
 difficulty of obtaining competent teachers. In this matter almost 
 everything depends on the presence of a teacher who is fully master 
 of his subject, and thoroughly imbued with its spirit. 
 
 Taking Literary Culture in the same broad sense with scientific, 
 it will include the whole field of human thought and action as em- 
 bodied in language and literature. Here again we have a domain, 
 not, it is true, boundless like that of nature, because it relates to the 
 works of man, not to those of God, but still practically without limit 
 in so far as individual power is concerned. At the entrance to it lie 
 two elementary parts of education of the most eminently utilitarian 
 character. The first is the cultivation of our powers of expression in 
 speaking and writing, which can be accomplished only by the study 
 of our own language and its literature. The second is the storing of 
 our minds with the wisdom embodied in history, a study which in its 
 practical utility may be held to surpass itll others, inasmuch as in this 
 garb it has pleased God to give us His own divine revelation, that 
 sacred history which is and ever must be the kernel of all true wisdom, 
 and inasmuch as the secular history of the world is our main store- 
 house of accumulated human experience. To these two great prim- 
 ary utilities of literary culture may be added that trainmg of taste 
 and criticism which links this department to the next, and that ac- 
 quaintance with the languages and literature of other peoples and 
 times which should widen our comprehension of human thought in 
 its various manifestations. 
 
 But how and in w;hat measure can these inestimable benefits of 
 literary culture be secured ? Much can be done, and more will be 
 done in the future, to give a stable ground-work of the use of our 
 own language in the elementary schools. Added to this the higher 
 education should embrace rhetoric and the more delicate graces of 
 composition, and the critical study of some good author or authors, 
 with investigation of the roots of our language in its original Saxon 
 
8 
 
 and Celtic sources, and the additions which have been grafted into 
 it from abroad. The learner should also be introduced to the riches 
 of some other cultivated tongue, either ancient or modern, and this 
 should be made the means of training in what is known of the laws 
 of language in general, and in the understanding of the different 
 modes of thought and expression of different peoples. I have said 
 one other language, because it is difficult to do more in consistency 
 with the claims of other learning, except in the case of those who 
 are to make language a speciality. There is reason to believe that 
 the obligation resting on us in our colleges for men, to attempt to 
 teach several languages at once, is one of those bondages forced 
 upon us by ancifent custom, from which we must some day be 
 emancipated, and to which the teachers of women should not com- 
 mit themselves. If women are to be trained as philological special- 
 ists, I would further say that in adding a third or fourth language 
 to their course of study, these should not, as usual in the case 
 of young men, be of the same group with our own, as the Latin, 
 Greek, French, German, and even Sanskrit are, but should be 
 of some other of the great branches of speech — a Semitic like 
 the Hebrew, or a Turanian one like the Chinese, or those old 
 Assyrian and Chaldean tongues now so much studied. Otherwise 
 the lingual culture of the lady specialist in language will have 
 the same one-sided character which it has long had among male 
 students, who may hold themselves to be scholars while ignorant of 
 the oldest and most widely spread languages of the world. Going 
 beyond language and^ general literature, I do not know what to 
 say of history, except that in the higher education it should not 
 be confined to those mere summaries or school text-books, which are 
 supposed to be the special historic pabulum of students, but should be 
 taught through standard works, and with reference to original author- 
 ities, and under the care of one who is himself an historian in know- 
 ledge, heart and feeling, and wide sympathy with all that is noble in 
 humanity. To do this, a limited field both in time and space must 
 be selected, except in the case of historical specialists. 
 
 On the .Esthetic part of education I have but a few words to say; 
 but I would not have it thought that I value this little. On the con- 
 trary, it is certain that true beauty is the handmaid of true goodness, 
 and warped and distorted notions of the beautiful are the fitting com- 
 panions of what is low and vile in morals, and are the fruitful sources 
 
9 
 
 say; 
 
 con- 
 ness, 
 com- 
 urces 
 
 of evil in social and religious matters. In our actual education the 
 special culture of taste is very much limited to painting, sculpture and 
 music. No kind of culture gives a purer taste, or is more- likely to 
 repel us from those hideous barbarisms that glare on us on every 
 side in the guise of ornament, than careful and accurate copying of 
 the beautiful forms of nature, or of those strange marvels of art which 
 have come down to us from classical antiquity. No ajsthetic culture 
 is more elevating than that of music, if it be truly music — that music 
 which is in harmony with the higher and better feelings of our nature; 
 and if it be taught in connection with the scientific principles on 
 which the art depends for its power to please, and which constitute 
 one of the most remarkable of those God-given correlations between 
 mind and matter which meet the student of man and nature at every 
 point. I cannot help thinking that a true culture of art might be 
 made an important meahs of correcting taste in dress, furniture, and 
 social customs, and in rendering some forms of evil and savagery less 
 attractive. But here, again, we want the heaven-inspired teacher to 
 give a right direction. It is but right to say, in leaving this subject, 
 that the love of beauty should be cultivated in all our teaching of 
 sciehce and literature, as well as in that of the fine arts themselves. 
 
 There remains but to say one word on Moral Culture, and that 
 wor3 must be, that pure and high morality is not to be taught by rote 
 in schools. It grows of pure example and of the divine influence in 
 the heart. Therefore I believe that the best moral and religious in- 
 fluence in our homes, our schools, and our colleges is that of the 
 example of a true pieiy and self-sacrificing devotion in the parent and 
 teacher ; and that woman, whose highest misson is to be the guide 
 and ornament of a family, should in this way learn to fulfil that mis- 
 sion. There is, however, a science of ethics, having its roots in the 
 constitution of human nature and branching into all departments of 
 social and political life, which has in it much that is congenial to women 
 of culture; and much that connects itself with the higher spiritual life. 
 Even if educated women should not be called on to take part in 
 public or political affairs, they may find such culture of great value in 
 the higher walks of social and educational influence, in which they 
 must occupy a place of increasing importance as our age advances. 
 
 Here there intervenes a dark shadow in the picture 1 am tracing — 
 the immorality and even irreligion mixed up with so much that is called 
 education. I do not refer here altogether to the hard and barbarous 
 
,10 
 
 punishments and equally inhuman stimuli which are happily giving 
 place in schools and colleges to better influences. There is besides 
 these a growing efTort to warp education into the service of a reaction 
 against the light and liberty of the time, to make it narrowly sectarian 
 or ecclesiastical, to mix it with superstitions and prejudices hateful 
 to God and man, and to shut out the light reflected from God's own 
 word and works as a dangerous thing. Alas I for the nation whose 
 women are trained to be the devotees of superstition. On the other 
 hand there is a growing danger that education may fall under the in- 
 fluence of a dark and cold materialism, teaching that good and evil 
 are but shades erf feeling, that beauty is no gift of God, that man* 
 himself is the child of dead forces and the heir of no immortality. 
 The world has not yet seen a naiion whose women were infidels, but 
 such a nation would be a hell on earth. In our time these opposing 
 evil forces are struggling for the mastfery and tearing each other in 
 their rage, and it is even difficult to secure the services of specialists 
 who are not affected with one or other of these opposite errors. This 
 is at present the saddest feature in our educational outlook, and I 
 do not know how it is to be amended unless educated women will 
 take some part of the work into their own hands, and bring to bear 
 the influence; of their own practical good sense and right feeling on 
 the side of truth, honesty and good taste. 
 
 It remains for us to ask how are our women best to attain 
 some share of that great and glorious heritage of li^ht and learning 
 on the borders of which we have been touching? The first prelim- 
 inary is the erection of good elementary and high schools for girls, as 
 preparatory to higher education. In this respect our larger seats of 
 population in Canada are not badly provided ; but it is the true policy 
 of all the friends of higher education to be zealous in promoting the 
 prosperity and improvement of these schools. The next requisite is 
 that girls and their parents should be prepared to give some years of 
 their time after leaving school to the work of higher culture; and un- 
 doubtedly some portion of the enjoyments and social gaieties of life 
 must be sacrificed for this purpose. If this cannot be done to the 
 extent of taking the full course for a degree, then a well-selected 
 partial course is the best substitute, and may be' followed without 
 engrossing the whole time of the student. Our universities would 
 mucly rather have undergraduates than partials ; but at present we 
 roust provide for the fact that many ladies desirous of higher culture 
 
 
11 
 
 man 
 
 are prevented by ci'-cumstances from pursuing the complete course of 
 study. We are the more under obhgation to make such provision, as 
 having succeeded to the excellent work of the Ladies* Educational 
 ' Association, which was so efficient in this department, and which 
 prepared the way for a regular academical course. 
 
 It would be invidious to make any comparison of the modes 
 which different universities in this country have adopted to provide 
 for the higher education of women, under circumstances often of 
 extreme difficulty; but I may be permitted to say that the method in 
 troduced here, by the liberality of Sir Donald Smith, while still 
 imperfect, enables us at present to secure equal instruction for the 
 sexes in separate classes with identical examinations and degrees, 
 and bids fair in its full development to place the Canadian ladies of 
 the coming time in a position to be envied by their sisters abroad, 
 while its influence on our school systems and on our colleges for men 
 cannot fail to be in the highest degree beneficial. The time may 
 come when instead of the question, "How shall our young women 
 obtain the same advantages with our young men?" it may be *' How 
 can our courses of study for men be so reformed as to make them 
 equal to those of our colleges for women ?" 
 
 Nothing in the preceding part of this address refers to what may 
 properly be termed professional education, but only to that general 
 culture which should be accessible to every educated woman, and 
 this with the view that her profession is to be that which we referred 
 to in the outset and which is the highest in the world — that of 
 a wife and mother — the high priestess of the family, earth's holiest 
 shrine — the ruler of the well-regulated household, which is the sole 
 possible basis of any sound public morality and true prosperity — the 
 wise and thoughtful regulator of all those social re-unions, charities 
 and benevolences which make life agreeable. If women must be 
 prepared for permanent professions it is because the world is out 
 of joint — because it has sunk into a lower fall than that which de- 
 prived our first parents of paradise, and has thrown down women not 
 only from the position of equal helpmeet in innocent Eden, but from 
 the subject helpmeetness established after the fall, and has driven 
 her out, not with the man but alone, to contend with the thorns and 
 thistles of the wilderness. Alas ! that our boasted civilization has 
 fallen so low that it should be necessary even to contemplate the 
 isolation of woman in the battle of life. Happily, Christanity is not 
 
■«■•« 
 
 12 
 
 to blame for this ; for under its system women, while allowed to 
 engage in all useful avocations, were ordinarily to be sustained 
 in the privileges of domestic life by their male relations, or failing 
 these, by the church itself: and those who had been deprived by 
 death of their natural protectors were to be employed in missionary 
 work. These were the "widows indeed" of the Apostle Paul. The 
 work of this christian ministry, whether educational, benevolent, or' 
 religious, was evidently the sole public profession recognized for 
 women in the New Testament. But the world is not yet sufficiently 
 christian or sufficiently civilized to appreciate fully the social beauty 
 of Christianity. Hence it is full of wrangling as to the rights and 
 privileges of women who must earn their daily bread, and especially 
 of those who must earn it by the labour of the brain rather than of 
 the hands. 
 
 1 may sum up the position of women in a truly christian society 
 by an example which, though old, bears on present questions. When 
 Paul the apostle crossed over from Troas, there may not have 
 been a solitary christian in all F^urope. In Philippi he went on 
 the sabbath day to the meeting-place ot his Jewish countrymen. 
 He found there a few pious women holding a prayer meeting. 
 There must have been Jewish men in Philippi, but all were too 
 careless or too busy to attend to the obligations of the Sabbath. 
 A few women represented all the true religion of the place. The 
 hearts of some of these women were touched by the message of 
 Paul, and in the house of Lydia — a dealer 'in purple, and a christian 
 lady — met the first Christian Church in Europe. This instance illus- 
 trates the position of women in the Jewish and early christian 
 church. The heathen women of the period were degraded to the 
 lowest point by the licentious character of their idolatry and by its 
 failure to recognize anything true or good in the nature of woman. 
 The Jewish women everywhere occupied a higher plane, based upon 
 the spiritual and moral teaching of the Old Testament, and as was 
 natural, their religion was less that of the law and more that of the 
 prophets and psalmists then that of the men. Hence in every Gentile 
 city the Jewish women were a pure and holy element to which we 
 find that many of the better natures among the Gentile women, "the 
 honourable women," of the Acts of the Apostles, joined themselves. 
 It was from these that the women of early Christianity were recruited, 
 those efficient helpers of the Apostles to whom Paul so often refers. 
 
13 
 
 ved to 
 tained 
 failing 
 ed by 
 lionary 
 , The 
 ent, or' 
 ed for 
 ciently 
 beauty 
 Its and 
 )ecially 
 than of 
 
 ■h 
 society 
 When 
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 trymen. 
 \eeting. 
 ere too 
 abbath. 
 . The 
 sage of 
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 :e illus- 
 hristian 
 i to the 
 by its 
 IvNoinan. 
 d upon 
 as was 
 of the 
 Gentile 
 ich we 
 n, "the 
 nselves. 
 cruited, 
 refers. 
 
 Christianity was especially the gospel of women, but its progress was 
 arrested by the ambition of men and the growth of ecclesiasticism, the 
 inroads of barbarians and the wars and desolations succeeding the 
 downfall of the Roman Empire, while the chivalry of the middle 
 ages did little except for a privileged class. The world has yet to 
 see the full blessings of the ministry of educated christian women, 
 which may perhaps not be realised before that Saviour who, as he 
 was called a friend of publicans and sinners, has also been sneered 
 at as too womanly in his teaching, shall return in power to reign. 
 
 In the midst of present controversies one can at least see two profes- 
 sions, both intimately connected with the family, and both very near 
 to the mission of the primitive widows and ministers of the Apostolic 
 Church. The first of these is teaching, a profession most suited in 
 every way to woman ; and the arrangements whereby young women 
 trained in our Normal Schools have in the United States and Canada 
 almost engrossed to themselves the work of instruction, especially in 
 the elementary schools, constitute one of the best and highest 
 features of our educational system. Our Normal Schools are now to 
 a great extent professional colleges for women, and they should be 
 developed still further in this direction, more especially since the 
 profession to which they lead is one which does not in any way inter- 
 fere with the true functions and duties of woman. Another profes- 
 sion almost ecjually important is that of the trained and scientific 
 nurse, that higher kind of medical nurse Vho is so much required to 
 supplement the comparatively scanty attentions of the physician* 
 and to govern and instruct or to replace altogether less competent 
 attendants on the sick. That the medical profession itself,^ more 
 especially in so far as female patients are concerned, should be open 
 to women, I do not doubt is a possible feature of that higher civiliza- 
 tion to which the world may one day reach ; but in the meantime 
 there can be no question as to the claims and position of the educated 
 nurse. Beyond this I would go one step further. Great mental 
 endowments and 5>pecial genius, those grand and direct gifts of God, 
 are not limited by sex ; they belong to the world, and must not be 
 repressed by neglect or prejudice. Those women who in the course 
 of their education, show pre-epminent gifts in literature, in art, in 
 science, or in philosophy, .should be trained for their special fields, 
 and the highest places in public and educational institutions should 
 be open to them equally with men, otherwise mankind must continue 
 
14 
 
 lamely to halt along in the march of progress, deprived of half 
 of the most precious^ eudowments showered by heaven upon the 
 earth. In conclusion, the sum of the whole matter is that the highest 
 possible culture for women is necessary if we would be more than 
 half civilized. If the education of men were carried to the highest 
 perfection, and that of women neglected, we should have only a half 
 culture, and this deteriorated by the absence of the reaction and 
 stimulus which would spring from educated women ; and by the 
 vanity and frivolity flowing from the influence of those whose minds 
 have been left uncultivated. 
 
 Thus whatever functions in society the educated woman may be 
 called on to fill, she must be an important factor in the higher civiliza- 
 tion and in the progress of humanity, and her precise r&lation to the 
 various avocations of life will develop itself as higher .education be- 
 comes more and more general. Permit me to close with two historical 
 pictures of educated and talented Englishwomen, Queen PUizabeth 
 and Queen Victoria. The former, placed at the helm in a great and 
 terrible crisis of the history of our country, had loneliness forced upon 
 her by the necessities of her position. She must employ and govern 
 all sorts of men but could mate with none. This was her God-given 
 mission, which she performed heroically at whatever sacrifice of her 
 own feelings and affections. The latter, a loving wife and mother,, 
 guiding with gentle hand at once her own family affairs and those of 
 the state, suffering the sorrows and trials incident to domestic life ; 
 yet a firm, wise and benevolent ruler, but not like the other obomed 
 to dwell apart and alone. Both women present an exami)le of great- 
 ness and goodness in the highest sphere of public activity, yet how 
 different in their history and surroundings. Kvery educated and in- 
 tellectual woman must be a queen in her own sphere, whether small 
 or great. She may be an Elizabeth or a Victoria. She cannot be both. 
 The question of which may not depend altogether on herself; but 
 with God's grace she may play well eitlier part. 
 
I of half 
 jpon the 
 e highest 
 ore than 
 i highest 
 ily a half 
 tion and 
 1 by the 
 se minds 
 
 may be 
 r civiliza- 
 )n to the 
 ation be- 
 historical 
 Elizabeth 
 freat and 
 :ed upon 
 d govern 
 iod-given 
 :e of her 
 mother^ 
 those of 
 Stic life 'y 
 ooomed 
 of great- 
 yet how 
 i and in- 
 ler small 
 be both, 
 ielf ; but 
 
 • /