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education of the two sexes separates them | vances for continuing it from century to centwidely at the beginning, and to meet on any ury, that we may fairly count upon some common ground of culture a second educa-provision for its necessities in marriage. Intion has to be gone through. It rarely hap- tellectual men are not less alive to the charms pens that there is resolution enough for this. The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which is not very favorable to companionship in married life. It appears to be thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to give women a degree of respect for men's attainments, which they would not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them critically; whilst girls are taught arts and lan- No, there is such a thing as the intellectual guages which until recently were all but ex-marriage, in which the intellect itself is marcluded from our public schools, and won no ried. If such marriages are not frequent, it rank at our universities. Men and women is that they are not often made the deliberate had consequently scarcely any common purpose of a wise alliance. Men choose their ground to meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline in the training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of that earnest intellectual labor which might have remedied the deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then, and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily surmountable impediment to culture. The history of many marriages which have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of my friends: "She knew nothing when I married her. I tried to teach her something; it made her angry, and I gave it up."

of women than other men are; indeed the greatest of them have always delighted in the society of women. If marriage were really dangerous to the intellectual life, it would be a moral snare or pitfall, from which the best and noblest would be least likely to escape. It is hard to believe that the strong passions which so often accompany high intellectual gifts were intended either to drive their possessors into immorality or else to the misery of ill-assorted unions.

LETTER II.

wives because they are pretty, or because they are rich, or because they are well-connected, but rarely for the permanent interest of their society. Yet who that had ever been condemned to the dreadful embarrassments of a tête-à-tête with an uncompanionable person, could reflect without apprehension on a lifetime of such téte-à-têtes?

When intellectual men suffer from this misery they have themselves to blame. What is the use of having any mental superiority, if, in a matter so enormously important as the choice of a companion for life, it fails to give us a warning when the choice is absurdly unsuitable? When men complain, as they do not unfrequently, that their wives have no ideas, the question inevitably suggests itself, why the superiority of the masculine intellect did not, in these cases, permit it to discover the defect in time? If we are so

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED elever as to be bored by ordinary women,

MARRIAGE.

why cannot our cleverness find out the feminine cleverness which would respond to it? The foundations of the intellectual marriage-Marriage not a snare or pitfall for the intellectual-Men of culture, who What I am going to say now is in its very marry badly, often have themselves to blame-For every nature incapable of proof, and yet the longer grade of the masculine intellect there exists a correspond- I live the more the truth of it is "borne in ing grade of the feminine intellect-Difficulty of finding the true mate-French University Professors-An extreme upon me." I feel convinced that for every case of intellectual separation-Regrets of a widow-grade of the masculine intellect there exists a Women help us less by adding to our knowledge than corresponding grade of the feminine intellect, by understanding us.

In several letters which have preceded this I have indicated some of the differences between the female sex and ours, and it is time to examine the true foundations of the intellectual marriage. Let me affirm, to begin with, my profound faith in the natural arrangement. There is in nature so much evident care for the development of the intellectual life, so much protection of it in the social order, there are such admirable contri

so that a precisely suitable intellectual marriage is always possible for every one. But since the higher intellects are rare, and rare in proportion to their elevation, it follows that the difficulty of finding the true mate increases with the mental strength and culture of the man. If the "mental princes," as Blake called himself, are to marry the mental princesses, they will not always discover them quite so easily as kings' sons find kings' daughters.

This difficulty of finding the true mate is | The pair walk out together twice a week. I the real reason why so many clever men marry sometimes wonder what they say to each silly or stupid women. The women about other during those conjugal promenades. them seem to be all very much alike, mentally; They talk about their children, probably, and it seems hopeless to expect any real compan- the little recurring difficulties about money. ionship, and the clever men are decided by He cannot talk about his studies, or the inthe color of a girl's eyes, or a thousand pounds tellectual speculations which his studies conmore in her dowry, or her relationship to a tinually suggest. peer of the realm.

The most extreme cases of intellectual separation between husband and wife that ever came under my observation was, however, not that of a French professor, but a highly

most intellectual men I ever knew-a little cynical, but full of original power, and uncommonly well-informed. His theory was, that women ought not to be admitted into the region of masculine thought-that it was not good for them; and he acted so consistently up to this theory, that although he would open his mind with the utmost frankness to a male acquaintance over the evening

It was remarked to me by a French university professor, that although men in his position had on the whole much more culture than the middle class, they had an extraordi- cultivated Scotch lawyer. He was one of the nary talent for winning the most vulgar and ignorant wives. The explanation is, that their marriages are not intellectual marriages at all. The class of French professors is not advantageously situated; it has not great facilities for choice. Their incomes are so small that, unless helped by private means, the first thing they can prudently look to in a wife is her utility as a domestic servant, which, in fact, it is her destiny to become. The intel- whisky-toddy, there was not whisky enough lectual disparity is from the beginning likely to be very great, because the professor is confined to the country-town where his Lycée happens to be situated, and in that town he does not always see the most cultivated society. He may be an intellectual prince, but where is he to find his princess? The marriage begins without the idea of intellectual companionship, and it continues as it began. The girl was uneducated: it seems hopeless to try to educated the woman; and then there is the supreme difficulty, only to be overcome by two wills at once most resolute and most persistent, namely, how to find the time. Years pass; the husband is occupied all day; the wife needs to cheer herself with a little society, and goes to sit with neighbors who are not likely to add anything valuable to her knowledge or to give any elevation to her thoughts. Then comes the final fixing and crystallization of her intellect, after which, however much pains and labor might be taken by the pair, she is past the possibility of change.

in all Scotland to make him frank in the presence of his wife. She really knew nothing whatever about his intellectual existence; and yet there was nothing in his ways of thinking which an honorable man need conceal from an intelligent woman. His theory worked well enough in practice, and his reserve was so perfect that it may be doubted whether even feminine subtlety ever suspected it. The explanation of his system may perhaps have been this. He was an exceedingly busy man; he felt that he had not time to teach his wife to know him as he was, and so preferred to leave her with her own conception of him, rather than disturb that conception when he believed it impossible to replace it by a completely true one. We all act in that way with those whom we consider quite excluded from our private range of thought.

All this may be very prudent and wise: there may be degrees of conjugal felicity, satisfactory in their way, without intellectual intercourse, and yet I cannot think that any man of high culture could regard his marriage These women are often so good and devoted as altogether a successful one so long as his that their husbands enjoy great happiness; wife remained shut out from his mental life, but it is a kind of happiness curiously inde- Nor is the exclusion always quite agreeable pendent of the lady's presence. The professor to the lady herself. A widow said to me may love his wife, and fully appreciate her qualities as a housekeeper, but he passes a more interesting evening with some male friend whose reading is equal to his own. Sometimes the lady perceives this, and it is an element of sadness in her life.

that her husband had never thought it necessary to try to raise her to his own level, yet she believed that with his kindly help she might have attained it.

You with your masculine habits, may observe, as to this, that if the lady had seriously "I never see my husband," she tells you, cared to attain a higher level she might have not in anger. "His work occupies him all achieved it by her own private independent day, and in the evening he sees his friends." effort. But this is exactly what the feminine

nature never does. A clever woman is the best of pupils, when she loves her teacher, but the worst of solitary learners.

It is not by adding to our knowledge, but by understanding us, that women are our helpers. They understand us far better than men do, when once they have the degree of preliminary information which enables them to enter into our pursuits. Men are occupied with their personal works and thoughts, and have wonderfully little sympathy left to enable them to comprehend us; but a woman, by her divine sympathy-divine indeed, since it was given by God for this-can enter into our inmost thought, and make allowances for all our difficulties. Talk about your work and its anxieties to a club of masculine friends, they will give very little heed to you; they are all thinking about themselves, and they will dislike your egotism because they have so much egotism of their own, which yours invades and inconveniences. But talk in the same way to any woman who has education enough to enable her to follow you, and she will listen so kindly, and so very intelligently, that you will be betrayed into interminable confidences.

These are the two questions which conclude and epitomize the last of your recent letters. Let me endeavor to answer them as satisfactorily as the obscurity of the subject will permit.

The intellectual ideal seems to be that of a conversation on all the subjects you most care about, which should never lose its interest. Is it possible that two people should live together and talk to each other every day for twenty years without knowing each other's views too well for them to seem worth expressing or worth listening to? There are friends whom we know too well, so that our talk with them has less of refreshment and entertainment than a conversation with the first intelligent stranger on the quarter-deck of the steamboat. It is evident that from the intellectual point of view this is the great danger of marriage. It may become dull, not because the mental force of either of the parties has declined, but because each has come to know so accurately beforehand what the other will say on any given topic, that inquiry is felt to be useless. This too perfect intimacy, which has ended many a friendship outside of marriage, may also terminate the intellectual life in matrimony itself.

Let us not pass too lightly over this danger, for it is not to be denied. Unless carefully provided against, it will gradually extinguish the light that plays between the wedded intelligences as the electric light burns between two carbon points.

Now, although an intellectual man may not care to make himself understood by all the people in the street, it is not a good thing for him to feel that he is understood by nobody. The intellectual life is sometimes a fearfully solitary one. Unless he lives in a great capital the man devoted to that life is more than all other men liable to suffer from isolation, I venture to suggest, however, that this to feel utterly alone beneath the deafness of evil may be counteracted by persons of some space and the silence of the stars. Give him energy and originality. This is one of those one friend who can understand him, who will very numerous cases in which an evil is sure not leave him, who will always be accessible to arrive if nothing is done to prevent it, yet by day and night-one friend, one kindly in which the evil need not arrive when those listener, just one, and the whole universe is whom it menaces are forewarned. To take changed. It is deaf and indifferent no longer, an illustration intelligible in these days of and whilst she listens, it seems as if all men steam-engines. We know that if the water and angels listened also, so perfectly his is allowed to get very low in the boiler a dethought is mirrored in the light of her answer-structive explosion will be the consequence; ing eves.

LETTER III.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED

MARRIAGE.

The intellectual ideal of marriage-The danger of dulness To be counteracted only by the renewal of both mindsExample of Lady Baker-Separation of the sexes by an old prejudice about education-This prejudice on the decline-Influence of the late Prince Consort.

How far may you hope to realize the intellectual ideal of marriage? Have I ever observed in actual life any approximate realization of that ideal?

yet, since every stoker is aware of this, such explosions are not of frequent occurrence. That evil is continually approaching and yet continually averted by the exercise of human foresight.

Let us suppose that a married couple are clearly aware that in the course of years their society is sure to become mutually uninteresting unless something is done to preserve the earlier zest of it. What is that something?

That which an author does for the unknown multitude of his readers.

Every author who succeeds takes the trouble to renew his mind either by fresh

The privacy of married life often prevents us from knowing the extent to which intelligent women have renewed their minds by fresh and varied culture for the purpose of retaining their ascendency over their husbands,

knowledge or new thoughts. Is it not at least | wearisome delay; her mind had travelled with equally worth while to do as much to preserve his mind as her feet had followed his footsteps. the interest of marriage? Without undervalu- Scarcely less beautiful, if less heroic, is the ing the friendly adhesion of many readers, picture of the geologist's wife, Mrs. Buckland, without affecting any contempt for fame, who taught herself to reconstruct broken foswhich is dearer to the human heart than sils, and did it with a surprising delicacy, and wealth itself whenever it appears to be not patience, and skill, full of science, yet more wholly unattainable, may not I safely affirm than science, the perfection of feminine art. that the interest of married life, from its very nearness, has a still stronger influence upon the mind of any thinking person, of either sex, than the approbation of unnumbered readers in distinct countries or continents? You never see the effect of your thinking on your read-or to keep up the interest of their lives. It is ers; they live and die far away from you, a few write letters of praise or criticism, the thousands give no sign. But the wife is with you always, she is almost as near to you as your own body; the world, to you, is a figure-picture in which there is one figure, the rest is merely background. And if an author takes pains to renew his mind for the people in the background, is it not at least equally worth your while to bring fresh thought for the renewal of your life with her?

This, then, is my theory of the intellectual marriage, that the two wedded intellects ought to renew themselves continually for each other. And I argue that if this were done in earnest, the otherwise inevitable dulness would be perpetually kept at bay.

To the other question, whether in actual life I have ever seen this realized, I answer yes,

in several instances.

Not in very many instances, yet in more than one. Women, when they have conceived the idea that this renewal is necessary, have resolution enough for the realization of it. There is hardly any task too hard for them, if they believe it essential to the conjugal life. I could give you the name and address of one who mastered Greek in order not to be excluded from her husband's favorite pursuit; others have mastered other languages for the same object, and even some branch of science for which the feminine mind has less natural affinity than it has for imaginative literature. Their remarkable incapacity for independent mental labor is accompanied by an equally remarkable capacity for labor under an accepted masculine guidance. In this connection I may without impropriety mention one Englishwoman, for she is already celebrated, the wife of Sir Samuel Baker, the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza. She stood with him on the shore of that unknown sea, when first it was beheld by English eyes; she had passed with him through all the hard preliminary toils and trials. She had learned Arabic with him in a year of necessary but

done much more frequently by women than
by men. They have so much less egotism, so
much more adaptability, that they fit them-
selves to us oftener than we adapt ourselves
to them. But in a quiet perfect marriage these
efforts would be mutual. The husband would
endeavor to make life interesting to his com-
panion by taking a share in some pursuit which
was really her own. It is easier for us than
it was for our ancestors to do this at least
for our immediate ancestors. There existed,
fifty years ago, a most irrational prejudice,
very strongly rooted in the social conventions
of the time, about masculine and feminine ac-
complishments. The educations of the two
sexes were so trenchantly separated that
neither had access to the knowledge of the
other. The men had learned Latin and Greek,
of which the women were ignorant; the
women had learned French or Italian, which
the men could neither read nor speak. The
ladies studied fine art, not seriously, but it occu-
pied a good deal of their time and thoughts;
the gentlemen had a manly contempt for it,
which kept them, as contempt always does, in
a state of absolute ignorance. The intellectual
separation of the sexes was made as complete
as possible by the conventionally received idea
that a man could not learn what girls learned
without effeminacy, and that if women aspired
to men's knowledge they would forfeit the
delicacy of their sex. This illogical prejudice
was based on a bad syllogism of this kind:-
Girls speak French, and learn music and
drawing.

Benjamin speaks French, and learns music
and drawing.
Benjamin is a girl.

And the prejudice, powerful as it was, had not even the claim of any considerable antiquity. Think how strange and unreasonable it would have seemed to Lady Jane Grey and Sir Philip Sidney! In their time, ladies and gentlemen studied the same things, the world of culture was the same for both, and they could meet in it as in a garden.

Happily we are coming back to the old ra- | less they are urged to it, and directed in it, by tional notion of culture as independent of the some powerful masculine influence. In the question of sex. Latin and Greek are not un- absence of that influence, although their minds feminine; they were spoken by women in are active, that activity neither tends to disAthens and Rome; the modern languages are cipline nor to the accumulation of knowledge. fit for a man to learn, since men use them Women who are not impelled by some mascontinually on the battle-fields and in the par- culine influence are not superior, either in liaments and exchanges of the world. Art is knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the a manly business, if ever any human occupa- age of fifty to what they were at the age of tion could be called manly, for the utmost twenty-five. In other words, they have not efforts of the strongest men are needed for in themselves the motive powers which can success in it. cause an intellectual advance.

The increasing interest in the fine arts, the The best illustration of this is a sisterhood more important position given to modern lan- of three or four rich old maids, with all the guages in the universities, the irresistible at- advantages of leisure. You will observe that tractions and growing authority of science, they invariably remain, as to their education, all tend to bring men and women together on where they were left by their teachers many subjects understood by both, and therefore years before. They will often lament, peroperate directly in favor of intellectual inter-haps, that in their day education was very inests in marriage. You will not suspect me of a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royalty if I trace some of these changes in public opinion to the example and influence of the Prince Consort, operating with some effect during his life, yet with far greater force since he was taken away from us. The truth is, that the most modern English ideal of gentlemanly culture is that which Prince Albert, to a great extent, realized in his own person. Perhaps his various accomplishments may be a little embellished or exaggerated in the popular belief, but it is unquestionable that his notion of culture was very large and liberal, and quite beyond the narrow pedantry of the preceding age. There was nothing in it to exclude a woman, and we know that she who loved him entered largely into the works and recreations of his life.

LETTER IV.

ferior to what it is now; but it never occurs to them that the large leisure of subsequent years might, had it been well employed, have supplied those deficiencies of which they are sensible. Nothing is more curiously remote from masculine habits than the resignation to particular degrees of ignorance, as to the inevitable, which a woman will express in a manner which says: "You know I am so; you know that I cannot make myself better informed." They are like pertect billiard-balls on a perfect table, which stop when no longer impelled, wherever they may happen to be.

It is this absence of intellectual initiative which causes the great ignorance of women. What they have been well taught, that they know, but they do not increase their stores of knowledge. Even in what most interests them, theology, they repeat, but do not extend, their information. All the effort of their minds appears (so far as an outside observer may presume to judge) to act like water on a picture, which brings out the colors that already exist upon the canvas but does not add

PO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED anything to the design. There is a great and

MARRIAGE.

Women do not or themselves undertake intellectual laborTheir resignation to ignorance-Absence of scientific curiosity in women-They do not accumulate accurate knowledge-Archimedes in his bath-Rarity of inventions due to women-Exceptions.

perpetual freshness and vividness in their conceptions, which is often lacking in our own. Our conceptions fade, and are replaced; theirs are not replaced, but refreshed.

What many women do for their theological conceptions or opinions, others do with referBEFORE saying much about the influence of ence to the innumerable series of questions of marriage on the intellectual life, it is neces- all kinds which present themselves in the sary to make some inquiry into the intellect-course of life. They attempt to solve them ual nature of women.

by the help of knowledge acquired in girlThe first thing to be noted is that, with ex- hood; and if that cannot be done, they either ceptions so rare as to be practically of no give them up as beyond the domain of women, importance to an argument, women do not or else trust to hearsay for a solution. What of themselves undertake intellectual labor. they will not do is to hunt the matter out unEven in the situations most favorable for labor aided, and get an accurate answer by dint of of that kind, women do not undertake it un-independent investigation.

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