earning well, we had
some reason to alledge against wymend, but seeing misuse is commonly
both the kinds, why blame we their infirmitie whence we free not
ourselves." He then contends that a young gentlewoman who can write
well and swiftly, sing clearly and sweetly, play well and finely, and
employ readily the learned languages with some "logicall helpe to chop
and some rhetoricke to brave," is well furnished, and that such a one
is not likely to bring up her children a whit the worse, even if she
becomes a Loelia, a Hortensia, or a Cornelia. In discussing whether or
not girls should be taught by their own sex, he inclines to the belief
that this practice were advisable, but that discreet men might teach
girls to advantage. To use his own words: "In teachers, their owne
sex were fittest in some respects, but ours frame them best, and,
with good regard to some circumstances, will bring them up excellently
well." In the higher circles, where cynicism frequently assumes the
forms of wisdom, it was not universally agreed that women should
have the widest opportunities of education. In one of his discourses,
Erasmus, possibly the most accomplished of the schoolmen of the time,
opens to our view the opinion of the Church as to female scholarship
when he represents an abbot as contending that if women were learned
they could not be kept under subjection, "therefore it is a wicked,
mischievous thing to revive the ancient custom of educating them." A
remark in one of Erasmus's letters lays him open to the suspicion of
sharing somewhat in this view, for, in his description of Sir Thomas
More, he speaks of him as wise with the wise, and jesting with
fools--"with women especially, and his own wife among them."

Besides the graver matters of study which claimed their attention, the
women of England were devoted to music, needlework, and dancing, which
were the favorite fashionable pastimes. Erasmus speaks of them as
the most accomplished in musical skill of any people. Early as the
reign of Henry VIII., to read music at sight was not an uncommon
accomplishment, while those who aspired to the technique of the
subject were students of counterpoint. Musical literature was scanty;
the principal instruments were the lute, the mandolin, the clavichord,
and the virginals.

Notwithstanding its literary flavor and its identity with the great
themes of modern knowledge, the age of Elizabeth can hardly be called
a serious one from the point