indeed, a question altogether too grave, too comprehensive, and too
complicated in some of its bearings to be more than briefly alluded to
here. But let us consider education for a moment as the mere
acquirement of intellectual knowledge. This is but one of its phases,
and that one not the most important; but such is the popular, though
very inadequate, idea of the subject in America. Observe how much has
already been done in this sense for the instruction of the woman of our
country. In the common district schools, and even in the high schools
of the larger towns, the same facilities are generally offered to both
sexes; in the public schools brother and sister have, as a rule, the
same books and the same teachers. And we may go much further and say
that every woman in the country may already--IF SHE IS DETERMINED TO DO
SO--obtain very much the same intellectual instruction which her own
brother receives. If that education is a highly advanced one she will,
no doubt, have some special difficulties to contend against; but those
difficulties are not insurmountable. The doors of most colleges and
universities are closed, it is true, against women, and we can not
doubt that this course is taken for sound reasons, pointed out by good
sense and true sagacity. It is impossible not to believe that between
the ages of fifteen and five-and-twenty young men and young women will
carry on their intellectual training far more thoroughly and
successfully apart than thrown into the same classes. At that age of
vivid impressions and awakening passions, the two sexes are
sufficiently thrown together in family life and in general society for
all purposes of mutual influence and improvement. Let them chat, walk,
sing, dance together, at that period of their lives; but if you wish to
make them good scholars, let them study apart. Let their loves and
jealousies be carried on elsewhere than in the college halls. But
already female colleges, exclusively adapted to young women, are talked
of--nay, here and there one or two such colleges now exist. There is
nothing in which American men more delight, nothing more congenial to
their usual modes of thought and action, than to advance the
intellectual instruction of the whole nation, daughters as well as
sons. We may rest assured that they will not fail to grant all needful
development in this direction. One female college, of the very highest
intellectual standard, would probably be found sufficie