n
the vital question of the relation between mind and matter. And then,
look at her writings! She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for
eloquence, and affectation for originality; she struts on one page, rolls
her eyes on another, grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth.
She may have read many writings of great men, and a few writings of great
women; but she is as unable to discern the difference between her own
style and theirs as a Yorkshireman is to discern the difference between
his own English and a Londoner's: rhodomontade is the native accent of
her intellect. No--the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble
a soil to bear much tillage; it is only fit for the very lightest crops."

It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very
superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the
world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only pointing
out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered
themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not
believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by
associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her
knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, like
a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her
knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like
just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters
herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it
a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself.
She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation; not
because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of
men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and Latinity does not
present itself to her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books
to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that
delight them. In conversation she is the least formidable of women,
because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you
_can't_ understand her. She does not give you information, which is the
raw material of culture--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest
essence.

A more numerous class of silly novels than the oracular (which are
generally inspired by some form of High Church or transcendental
Christianity) is what