the incorrectness and essential absurdity of which I
have already commented.

As to another attributed superiority of the Yankee woman I must express
my surprised dissent. I have not only read, but heard their intelligence
and social qualities rated much higher than that of their sisters in
England. Fair countrywomen, heed not this flattery. It is not true. The
typical Englishwoman of the upper and upper middle class has in strength
of mind and in information no type counterpart in "America." She may not
know Latin, and she may, and get little good by it; she may not be
brilliant, or quick, or self-adaptive, and she generally is not; but she
is well informed both as to the past and the present; she shows the
effect rather of true education than of school cramming, of culture
inherited and slowly acquired, and of intercourse with able, highly
educated, and cultivated men. She generally has some accomplishment
which she has acquired in no mere showy boarding-school fashion, but
with a respectable thoroughness. England is full of ladies who paint
well in water colors, or who are musicians, not mere piano players, or
who are botanists, or who write well, and who add one or more of such
acquirements to a solid general education, a considerable knowledge of
affairs, and the ability to manage a large household.

The conversation of the society in which such women are found is far
more interesting, far worthier of respect than that which is heard in
fashionable society (and these women are fashionable) in "America." And
this without any reproach to the latter. For how could it be otherwise
than that women who are the daughters, sisters, and wives of men who
are themselves highly educated, and who have the affairs of a great
empire, if not in their hands, at least upon their minds, should in all
that can be acquired by intercourse with such men be superior to others
most of whom bear the same relations to men who are necessarily
inferior in all these respects, who are absorbed in business, and know
little beyond their business except what can be learned from the
hurried reading of newspapers? In England there is not only accumulated
wealth, but accumulated culture; and of this the result appears not
only in the men, but in the women. It could not be otherwise.
Englishwomen are companions, and friends, and helps to their fathers,
their husbands, to all the men of their household. They are not
absorbed in the mere external affai