et 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.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.

Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor--Their
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.

Before saying much about the influence of marriage on the intellectual
life, it is necessary to make some inquiry into the intellectual nature
of women.

The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be
practically of no importance to an argument, women do not of themselves
undertake intellectual labor. Even in the situations most favorable for
labor of that kind, women do not undertake it unless they are urged to
it, and directed in it, by some powerful masculine influence. In the
absence of that influence, although their minds are active, that
activity neither tends to discipline nor to the accumulation of
knowledge. Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are
not superior, either in knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the age
of fifty to what they were at the age of twenty-five. In other words,
they have not in themselves the motive powers which can cause an
intellectual advance.

The best illustration of this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old
maids, with all the advantages of leisure. You will observe that they
invariably remain, as to their education, where they were left by their
teachers many years before. They will often lament, perhaps, that in
their day education was very inferior 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 ignora