s,
sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard
of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its
reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its
measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any
literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women
should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to
offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own
behalf. She says that

The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form,
because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid
education of women.

That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own
efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to
be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to
be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power,
and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as
sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When
educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and
affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard
rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come
to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and
feeble a soil to bear much tillage."

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 does not