tue of Elena Cornaro, professor of six
languages in that once renowned university. But Elena Cornaro was educated
like a boy, by her father. On the great door of the University of Bologna
is inscribed the epitaph of Clotilda Tambroni, the honored correspondent of
Porson, and the first Greek scholar of southern Europe in her day. But
Clotilda Tambroni was educated like a boy, by Emanuele Aponte. How fine are
those prefatory words, "by a Right Reverend Prelate," to that pioneer book
in Anglo-Saxon lore, Elizabeth Elstob's grammar: "Our earthly possessions
are indeed our patrimony, as derived to us by the industry of our fathers;
but the language in which we speak is our mother tongue, and who so proper
to play the critic in this as the females?" Yet this particular female
obtained the rudiments of her rare education from her mother, before she
was eight years old, in spite of much opposition from her right reverend
guardians. Adelung declares that all modern philology is founded on the
translation of a Russian vocabulary into two hundred different dialects
by Catherine II. But Catherine shared, in childhood, the instructors of
her brother, Prince Frederick, and was subject to some reproach for
learning, though a girl, so much more rapidly than he did. Christina of
Sweden ironically reproved Madame Dacier for her translation of
Callimachus: "Such a pretty girl as you are, are you not ashamed to be so
learned?" But Madame Dacier acquired Greek by contriving to do her
embroidery in the room where her father was teaching her stupid brother;
and her queenly critic had herself learned to read Thucydides, harder
Greek than Callimachus, before she was fourteen. And so down to our own
day, who knows how many mute, inglorious Minervas may have perished
unenlightened, while Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
were being educated "like boys."

This expression simply means that they had the most solid training which
the times afforded. Most persons would instantly take alarm at the very
words; that is, they have so little faith in the distinctions which Nature
has established, that they think, if you teach the alphabet, or anything
else, indiscriminately to both sexes, you annul all difference between
them. The common reasoning is thus: "Boys and girls are acknowledged to
be very unlike. Now, boys study Greek and algebra, medicine and
bookkeeping. Therefore girls should not." As if one should say: "Boys
and girls are