are desolate and oppressed."

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence; perhaps you will
not be with me in what I believe is most needful for me to say. There
is one dangerous science for women--one which they must indeed beware
how they profanely touch--that of theology. Strange, and miserably
strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and
pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and
sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of
incompetency, into that science in which the greatest men have
trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, that they will complacently
and pridefully bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them,
whatever arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into one
bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born to be
Love visible, that where they can know least, they will condemn first,
and think to recommend themselves to their Master, by scrambling up the
steps of His judgment throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of all,
that they should think they were led by the Spirit of the Comforter
into habits of mind which have become in them the unmixed elements of
home discomfort; and that they dare to turn the Household Gods of
Christianity into ugly idols of their own;--spiritual dolls, for them
to dress according to their caprice; and from which their husbands must
turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at for
breaking them.

74. I believe then, with this exception, that a girl's education
should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the same as a
boy's; but quite differently directed. A woman in any rank of life,
ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in
a different way. His command of it should be foundational and
progressive; hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use.
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things in a
womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for the discipline
and training of their mental powers in such branches of study as will
be afterwards fittest for social service; but, speaking broadly, a man
ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly--while a
woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may
enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, and in those of
his best friends.

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as sh