J.S. MILL.

* * * * *

Age has not abated my zeal for the emancipation of my sex from the
unreasonable prejudice too prevalent in Great Britain against a literary
and scientific education for women. The French are more civilized in
this respect, for they have taken the lead, and have given the first
example in modern times of encouragement to the high intellectual
culture of the sex. Madame Emma Chenu, who had received the degree of
Master of Arts from the Faculty of Sciences of the University in Paris,
has more recently received the diploma of Licentiate in Mathematical
Sciences from the same illustrious Society, after a successful
examination in algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, the
differential and integral calculus, and astronomy. A Russian lady has
also taken a degree; and a lady of my acquaintance has received a gold
medal from the same Institution.

I joined in a petition to the Senate of London University, praying that
degrees might be granted to women; but it was rejected. I have also
frequently signed petitions to Parliament for the Female Suffrage, and
have the honour now to be a member of the General Committee for Woman
Suffrage in London.

* * * * *

[My mother, in alluding to the great changes in public opinion which
she had lived to see, used to remark that a commonly well-informed
woman of the present day would have been looked upon as a prodigy of
learning in her youth, and that even till quite lately many
considered that if women were to receive the solid education men
enjoy, they would forfeit much of their feminine grace and become
unfit to perform their domestic duties. My mother herself was one of
the brightest examples of the fallacy of this old-world theory, for
no one was more thoroughly and gracefully feminine than she was,
both in manner and appearance; and, as I have already mentioned, no
amount of scientific labour ever induced her to neglect her home
duties. She took the liveliest interest in all that has been done of
late years to extend high class education to women, both classical
and scientific, and hailed the establishment of the Ladies' College
at Girton as a great step in the true direction, and one which could
not fail to obtain most important results. Her scientific library,
as already stated, has been pr