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To all adult minds, lectures convey instruction more happily than recitation; and, when men and women are taught together, the lecture system is valuable, because it permits the mind to appropriate its own nutriment, and does not oppress the faculties with uncongenial food.

To those who are familiar with the whole question, no theme is more painful than that of the inadequate compensation and depressed position of the female teacher. There is no need to harp on this discordant string. Let us strike its key-note in a single story.

A year ago, in one of the most beautiful towns of this neighborhood, separated by a grassy common, shaded with drooping elms, rose two ample buildings, dedicated to the same purpose. They were the High Schools for the two sexes.

They were taught by two persons, admirably fitted for their work. The man, uncommonly happy in imparting instruction, was yet deficient in mathematics, and considered by competent judges inferior to the woman.

Since I first began to speak upon this subject, a very great change has taken place: women are put in places which require higher culture and greater administrative capacity. They are also paid better wages: these wages are not yet in fair proportion to what are paid to men for the same work; and the shameful argument is still used, that we employ women, chiefly because men will not work for the same price. The Roxbury High School, the Shurtleff Grammar School in Chelsea, the Normal School at St. Louis, and the Normal School at Framingham, are now under the charge of women. In the list of teachers from the Oswego School, we find four who are paid one thousand dollars a year, and eleven who are paid seven hundred dollars. Our daily press is very well satisfied with this; but, since 1860, what portion of a decent living will seven hundred dollars provide to a cultivated woman? When the salaries of the St. Louis teachers were raised in 1866, the principal was obliged to express her indignation before her salary was raised to its present sum of two thousand dollars. Had she been a man, she would certainly have had as much as the principal of the High School; namely, twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars. A graduate of Antioch College, assisting in the High School at St. Louis, has twelve hundred dollars, where a man would have seventeen hundred dollars. Miss Brackett's own assistants in the Normal School have eleven hundred dollars.

The appointment of Miss Johnson to the head of the Normal School at Framingham will open the way to a similar change in many quarters, if what Governor Bullock has not disdained to call the "policy of Massachusetts" is consistently carried out. I do not know what salary is offered to Miss Johnson; but, if it were equal to that of the man who preceded her, would not the newspapers have told us? The comparative value of these salaries is not shown by the figures. It depends on the prices of gold, and of food and provisions, each year. It cannot be half as great as an inexperienced person would think.

There is a great want of female teachers of Latin and French. School committees assure me, that proficients in language would be certain of good pay in our high schools. For the most part, women prefer to devote themselves to mathematics. I used to say, with a smile, in the Western States, that all the women could read the "M?canique C?leste;" but they found Caesar and T?l?maque equally uninteresting. Later, Colonel Higginson bears witness to the impossibility of getting good classical teachers.

It is a common idea, that the standard of education is higher now than it was thirty years ago. It may be doubted. More things are taught in schools,--ologies, isms, and the like; but the most thorough teachers are not the most popular, and it may be questioned, whether in the best minds on the Continent, in England, or this country, so great progress has been made as has been generally claimed. There is much more liberality in regard to the general question, but no more in regard to the ideal standard.

In one of Niebuhr's letters to Madame Hensler, he says, in speaking of Klopstock: "The character of the women is a remarkable feature of the time of Klopstock's youth. The cultivation of the mind was carried incomparably farther with them than with nearly all the young women of our days; and this we should scarcely have expected to find in the cotemporaries of our grandmothers. It was not, therefore, the influence of our native literature; for that first rose into being along with, and under the influence of, the love inspired by these charming maidens. For some time after the Thirty Years' War, the ladies of Germany, particularly those of the middle classes, were excessively coarse and uneducated. This wonderful alteration must have taken place, therefore, during eighty years,--between 1660 and 1740; though we are quite ignorant how and when it began."

The ancient standard of Italy was very high, even in the fifteenth century, if we consider only the literary skill or mathematical culture frequently desired and attained; but Anna Maria Mozzoni may congratulate herself on having given a moral and social impetus to it, which it has never before received. Her wise, considerate, philosophical suggestions will meet the cordial welcome of all right-minded women. If followed out, they will create nobler women than Tambroni or Laura Veratti.

"But," says Mrs. Jameson, "if a petition were drawn up, and handed to medical men, praying that women should not be trained as nurses, nor taught the laws of health, I am afraid there are well-intentioned men, who would, at the time, be induced to sign it; but I believe that twenty, nay, even ten years hence, they would look back upon their signatures with as much disgust and amazement as is now excited by the attempt to explode and sneer down the school at Marlborough House."

Indelicacy, forsooth! Where can we find it, if not in the impure nature which raises the objection, and the low manner of thinking in general society which consents to receive it? May not the mother, who receives her naked new-born child from the hand of God, fitly ask to understand the liabilities of its little frame? May not the wife, called in seasons of sickness to the most delicate and trying duties, modestly ask for that thorough culture which alone can make those duties easy? And who make this objection? Men who go shuddering and half-drunken into the dissecting room, to scatter vile jests above that prostrate temple of the Holy Ghost! Men who see nothing in the exquisite development of God's creation, but the reflection of their own obscene lives! Students who know no better way to steel their courage to the use of the scalpel than to play at foot-ball on the college green with a human skull, holding its dignity to the level of their own honor!

The best hope that Jessie Meriton White has for England is, that some of the most distinguished professors shall consent in time to take classes of female students.

The office of the physician is as holy as that of the priest: formerly they were one; now, at least, the physician should be priest-like. Irreverence and impurity should be banished from medical ranks. The science of medicine stands in great need of the intuitive genius of woman. In pursuing it, she will need the steady caution of man. In this country and in France, earnest and devoted students of both sexes have stood in the dissecting room to the benefit of both. So let them continue to stand, till the spirit is known by its fruits. An impure man is no better than an impure woman; but impurity among men may be concealed. Let it come between the two sexes, and it will be brought at once into antagonism with society, and will meet its true desert. The objection reveals the secrets of the medical college, and is the strongest argument ever offered for the medical education of women.

And what have we to say of our own country? Has the American standard reached a safe altitude, or must we admit that it has the same limitations? A popular width of view we have certainly gained in the last half-century; but have we made secure progress in the right direction? Some eighty years ago, John Adams wrote of his wife, "This lady was more beautiful than Lady Russell, had a brighter genius, more information, and more refined taste, and was at least her equal in virtues of the heart, in fortitude and firmness of character, in resignation to the will of Heaven, and in all the virtues and graces of the Christian life. Like Lady Russell, she never discouraged her husband from running all hazards for the salvation of his country's liberties; she was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."

We have said enough to show, that in Germany, France, England, and America, the ideal standard of education was sufficiently high over a century ago. Why has not such actual progress been made as might have been expected?

As exquisite beauty of water, hill, and dale lies hidden in many a country hamlet, unheeded by the guidebook, unsuspected by the traveller on the turnpike road; so, in society, self-sacrifice, noble daring, and saintly perseverance, nestle behind the prominent failure. We find them everywhere, except where we should most naturally look for them.

We can recall the argument used in those Eastern lands, and the answer which civilization offered. "I am afraid to teach my women," said the Turk: "they are already crafty and impure. To gather them into public places is to offer a premium on immodesty, and a temptation to misconduct." The Christian answered proudly, "We can trust our women; yes, even in Paris and London."

Soon after their arrival, Miss Rogers died; but her friend was not discouraged. In the following March, an officer of state, Hekekyan Effendi, came to inquire whether she would take charge of the royal women, one hundred in number, and the nearest relatives of the sovereign. Much depended, it was thought, upon the co-operation of the oldest daughter, Nas-lee Hanoom; and it was His Highness's desire that the heads of the family should be formed into a committee to extend female schools. See how this Mohammedan officer writes to Miss Holliday.

In August, she writes: "My visits have been attended with the most cheering success. I am received and honored with every possible distinction; but, added to my school, it is a great fatigue." Her character in every way sustained the effect of her teaching. She was offered thirty pounds a month for her attendance at the hareem, but thought ten pounds sufficient, and would accept no more. In October, a box of presents was received from England. When Hekekyan was invited to look into this box, he seized upon some scientific plates sent to the young princess. "Ah!" said he, "these are the things we need." The Pacha was captivated, in his turn, by an orrery, and a model of the Thames Tunnel. The hareem sent back a similar box, and Nas-lee herself worked a scarf for the queen. Miss Holliday was soon ordered to translate some of her books into Turkish; and her princesses wrote touching letters to their English friends. Soon after, we find this indefatigable woman teaching English, French, drawing, and writing, in the hareem of a late Governor of Cairo. Education must begin with languages; for Egypt has no literature to offer to her children. In 1840 Victoria sent to the hareem a portrait of herself, which was carried in procession and hung with proper honors by the side of that of the pacha. Very soon came an Egyptian Society for the Promotion of Female Education. Scientific instruments and books were ordered. An infant school began with one hundred and fifty children. The hareem demanded another teacher, and Mrs. Lieder was sent out. In 1844 a male school was formed, and European teachers imported. The young girls, who had begun with needle-work eight years before, were now studying Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, geography, arithmetic, and drawing. "What a change," writes Alice in 1846,--"what a change within the last ten years! When I came to Egypt, there was not a woman who could read; and now some hundreds have not only the power, but the best books. Year after year, I have been permitted to see the growth of a new civilization. What a change has come over the royal family since I first entered it! The desire for trifles is preparing the way for our noblest gifts; and a fatal blow has been struck at the whole system of hareems." It would be pleasant to trace this devoted woman farther, to know whether she still lives, and if she has reached the Abyssinian plains. In this humble way began the great educational movement in Egypt, which gave strength and vitality to Mehemet Ali's best-considered plans, which has sent scores of young princes to Paris, and will eventually change the face of the whole land.

In support of this "exception," the superintendent of the New-York City Schools, long ago, reported, that its female schools, whether by merit of teachers or pupils or both, are of a much higher grade than the male schools. Eighteen girls'-schools are superior, in average attainment, to the very best boys'-school. He goes on to speak of the rapidity with which women acquire knowledge, in terms which remind us of Margaret Fuller, when she remarks of Dr. Channing, that it was not very pleasant to read to him; "for," said she, "he takes in subjects more deliberately than is conceivable to us feminine people, with our habits of ducking, diving, or flying for truth." In speaking of her classes at Vassar College, Miss Mitchell says : "I have a class of seventeen pupils, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. They come to me for fifty minutes every day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by them daily. They show more mathematical ability, and more originality of thought, than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?"

At the session of the Michigan Legislature, held in 1857-8, petitions were received, asking that women might be permitted to enjoy all the advantages of the State University. The committee to whom the subject was referred, took counsel with the older colleges at the East, whose whole spirit and method is as much opposed to such an idea as that of Oxford. The result was, that they reported against any change for the present,--a report the more to be regretted, as Ann Arbor has a broader University foundation than any institution within the limits of the United States. The University has lately petitioned for a larger endowment, and again an effort has been made to secure its advantages for women; Theodore Tilton pleading before the committee in their behalf, in February, 1867. We know of twenty-seven colleges in the United States, open to men and women, of which Oberlin was the noble pioneer.

The highest culture has been claimed for women: it has been shown, that, for two centuries, the ideal of such a culture has existed, but has been depressed by an erroneous public opinion. There has, however, been a steady growth in the right direction, which entitles us to ask for a "revised and corrected" public opinion. The influence of mental culture is a small thing by the side of that insinuating atmospheric power and the customs of society which it controls. All educated men and women, all liberal souls, therefore, should do their utmost to invigorate public opinion. To allow no weakness to escape us, to challenge every falsehood as it passes, to brave every insinuation and sneer, is what duty demands. Can you not bear to be called "women's-rights women"? To whom has the name ever been agreeable? Society gives the lie to your purest instincts, and you bear it. It calls the truths you accept hard names, and you are dumb. It throws stones, and you shrink behind some ragged social fence, leaving a few weak women to stand the assault alone.

When Mary Patton had carried her ship round Cape Horn,--standing in a parlor where the air was close, though the breezes that entered at its open casement swept the Common as they came, a woman told, with newly kindled enthusiasm, the story of that wonderful voyage. She gave her, in warm words, her wifely and womanly due. "She saved the ship, God bless her!" she said as she concluded; and another voice, that once was sweet, responded, "More shame to her!"

"'More shame to her!'" repeated the first speaker, as if she had been struck a sudden blow; and turning quickly towards the girl, beautiful, well educated, carefully reared, who, in the fulness of her twenty summers, found time for church-going, for clothing the poor, for elegant study, for every thing but sympathy,--"More shame!" she repeated: "What! for saving life and property?"--"Better that they should all have gone to the bottom," returned her friend, "than that one woman should step out of her sphere!" Ah! the Infinite Father knows how to educate the public opinion that we need. Now and then he lifts a woman, as he did Mary Patton, against her will out of her ordinary routine; and, while all the world gaze at her with tender sympathy, they half accept the coming future.

"Public opinion is of slow growth," you retort: "do not charge its corruptions on the people of to-day."

The people of to-day are responsible for any corruptions which they do not reject.

We have seen that the standard of womanly education does not lead where it should, because controlled by a public opinion which demands too little. It becomes us here to investigate the origin of that public opinion, and to ask the meaning of the lives which have been lived in its despite.

FOOTNOTES:

This does not mean the supervision of father and mother, but that into colleges, universities, medical schools, and whatever educational institutions may be named, the controlling and protecting influence of both sexes should be carried. I believe that every university should have a cultivated and elegant woman , whose duty it should be to preside over its social life, and offer such allurements to virtuous pleasure that gambling-houses and worse shall lose their present fascinations. If young men could associate with virtuous and lovely women, under suitable sanction, in their college life, they would not, in general, go out of it in search of the vicious and unlovely. No one who lives within three miles of a large university need doubt the meaning of this paragraph. An age and a religious faith which discards the cloister, should discard a cloisteral fashion, wherever it exists.

"Society offered her no welcome." I am very well aware that this statement, taken with what I shall elsewhere indicate, will be considered an exaggeration; but, with a somewhat wide and varied experience of the United States and of Canada, I maintain it to be true. I am not to say what is true in the eyes of others, but what is true in my own. "What!" some one will exclaim, "education not a passport to social honor! Where was there ever a country where the teacher was respected as she is in New England?" Theoretically, this is true; and I have known a few instances in New England, in which teachers of private schools, of good family, successful in acquiring wealth , kept an eminent social position. Men generally keep a fair position; women, rarely. To test the truth of this, let me press the question. To whom do we all, to whom does the Commonwealth, owe a sacred debt, if not to the teachers of the primary and the grammar schools? Among these women, I have found some of the most delicate, high-bred, and cultivated women whom I have ever known of the same age. Let any one who sees them collected on public occasions glance at them, and judge; but, in cities at least, these women are never in society. Their meagre salaries prevent them from dressing as ladies must be dressed for a large company. For the same reason, their boarding-places are obscure and lonely. The middle class of artisans, &c., who send their children to the public schools, seek no intercourse with those whose refinement seems to isolate them; the upper class look down upon them very kindly, but never think of inviting them to meet distinguished people, of showing them rare books or pictures, of stimulating their worn-out faculties in any way. Why do we not make these teachers our first care? Should we not be more than repaid--if pay we must have--by the cheer and comfort added to the schoolroom in which our children are to be taught? I have tried the experiment of bringing these tired souls into contact with those who ought to refresh them. It does marvellously well, until the crucial question is asked, "Who is she?" If I answer, "The teacher of a primary school," what a change of countenance, what a fading of the cordial smile, what passive indifference! and this, in cases where, in refinement and delicacy of manner, the young lady might pass unchallenged anywhere. But let the subject of my experiment be a girl of genius; with such cultivation only as a Normal School could add to the education of a country home; deficient still in the minor graces of deportment; too energetic and adventurous, perhaps, to be elegant; and who will take a motherly interest in her, draw her within the charmed circle where she shall learn to carry herself with reserve and dignity, and to veil her flashing powers, that they may warm where they have hitherto consumed?

No: I do not exaggerate. I believe we are all concerned to know in what sort of homes, under what influences, with what helps to health and happiness, these lonely and isolated girls pass the hours when they are not engaged in teaching. It concerns us, in the first place, of course, because theirs are the direct influences which mould our children; but I scorn that argument. It concerns us far more because they are the children of the same Father, engaged in the most trying of human vocations, and entitled as women, especially as unprotected women, to the sympathy of all mothers.

"This," you will say, "was at the South. It grew out of that spirit of 'caste' which died with slavery." Is it indeed dead? Is there no spirit of caste in Massachusetts?

Un Passo Avanti nella Cultura Femminile Fesi e Progetto di Anna Maria Mozzoni Mitano. 1866.

I would gladly expunge the bitter reproof of these lines; but they record a fact which occurred at a medical school, where such an application was made, and must stand as history.

The three parts of this book have been made to conform to the census and statistics of the year 1850. To bring them up to the year 1860 would require a repetition of all the labor originally devoted to the question. That would be unwise if it were possible, for it could not alter the bearing of any statements; and it is not possible, because we have now no certain values in America. I had from the first intended to indicate in notes any important changes that had taken place in this decade. I had earnestly hoped to be able to contradict here the statements in the text in regard to medical opportunities for women, and the proper training of sick nurses, in England. But my English correspondents assure me that I have no occasion to change any thing; that the facts remain substantially what they were when my manuscript was written.

"But," says some watchful woman, "has not Miss Garrett taken her degree from Apothecaries' Hall? and have not a few women at least been trained as sick nurses?"

The case, as it has been stated to us, is an exemplification, on a gigantic scale, of all that we complain of; and proves our statement, that women have not won an education for themselves, till they win with it its legitimate results. For their opportunities as things now stand, all over the world, women pay a premium on the terms offered to men. Let them take these opportunities as tools, and try to win their bread with them, and the wages offered are, as a rule, a large discount on those offered to men. Political economy has nothing to do with the exceptional cases in which this is most evident,--only the common, habitual idea, that the wages of women must be kept down; and that, to do it, the value of superior labor must not be recognized, as in the case of the female teacher quoted in the text.

In the Report of St. Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children, in Marylebone, I find Miss Elizabeth Garrett mentioned as the General Medical Attendant. The Devonshire-square Nursing Institute, established, I think, by Mrs. Fry, twenty years ago, sends out nurses on the request of clergymen. Several sisters give their whole time to it.

King's College pays one thousand pounds annually for nurses to St. John's Home.

St. Thomas's Hospital, where nurses are being trained by the Nightingale fund, rejected fifty applications in six months.

The excitement in England has had a wholesome effect upon colonial action. The East-Indian Government has lately given Lady Canning twenty thousand rupees, to assist in building a home for the Calcutta Nurses' Institute; and a movement is making in India to educate native women as physicians. See, in the Appendix, the account of Miss Nightingale's School for Nurses in Liverpool.

See Appendix.

HOW PUBLIC OPINION IS MADE.

The existing public opinion with regard to woman has been formed by the influence of heathen ages and institutions, kept up by a mistaken study of the classics,--a study so pursued, that Athens and Rome, Aristophanes and Juvenal, are more responsible for the popular views of woman, and for the popular mistakes in regard to man's position toward her, than any thing that has been written later.

This influence pervades all history; and so the study of history becomes, in its turn, the source of still greater and more specious error, except to a few rare and original minds, whose eccentricities have been pardoned to their genius, but who have never influenced the world to the extent that they have been influenced by it.

The adages or proverbs of all nations are the outgrowths of their first attempts at civilization. They began at a time which knew neither letter-paper nor the printing-press; and they perpetuate the rudest ideas, such as are every way degrading to womanly virtue. The influence of general literature is impelled by the mingled current. For many centuries, it was the outgrowth of male minds only, of such as had been drilled for seven years at least into all the heathenisms of which we speak.

Women, when they first began to work, followed the masculine idea, shared the masculine culture. As a portion of general literature, the novel, as the most popular, exerts the widest sway. No educational influence in this country compares with it; even that of the pulpit looks trivial beside it. There are thousands whom that influence never reaches; hardly one who cannot beg or buy a newspaper, with its story by some "Sylvanus Cobb."

From the first splash of the Atlantic on a Massachusetts beach to the farthest ca?on which the weary footsteps of the Mormon women at this moment press; from the shell-bound coast of Florida, hung with garlands of orange and lime, to the cold, green waters of Lake Superior, in their fretted chalice of copper and gold,--the novel holds its way. On the railroad, at the depot, in the Irish hut, in the Indian lodge, on the steamer and the canal-boat, in the Fifth-avenue palace, and the Five-Points den of infamy, its shabby livery betrays the work that it is doing.

Social customs follow in the train of literature; and sometimes in keeping with popular errors, but oftener in stern opposition to them, are the lives and labors of remarkable individuals of both sexes,--lives that show, if they show nothing else, how much the resolute endeavor of one noble heart may do towards making real and popular its own convictions.

The influence of newspapers sustains, of course, the general current derived from all these sources.

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