ABSTRACT
This brings us to the want of education which has hung like a dead wdght upon women's creative faculties. A discovery, an invention, may be the happy effort of a moment, but it is the result of years of patient study and research. A boy learns his lessons with hard drill, which sharpens his observing and reasoning powers; 0. girl slurs over her work, only employing half her mind, learning nothing to the bottom, but satisfied ifit makes 0. show. The inaccurate and illogical habit of mind produced in women by the want of tlloroughness in theil' early education has been far more disastrous to them than the actual want of knowledge. Besides this, comparatively few fathers have cared to instruct their aaughters in their profession; even a painter 01' musician seldom expects hIS girls to take up his career. Tho women who have achieved eminence are almost selft.aught: Mrs. Somerville gave herself her education; Miss Herschel was almost the servant-of all work of her family, and could with difficulty even obtain a few music lessons. Milton's daughtel'S read Greek and Latin to him by ear onlv, never being taught to understand what they read. Instances of this SOl't might be multiplied indefinitely.
