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OUR FRENCH CORRESPONDENT. 125
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Paris, September 19, 1861. Ladies You , ...
tlie dress as much as it does the wearer , who never for a moment gives the impression of what we are in the habit of styling * a fast
woman or of affecting anything that is masculine . M . Guillaumin is preparing for immediate publication a work by
Mademoiselle Royer on direct taxation . It argues on the affirmative side of the knotty question , I am told , with an ability that
might do honor to M . Michel Chevalier , and which would certainly enchant the Manchester school of politicians . This young lady was
educated to be a teacher , or at leasfc prepared herself so well for that _j > ° f ession _> that before her nineteenth year she passed the
difficult examination necessary to obtain the superior brevet . Not , however , feeling herself sufficiently educated , she proceeded to
Lausanne , and there applied herself with the greatest assiduity to ancient languages , belles lettresand philosophy . Her industry was
, rewarded with a commensurate degree of success , and her progress became a matter of wonder to the professors under whom she placed
herself . "When she was on the eve of leaving Switzerland , the University of Lausanne offered a prize to the best essay that should
be written on some philosophical subject ; and as it was open to the competition of those who did not belong to the University as well
to those who did , Mademoiselle Koyer secretly determined to test her powers in trying to obtain the prize , which , independent of
the honor , would be of some pecuniary value . The essays were , according to the regulationall sent in signed by fictitious names ,
, and on the day _apjDointed , when the successful competitor would be publicly declared in the amphitheatre of the University , she attended
¦ with a few other ladies , who went with the _exjoeetation of hearing some of their male relatives' assumed signatures called out ; but to
their astonishment , when the President repeated twice the Greek letter signing the successful essay , their companion rose , answered to
it , and was that day the first woman who had been ever crowned by the University of Lausanne . Subsequentlyshe has measured
her-, self side by side with the most brilliant lecturers and litterateurs at the entretiens and lectures in the Hue de la Paix . The night before she
lectured , M . Louis Jourdan spoke on "Woman , reviewed her present stateand the future to which it will probably lead the fairer sex _.
, Mademoiselle Royer selected the women of antiquity , and attempted to justify the Aspasias and others celebrated in Grecian and Roman
history , whom she said were not what _jDOsterity imagines , but merely those who rebelled against the domestic servitude to which
women of that age were subjected . The fair speaker , to whom this term may be applied , in many senses , pleaded eloquently for those
of her sex who , whatever their shortcomings may have been , when judged by the hih standard of a Christian morality then unknown
must still be counted g amongst the illustrious of that glorious , republic wnich thirsted so ardently after the human perfectibility
which the pen of Plato and fche chisel of Phidias almost seemed to
call into being . Those who listened to Mademoiselle Royer were
Our French Correspondent. 125
OUR _FRENCH CORRESPONDENT . 125
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1861, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101861/page/53/
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