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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 135
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.
1. The Of Relative Women. Valu A Lecture...
to " refresh , tlie atmosphere of daily life . " But both men and women will best succeed in this social dutywhose minds are
occupied and their faculties drawn out by som , e other definite daily work . Mothers , whose professional duty it is to guide their
households and bring up their children , artists , teachers , and professional women of all sorts , do actually exert a more softening
and harmonizing influence than any mere women of the world can do , whose influence tends mainly to keep down the moral
tone of society to a dead level of cold frivolity . Men , on the other handare not prevented by their more serious professional
avocations , from contributing their full share of the wit and the life and variety which constitute so much of the charm of society .
To set before a girl just entering upon life , the art of pleasing as the thing she is to live for—to prove only negatively that the
studies in which she may have learnt to take a deep interest have not miRtted . her for this great and important object—to lay out for
her special work " to give the light , and the colour , and the atmoall spheric t / _iat" delicacy — -to do to this societ is y , surel and the y not sentiment the best , and method the meekness of attaining , and
the and object subtle in temp view tations , while , . Our it exposes author seem a girl s to to be the justl most y disp serious leased
by sort " of consp social icuous effect effort is after set before social effect women ; but as their if to m produce ain some purpose
in life , how can we blame them if they make efforts ,, sometimes unp We leasantl shall y not consp follow icuous Mr , to . attain Hutton it ? in his skilful analysis of the
differences which he believes to exist between the masculine and the feminine intellect . Some of his assertions we are tempted
to dispute . Speculations on this subject seem to us premature , to say the least , and we deprecate hasty conclusions drawn from
the very imperfect data as yet in our possessio * n . We observe , howeverwith leasurea willingness on the part of Mr . Hutton to
do full justice , to p the ment , al powers of women . He calls attention to the deficiency of generalizing power shown in the works of most
women , and traces their special inferiority in this _resj _3 ect to the want of broader mental culturemaintaining that even the
imagination and the artistic faculties , would be strengthened by a more thorough intellectual discipline .
To one means of affording this intellectual discipline , which has lately been brought into public notice , that remarks of University Exami l -
nationsMr . Hutton devotes a few closing . He strongy objects , to setting before women " the same intellectual standard which is now put before young men" and he believes that " we
should have half the young women in , the country in brain-fever or a lunatic lumif they were to make up their minds to try " for
such a Degree asy as , that of the University of London . In support of
this some view what alarming gives a appear statement ance , which of the certainl amount of learning first sight required has a
Notices Of Books. 135
NOTICES OF BOOKS . 135
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1862, page 135, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101862/page/63/
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