duties, she was very tolerant of human infirmities.  She was faithful in reproof, but having once given her friendship she held on to it with great tenacity; she clung to the worldly Horace Walpole as she did to Dr. Johnson.  The most intimate woman friend of her long life was a Catholic.  Hannah was never married, which was not her fault, for she was jilted by the man she loved,—­for whom, however, she is said to have retained a friendly feeling to the last.  Though unmarried, she was addressed as Mrs., not Miss, More; and she seems to have insisted on this, which I think was a weakness, since the dignity of her character, her fame and high social position, needed no conventional crutch to make her appear more matronly.  As a mere fashionable woman of society, her name would never have descended to our times; as a moralist she is immortal, so far as any writer can be.  As an author, I do not regard her as a great original genius; but her successful and honorable career shows how much may be done by industry and perseverance.  Her memory is kept especially fresh from the interest she took in the education of her sex, and from her wise and sage counsels, based on religion and a wide experience.  No woman ever had better opportunities for the study of her sex, or more nobly improved them.  She was the most enlightened advocate of a high education for women that her age and even her century produced.

Now, what is meant by a high education for women? for in our times the opinions of people in regard to this matter are far from being harmonious.  Indeed, on no subject is there more disagreement; there is no subject which provokes more bitter and hostile comments; there is no subject on which both men and women wrangle with more acerbity, even when they are virtually agreed,—­for the instincts of good women are really in accord with the profoundest experience and reason of men.

In the few remarks to which I am now limited I shall not discuss the irritating and disputed question of co-education of the sexes, which can only be settled by experience.  On this subject we have not yet sufficient facts for a broad induction.  On the one hand, it would seem that so long as young men and women mingle freely together in amusements, at parties and balls, at the theatre and opera, in the lecture-room, in churches, and most public meetings, it is not probable that any practical evils can result from educational competition of the two sexes in the same class-rooms, especially when we consider that many eminent educators have given their testimony in its favor, so far as it has fallen under their observation and experience.  But, on the other hand, the co-education of the sexes may imply that both girls and boys, by similarity of studies, are to be educated for the same sphere.  Boys study the higher mathematics not merely for mental discipline, but in order to be engineers, astronomers, surveyors, and the like; so, too, they study chemistry, in its higher branches, to be chemists and physicians and miners.  If girls wish to do this rough work, let them know that they seek to do men’s work.  If they are to do women’s work, it would seem that they should give more attention to music, the modern languages, and ornamental branches than boys do, since few men pursue these things as a business.