We find, on investigation, what these considerations would lead us to expect, that eminent women have commonly been more exceptional in their training and position than even in their genius.  They have excelled the average of their own sex because they have had more of the ordinary advantages of the other sex.  Take any department of learning or skill; take, for instance, the knowledge of languages, the universal alphabet, philology.—­On the great stairway, at Padua, stands the statue of Elena Cornaro, professor of six languages in that once renowned university.  But Elena Cornaro was educated like a boy, by her father.  On the great door of the University of Bologna is inscribed the epitaph of Clotilda Tambroni, the honored correspondent of Person, and the first Greek scholar of Southern Europe in her day.  But Clotilda Tambroni was educated like a boy, by Emanuele Aponte.—­How fine are those prefatory words, “by a Right Reverend Prelate,” to that pioneer book in Anglo-Saxon lore, Elizabeth Elstob’s grammar:  “Our earthly possessions are indeed our patrimony, as derived to us by the industry of our fathers; but the language in which we speak is our mother-tongue, and who so proper to play the critic in this as the females?” But this particular female obtained the rudiments of her rare education from her mother, before she was eight years old, in spite of much opposition from her right reverend guardians.—­Adelung, the highest authority, declares that all modern philology is founded on the translation of a Russian vocabulary into two hundred different dialects by Catherine II.  But Catherine shared, in childhood, the instructors of her brother, Prince Frederick, and was subject to some reproach for learning, though a girl, so much more rapidly than he did.—­Christina of Sweden ironically reproved Madame Dacier for her translation of Callimachus:  “Such a pretty girl as you are, are you not ashamed to be so learned?” But Madame Dacier acquired Greek by contriving to do her embroidery in the room where her father was teaching her stupid brother; and her queenly critic had learned to read Thucydides, harder Greek than Callimachus, before she was fourteen.—­And so down to our own day, who knows how many mute, inglorious Minervas may have perished unenlightened, while Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were being educated “like boys”?

This expression simply means that they had the most solid training which the times afforded.  Most persons would instantly take alarm at the very words; that is, they have so little faith in the distinctions which Nature has established, that they think, if you teach the alphabet, or anything else, indiscriminately to both sexes, you annul all difference between them.  The common reasoning is thus:  “Boys and girls are acknowledged to be distinct beings.  Now boys study Greek and algebra, medicine and book-keeping.  Therefore girls should not.”  As if one should say:  “Boys and girls are distinct beings.  Now boys eat beef and potatoes.  Therefore, obviously, girls should not.”