“Meekness,” she says,

“may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants and deserves to be respected.  Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship...  A girl whose spirits have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention unless confinement allows her no alternative Most of the women, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational creatures, have accidentally been allowed to run wild, as some of the elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate Men have better tempers than women because they are occupied by pursuits that interest the head as well as the heart.  I never knew a weak or ignorant person who had a good temper Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels, but to sink them below women?  They are told that they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage It is in vain to attempt to keep the heart pure unless the head is furnished with ideas Would ye, O my sisters, really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of virtue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity!  Ye must acquire that soberness of mind which the exercise of duties and the pursuit of knowledge alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a doubtful, dependent situation, and only be, loved while ye are fair!  The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in their season; but modesty being the child of reason cannot long exist with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection....  With what disgust have I heard sensible women speak of the wearisome confinement which they endured at school.  Not allowed, perhaps, to step out of one broad path in a superb garden, and obliged to pace, with steady deportment, stupidly backward and forward, holding up their heads and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of bounding forward, as Nature directs to complete her own design, in the various attitudes so conducive to health.  The pure animal spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and. spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and, sharpening the understanding before it gains proportionable strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterizes the female mind,—­and, I fear, will ever characterize it while women remain the slaves of power.”

In the spirit of this book Theodosia’s education was conducted.  Her mind had fair play.  Her father took it for granted that she could learn what a boy of the same age could learn, and gave her precisely the advantages which he would have given a son.  Besides the usual accomplishments, French, music, dancing, and riding, she learned to read Virgil, Horace, Terence, Lucian, Homer, in the original.  She appears to have read all of Terence and Lucian, a great part of Horace, all the Iliad, and large portions of the Odyssey.  “Cursed effects,” exclaimed her father once,