unconscious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and characters of those about them, especially of men.  How potent and practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the world and most of human nature.  There are those who consider—­and I agree with them—­that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women.  Let me ask—­of what period of youth and of manhood does not the same hold true?  I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women.  I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the highest pitch.  I should have thought that it was the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather than for herself; and therefore I should say—­Let her smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed:  but let her never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach man—­what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along, even in the savage state—­namely, that there is something more necessary than the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is—­purity and virtue.  Let her never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord.

And if any should answer that this doctrine would keep woman a dependant and a slave, I rejoin—­Not so:  it would keep her what she should be—­the mistress of all around her, because mistress of herself.  And more, I should express a fear that those who made that answer had not yet seen into the mystery of true greatness and true strength; that they did not yet understand the true magnanimity, the true royalty of that spirit, by which the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Surely that is woman’s calling—­to teach man:  and to teach him what?  To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace.  To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice.  To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth:  but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity.  Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her happy lot—­to quote the words of a great poet, a great philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth—­let her begin, I say—­