The reaction was so complete that for the last two hundred and forty generations, the standard of female education has been lowered to that which by general confession ordinary female brains can stand without injury to the physique.

The practical consequences of sexual equality have re-established in a more absolute form than ever the principle that the first purpose of female life is marriage and maternity; and that, for their own sakes as for the sake of each successive generation, women should be so trained as to be attractive wives and mothers of healthy children, all other considerations being subordinated to these.

A certain small number of ladies avail themselves of the legal equality they still enjoy, and live in the world much as men.

But we regard them as third-rate men in petticoats, hardly as women at all.

Marriage with one of them is the last resource to which a man too idle or too foolish to earn his own living will betake himself.