"Come, come," said Mr. Otway, "it is not generous to profit by the simplicity of our panegyrists. If the motive for denying, or, at least, _grudging_ to women the advantages of a sound and a literary education, be analyzed, I fear that it will turn out but little creditable to our sex, and the proof that it is so, may rest on the circumstance that the cleverest and really best informed men are those who encourage female ambition to soar above the common standard. _These_ men delight in superior talents, and cultivation wherever they find them. They are not afraid of rivalry, and their minds are too large to take pleasure in any supremacy which is produced by exclusion. The lazy, and the tyrannical, would fence in their privileges, and not permit to women a participation in what they choose to call their inherent rights; the former to save themselves the trouble of acquiring knowledge, and the latter because they would depress and enslave the sex to which they would allot no higher calling than that of administering to their amusement? Is not this a _true bill_?" I could not deny that there was some force in the statement, but urged the _general_ voice as being considered the best criterion of what is good in itself, and then advanced the necessity of making some difference between two sets of beings destined to such dissimilar offices. "Men are born to action. They live in public, they preside in the councils of nations; they provide for the families that look up to them for protection; they labour in the field with their hands, and in the closet with their brains. When the toil of life is suspended, they desire relaxation, and to be gratified by the charms of beauty, grace, sweet music, and good manners." "And these are all compatible with much higher and more dignified powers, and purposes," rejoined my antagonist. "Some writer, whose name I forget, has said, 'tell me your amusements, and I'll tell you what you are.' There is a great deal of wisdom in the idea, and it holds good in forming an estimate both of nations and individuals. The love of gain, the dread of poverty, desire of fame; in short, a thousand motives may, and do, constrain men to engage in pursuits which make the _business_ of life. A set of shoemakers, or a privy council, merely _as such_, are brought to a level with each other, the one party as tradesmen, the other as ministers, and the only difference that we perceive in contemplating the _body_, in either case, resides in the superior or inferior skill of the workman or the statesman, compared with his fellows; but when the low occupation of the one, or the high employment of the other, is brought to its close, and the _man_ retires from his labours to unbend in the enjoyment of the social hour, it is _then_ that we find of what materials he is made."