Between the severe mental training of boys and the education thought fit and proper for girls, there was throughout the eighteenth century a broad and purposeless chasm. Before that time, and after it, too, the majority of women were happily ignorant of many subjects which every school-girl of to-day aspires to handle; but during the reigns of Queen Anne and the first three Georges, this ignorance was considered an essential charm of their sex, and was displayed with a pretty ostentation that sufficiently proves its value. Such striking exceptions as Madame de Staël, Mrs. Montagu, and Anne Damer were not wanting to give points of light to the picture; but they hardly represent the real womanhood of their time. Femininity was then based upon shallowness, and girls were solemnly warned not to try and ape the acquirements of men, but to keep themselves rigorously within their own ascertained limits. We find a famous school-teacher, under whose fostering care many a court belle was trained for social triumphs, laying down the law on this subject with no uncertain hand, and definitely placing women in their proper station. “Had a _third order_ been necessary,” she writes naively, “doubtless one would have been created, a _midway_ kind of being.” In default, however, of this recognized _via media_, she deprecates all impious attempts to bridge over the chasm between the two sexes; and “accounts it a misfortune for a female to be learned, a genius, or in any way a prodigy, as it removes her from her natural sphere.” “Those were days,” says a writer in Blackwood, “when superficial teaching was thought the proper teaching for girls; when every science had its feminine language, as Hindu ladies talk with a difference and with softer terminations than their lords: as The Young Ladies’ Geography, which is to be read instead of novels; A Young Ladies’ Guide to Astronomy; The Use of the Globes for Girls’ Schools; and the Ladies’ Polite Letter-Writer.” What was really necessary for a girl was to learn how to knit, to dance, to curtsy, and to carve; the last-named accomplishment being one of her exclusive privileges. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu received lessons from a professional carving-master, who taught her the art scientifically; and during her father’s grand dinners her labors were often so exhausting that translating the Enchiridion must have seemed by comparison a light and easy task. Indeed, after that brilliant baby entrance into the Kitcat Club, very little that was pleasant fell to Lady Mary’s share; and years later she recalls the dreary memories of her youth in a letter written to her sister, Lady Mar. “Don’t you remember,” she asks, pathetically, “how miserable we were in the little parlor at Thoresby?”