There is a branch of general education which is not thought at all necessary for women; as regards which, indeed, it is well if they are not brought up to cultivate the opposite. Women are not taught to be courageous. Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as unnecessary for women as Latin and Greek. Yet there are few things that would tend to make women happier in themselves, and more acceptable to those with whom they live, than courage. There are many women of the present day, sensible women in other things, whose panic-terrors are a frequent source of discomfort to themselves and those around them. Now, it is a great mistake to imagine that harshness must go with courage; and that the bloom of gentleness and sympathy must all be rubbed off by that vigour of mind which gives presence of mind, enables a person to be useful in peril, and makes the desire to assist overcome that sickliness of sensibility which can only contemplate distress and difficulty. So far from courage being unfeminine, there is a peculiar grace and dignity in those beings who have little active power of attack or defence, passing through danger with a moral courage which is equal to that of the strongest. We see this in great things. We perfectly appreciate the sweet and noble dignity of an Anne Bullen, a Mary Queen of Scots, or a Marie Antoinette. We see that it is grand for these delicately-bred, high-nurtured, helpless personages to meet Death with a silence and a confidence like his own. But there would be a similar dignity in women’s bearing small terrors with fortitude. There is no beauty in fear. It is a mean, ugly, dishevelled creature. No statue can be made of it that a woman would like to see herself like. Women are pre-eminent in steady endurance of tiresome suffering: they need not be far behind men in a becoming courage to meet that which is sudden and sharp. The dangers and the troubles, too, which we may venture to say they now start at unreasonably, are many of them mere creatures of the imagination—such as, in their way, disturb high-mettled animals brought up to see too little, and therefore frightened at any leaf blown across the road. We may be quite sure that, without losing any of the most delicate and refined of feminine graces, women may be taught not to give way to unreasonable fears, which should belong no more to the fragile than to the robust.