Yet we are not guiltless; not wholly purged from the curse yet. The army is not entirely anti-slavery in principles; and we cannot look for success, nor wish it, but for the sake of freedom. CHAPTER VI. INTELLECTUAL EXPERIENCES. January 19, 1862. How hard it is to know anything of history, to learn enough to feel at all competent to teach! I said I would look through Gibbon, but I had hardly reached the times of Julian, before my class must be hurrying beyond Charlemagne, and I must turn to French histories to help them along. Then, between de Bonnechose and Sir James Stephen, with the various writers on the Middle Ages, which must be consulted for the history of the feudal system, free cities, and the Papacy, comes in the remembrance of my Bible class in the early history of the church, and I must give some hours to Neander! Meanwhile, another class is reading Shakespeare, and I want them to be somewhat critical, and must therefore read, myself; while yet another class in Metaphysics are beginning the history of philosophy, and I want them to know something about Plato, and the Alexandrian schools, and knowing very little myself I must find out something first. So I bring to my room the volumes containing the “Timæus” and the “Republic;” but in the midst of it, I remember that there are some compositions to be corrected, that I may be ready for the new ones Monday morning. This is pretty much where Saturday night finds me, and so the weeks go on, this winter. I am glad to be busy, but I dislike to be superficial. Now, if I could teach only history, I should feel as though I might hope to do something. Girls will be ill-educated, until their teachers are allowed the time and thought which teachers of men are expected to take. January 22. I am trying to get an idea which is rolling in grand chaos through my mind into shape for a composition theme for my first class this afternoon. It is the power of the soul in moulding form,--from the great Soul of the universe, down to lower natures,--down to animal and vegetable life. Plato’s doctrine of ideas is the only starting-point I can think of; some thoughts of Swedenborg’s will help; then Lavater and the Physiologists and Psychologists. But I want them to use it practically; to take particular persons, features, shape, gait, manner, voice, life; and then observe closely how beauty develops itself in flowers, leaves, pebbles, into infinite variety, yet according to invariable laws. It is a hard thing to bring such subjects into shape which young girls can grasp; yet they are the best things for opening the mind upon a broad horizon.