I have been told that many of our sex use their feathers for writing, and I perceive with regret that you are yielding to the popular mania with which they are possessed. For myself I seek nothing but knowledge, and I should like to know what good end is served by soiling snow-white paper. Let us handle this subject freely. Either you have great talent, small talent, or no talent at all. I do not see it can be otherwise. If by fatality you are favoured with great talent, as are the males, who make laws for others and reputations for themselves, these very males, by reason of constitutional jealousy, will not permit you to rise superior to themselves. The highest fame has always been, and must always be, male-fame, ill begotten as it is at times. That being so, females are by law, and, as males say, by nature, unfitted to fill the loftiest posts of honour. They are essentially the potter’s clay fashioned into humble vessels suited to adorn or to become useful in the household, whereas the males are the marble of which monuments are made. Apart from the public life in which you are the slave of fame, you may wish to have a private domestic life hidden away from the world, to which you may betake yourself when weary of triumph and tinsel. But where will you find a partner vain or humble enough to share your lot, to joyfully wear the ridiculous livery inflicted on him by your success? Who would be the husband of a great female? Certainly no one you could respect and look up to for counsel and advice. You will remain, then, powerful and solitary. This is all very fine, but the position is trying, and high intelligence can better serve its God by dutifully lifting a small but compact circle to its own level of happiness than by striving to move the world. Fame brings many little cares of which I have not spoken; it has to bear hatred, envy, calumny—troubles these which seldom invade the quiet nest. On a column in sight of all, and in the full blaze of noonday light, the flaws and defects of the finest marbles are all observed and attacked by the critics. Let us descend from the column and come to the nicely-poised mind that would be so charming in some obscurer spots if only it could be schooled to perform its great feats in the shady nooks of the world. Here I lay my finger on the root of your malady. One makes a very good show among a circle of indulgent friends, but the public ought not to be {334} disappointed, for they did not complain of the want of your special talent, and did not invite you to become their idol in the temple of fame. One must walk upwards to this shrine with timid step, for there are more thorns than roses by the way. When the foot grows bolder, one becomes used to the compliments that are lavished, as well as to the curses that are heaped, on one’s head by those over whose prostrate forms one tramples. At last life loses its lustre, and you become the slave of