It is the long customs of mankind which stand in the way of educating women to trades and professions. These matters are mainly in woman's own hands. One is glad to see in the English Parliament certain statements made in this connection, and others also in a London pamphlet on the nature of municipal government. In reply to the common argument that women ought not to enter certain vocations, because they would ultimately find themselves incompetent, it is stated, that, in all delicate handicrafts, men do the same. Thus, of those who learn to make watches and watchmakers' tools, not one-fifth continue in the trade; and, in the decoration of that delicate ware called Bohemian glass, by far the greater portion of apprentices give it up on account of natural unfitness. It is the customs of society which sustain the prejudice against literary women. When Dr. Aikin published his "Miscellaneous Pieces," Fox met him in the street. "I particularly admire," said the orator, complimenting him, "your essay on Inconsistency."--"That," said Aikin, "is my sister's."--"Ah! well, I like that on Monastic Institutions."--"That is also hers," replied the honest man; and, in a tumult of confusion, Fox bowed himself away. Had public feeling been right, how gracefully he might have congratulated the brother on his sister's ability, how gladly might that brother have seen her excel himself! This sister was that Mrs. Barbauld who afterward did such womanly service, that we feel tempted to forgive the early fit of sentimentality which found vent in that rhymed nonsense, concluding,-- "Your best, your sweetest empire is to please." The manners of men have their educational influence. The quiet turning-aside from women when matters of business, politics, or science are discussed; the common saying, "What have women to do with that? let them mind their knitting, or their house affairs;" the short answer when an interested question is asked, "You wouldn't understand it, if I told you,"--all these depress and enervate, and, even if not _spoken_, the spirit of them animates all social life. "Men are suspicious," wrote Dr. Alexander in 1790, "that a rational education would open the eyes of women, and prompt them to assert the rights of which they have always been deprived." But education could not be withheld nor eyes closed for ever; therefore the time has come to claim these rights. The Sorbonne is already asked why it confers degrees upon women with one hand, while it quietly locks Margaret Fuller out of Arago's lecture-room with the other. Need we inquire what influence it would have upon society, if all literature and scientific opportunities, if all societies devoted to natural history and mathematics, if all colleges and public libraries the world over, were thrown open to woman?