The increasing interest in the fine arts, the more important position given to modern languages in the universities, the irresistible attractions and growing authority of science, all tend to bring men and women together on subjects understood by both, and therefore operate directly in favor of intellectual interests in marriage. You will not suspect me of a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royalty if I trace some of these changes in public opinion to the example and influence of the Prince Consort, operating with some effect during his life, yet with far greater force since he was taken away from us. The truth is, that the most modern English ideal of gentlemanly culture is that which Prince Albert, to a great extent, realized in his own person. Perhaps his various accomplishments may be a little embellished or exaggerated in the popular belief, but it is unquestionable that his notion of culture was very large and liberal, and quite beyond the narrow pedantry of the preceding age. There was nothing in it to exclude a woman, and we know that she who loved him entered largely into the works and recreations of his life. LETTER IV. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor--Their resignation to ignorance--Absence of scientific curiosity in women--They do not accumulate accurate knowledge--Archimedes in his bath--Rarity of inventions due to women--Exceptions. Before saying much about the influence of marriage on the intellectual life, it is necessary to make some inquiry into the intellectual nature of women. The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be practically of no importance to an argument, women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor. Even in the situations most favorable for labor of that kind, women do not undertake it unless they are urged to it, and directed in it, by some powerful masculine influence. In the absence of that influence, although their minds are active, that activity neither tends to discipline nor to the accumulation of knowledge. Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are not superior, either in knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the age of fifty to what they were at the age of twenty-five. In other words, they have not in themselves the motive powers which can cause an intellectual advance.