If you will kindly pardon an "improvement" of this subject, as a preacher would call it, I might add that an intellectual lady like yourself might, perhaps, do better to raise the tone of the feminine talk around her than to withdraw from it in weariness. There are always, in every circle, a few superior persons who, either from natural diffidence, or because they are not very rich, or because they are too young, suffer themselves to be entirely overwhelmed by the established mediocrity around them. What they need is a leader, a deliverer. Is it not in your power to render services of this kind? Could you not select from the younger ladies whom you habitually meet, a few who, like yourself, feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what you describe as the current feminine conversation? There is often a painful shyness which prevents people of real ability from using it for the advantage of others, and this shyness is nowhere so common as in England, especially provincial England. It feels the want of a hardy example. A lady who talked really well would no doubt run some risk of being rather unpleasantly isolated at first, but surely, if she tried, she might ultimately find accomplices. You could do much, to begin with, by recommending high-toned literature, and gradually awakening an interest in what is truly worth attention. It seems lamentable that every cultivated woman should be forced out of the society of her own sex, and made to depend upon ours for conversation of that kind which is an absolute necessity to the intellectual. The truth is, that women so displaced never appear altogether happy. And culture costs so much downright hard work, that it ought not to be paid for by any suffering beyond those toils which are its fair and natural price. LETTER VIII. TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE. Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women--They do not hear truth--Men disguise their thoughts for women--Cream and curaçoa--Probable permanence of the desire to please women--Most truth in cultivated society--Hopes from the increase of culture. I think that the greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women is that they do not hear the truth from men.