more thoughtless than radically selfish—you will find my subscription ready, and if you all give in like proportion to your means, this new monument of woman's womanliness will quickly be raised to bless the world!
Men call us "weak-minded," and unfit for mental labour, That such women as George Eliot and Mary Somerville, without naming many other talented, studious women, should have compelled even men to acknowledge their talents—that they should have risen to public estimation straight through the deadly weight of ignorant men's prejudice—proves quite the contrary. In Mary Somerville's case it was considered so very unfeminine for a woman to cultivate her intellect that they deprived her of light in the winter evenings, to prevent her studying; but had she been of the other sex every facility would have been gladly given, and then the boasting of those abilities would have lasted as long—well, as long as male boasting always lasts when a clever mind of that sex appears. And we all know how few they have—considering the millions of millions of men who have been born, and had the advantage of their sex to attain what height they could! Had they the amazing excellence in reason they are ever telling us of, they would know why they have so miserably failed to occupy the great mental positions they ought, by this era, to have reached.
It is only a few years since women were permitted to join men in the race for education's honours—yet, how they already disprove the male libel that they have no power for study! When our University of Melbourne opened to women, the first who passed and gained the highest honour was scarcely fifteen years of age. Though men are inclined to keep woman's progress as unknown as possible; in spite of all precautions, the girls' successes are sometimes pub-
