ters to silence. Lovers less generous than Cœlebs might well have been alienated by such disqualifications. "Oh, how lovely is a maid's ignorance!" sighs Rousseau, contemplating with rapture the many things that Sophie does not know. "Happy the man who is destined to teach her. She will never aspire to be the tutor of her husband, but will be content to remain his pupil. She will not endeavour to mould his tastes, but will relinquish her own. She will be more estimable to him than if she were learned. It will be his pleasure to enlighten her."
This was a well-established point of view, and English Sophies were trained to meet it with becoming deference. They heard no idle prating about an equality which has never existed, and which never can exist. "Had a third order been necessary," said an eighteenth-century schoolmistress to her pupils, "doubtless one would have been created, a midway kind of being." In default of such a connecting link, any impious attempt to bridge the chasm between the sexes met with the failure it deserved. When Mrs. Knowles, a Quaker
