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I believe it is a fact that the higher the state of civilization and refinement, the more unmarried women there are; and yet Dr. Clarke could add his voice to the vulgar hue and cry against them. Such is the prevalence of this hue and cry that women who are not elevated above its influence by early inculcations of noble principles, of self-respect, and of a lofty ideal, rush into matrimony because they are ashamed to appear to be unsought.

The maternal feeling is as intense and pure in many unmarried women as in their married sisters. Indeed, if we each take an observation in our own circle, we shall see it far more developed in many of them than in many married women, to whom children are a burden and a hinderance, and always considered and treated as if of secondary importance to their pleasures, and even to their more rational pursuits. The world cannot be divided in that way. The maternal sentiment is planted in the heart of every sympathetic and affectionate woman, -- indeed, woman is abnormal without it, -- and, if not developed by maternity itself, this sentiment may be so by right education, and thus saved from becoming a root of bitterness such as opinions like Dr. Clarke's are calculated to plant. How many an orphan child has found the very essence of motherly feeling and life-long devotion in a maiden aunt! The man is to be pitied who has not seen this in his acquaintance with society: one almost wishes to cite names to prove one's words. Has Dr. Clarke no touch-stone within himself to prove such characters, -- for he must have seen many of them? The maternal feeling is often more judiciously exercised where the passion of maternity -- what some moralists have called brute maternity -- has not been roused into activity by actual motherhood. I would farther explain this by a reference to those mothers in whom every other sentiment, even that of good wifehood, is absorbed by the maternal feeling and where, if they are undisciplined in mind, this feeling makes it impossible for them to see the faults of their children, or to allow any one else to note them, or give them any aid in their correction. Even the father is deprived of his natural right to share in the care, and is treated as their natural enemy if he criticises them. The loving but unimpassioned aunt, or co-operating educator, whose maternal feeling has been cultivated by her vocation, can see the facts more clearly than such mothers, and can often suggest the remedies. I think it may safely be asserted that the first proof of improvement in the popular feeling about marriage will be the respect for those unmarried women whose independent lives bear the noble fruits of culture, benevolence, and devotion to human improvement. Dr. Clarke misses the truth greatly also in asserting that the advocacy of high education for women emanates chiefly from unmarried women. None are more eloquent in its cause than the mothers -- the good mothers, of course -- who have felt the pain of their own deficiencies of education when they found themselves mothers, and too ignorant to fulfil their duties to their own satisfaction. "What can I do for my child? I do not know any thing about its needs, or how to supply them: my own education had no system or definite object, and now I feel it worthless." Such complaints are continual, and give one the feeling that every woman should serve her time, be she sick or be she poor, in practical education, by actually being brought into contact with children, and being taught how to instruct them. I have often ventured the remark that the best educated women I knew were those who had been practically engaged in education. I make it more earnestly than ever, for education is not merely the knowledge of sciences, languages, or systems of philosophy, but consists in the use of the faculties and their application to life thus developed by them and other studies. "The proper study of mankind is man," is an utterance that has often been quoted to prove that the exact sciences were inferior objects of pursuit to the study of language and philosophy but man cannot be studied aright without a scientific basis, and this is the greatest argument for the complete education of women, in whose hands is the moulding of the human race. When they do not hold their normal place and function, -- which they cannot do if uncultivated, -- the condition of such portions of the human race shows it palpably.

But I must not, like many of Dr. Clarke's reviewers, forget that he concedes woman's right and her capacity for the most extended education.

Let us now look at facts in regard to the danger of systematic and persistent study for women. One would think, judging by Dr. Clarke's " dreadful little book," as some one has called it, that women had generally been educated to death, while the deplorable fact is that she has only been half educated at the best. When in those instances, few and far between, where high culture was desired, the time for real study has come, the necessity for making up for former deficiencies has sometimes made it too severe. In half a century's acquaintance with the details of female education, I can remember no instance in which study has proved injurious to those who came to it in good health: excepted cases are truly exceptional, and not the average. I have also known instances where young women who were invalids have made a studious life their recreation, and have gained health and vigor meanwhile, -- all the happier and better for the intellectual life.