the grand simplicity of the original Greek, {7} and judge whether
Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined her--
or, it may be, drew her from life--must have been a perfect
gentleman; both complete in those "manners" which, says the old
proverb, "make the man:" but which are the woman herself; because
with her--who acts more by emotion than by calculation--manners
are the outward and visible tokens of her inward and spiritual
grace, or disgrace; and flow instinctively, whether good or bad,
from the instincts of her inner nature.

True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No more, most
probably, could the author of the Odyssey. No more, for that
matter, could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly,
both in mind and manners, most highly-cultivated men. Reading and
writing, of course, have now become necessaries of humanity; and
are to be given to every human being, that he may start fair in
the race of life. But I am not aware that Greek women improved
much, either in manners, morals, or happiness, by acquiring them
in after centuries. A wise man would sooner see his daughter a
Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, a Cleopatra, or even an
Hypatia.

Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets, among the
Nausicaas of the present day; the girls of the period; the
daughters and hereafter mothers of our future rulers, the great
Demos or commercial middle class of the greatest mercantile city
in the world: and noted what I had noted with fear and sorrow,
many a day, for many a year; a type, and an increasing type, of
young women who certainly had not had the "advantages,"
"educational" and other, of that Greek Nausicaa of old.