offered to both sexes; in the public schools brother and sister have,
as a rule, the same books and the same teachers. And we may go
much further and say that every woman in the country may already--
IF SHE IS DETERMINED TO DO SO--obtain very much the same
intellectual instruction which her own brother receives. If that
education is a highly advanced one she will, no doubt, have some
special difficulties to contend against; but those difficulties are not
insurmountable. The doors of most colleges and universities are
closed, it is true, against women, and we can not doubt that this
course is taken for sound reasons, pointed out by good sense and
true sagacity. It is impossible not to believe that between the ages
of fifteen and five-and-twenty young men and young women will
carry on their intellectual training far more thoroughly and
successfully apart than thrown into the same classes. At that age of
vivid impressions and awakening passions, the two sexes are
sufficiently thrown together in family life and in general society for
all purposes of mutual influence and improvement. Let them chat,
walk, sing, dance together, at that period of their lives; but if you
wish to make them good scholars, let them study apart. Let their
loves and jealousies be carried on elsewhere than in the college
halls. But already female colleges, exclusively adapted to young
women, are talked of--nay, here and there one or two such colleges
now exist. There is nothing in which American men more delight,
nothing more congenial to their usual modes of thought and action,
than to advance the intellectual instruction of the whole nation,
daughters as well as sons. We may rest assured that they will not
fail to grant all needful development in this direction. One female
college, of the very highest intellectual standard, would probably be
found sufficient for a population of some millions. The number of
women desiring a full college education will always, for many