was already sufficiently keen to require it. Principles were dealt out to
her, for one thing, with a generous want of definition which must have
made them fatal to all progress had she been able to take them intact. Her
mother's favourite and most inclusive dictum alone, that "everything is
for the best, and all things work together for good," should have forced
her to a matter of fact acceptance of wickedness as a thing inevitable
which it would be waste of time to oppose, since it was bound to resolve
itself into something satisfactory in the end, like the objectionable
refuse which can be converted by ingenious processes into an excellent
substitute for butter. But she was saved from the stultification of such a
position by finding it impossible to reconcile it practically with the
constant opposition which she found herself at the same time enjoined to
oppose to so many things. If everything is for the best, it appeared to
her, clearly we cannot logically oppose ourselves to anything, and there
must accordingly be two trinities in ethics, good, better, best, and bad,
worse, worst, which it is impossible to condense into one comprehensive
axiom.

But most noticeably prominent, to her credit, through all this period are
the same desirable characteristics, viz., that provisional acceptance
already noticed of what she was taught by those whom she delighted to
honor and obey, and the large-minded absence of prejudice which enabled
her to differ from them, when she saw good cause, without antagonism.
"Drop the subject when you do not agree: there is no need to be bitter
because you know you are right," was the maxim she used in ordinary social
intercourse; but she was at the same time forming principles to be acted
upon in opposition to everybody when occasion called for action. Another
noticeable point, too, was the way in which her mind returned from every
excursion into no matter what abstruse region of research, to the position
of women, her original point of departure. "Withholding education from