Page:Books and men.djvu/34

rance was considered an essential charm of their sex, and was displayed with a pretty ostentation that sufficiently proves its value. Such striking exceptions as Madame de Staël, Mrs. Montagu, and Anne Damer were not wanting to give points of light to the picture; but they hardly represent the real womanhood of their time. Femininity was then based upon shallowness, and girls were solemnly warned not to try and ape the acquirements of men, but to keep themselves rigorously within their own ascertained limits. We find a famous school-teacher, under whose fostering care many a court belle was trained for social triumphs, laying down the law on this subject with no uncertain hand, and definitely placing women in their proper station. "Had a third order been necessary," she writes naively, "doubtless one would have been created, a midway kind of being." In default, however, of this recognized via media, she deprecates all impious attempts to bridge over the chasm between the two sexes; and "accounts it a misfortune for a female to be learned, a genius, or in any way a prodigy, as it removes her from her natural sphere.