physical exercise? And in her day the ordinary rule for women in the upper ranks of society seems to have been to take none whatever. Their clothes and shoes rendered outdoor exercise entirely out of the question. A white muslin gown damped to cling more closely to the figure, and satin slippers, are not an equipment even for a walk on the London pavements; they would make a country ramble still more completely out of the question. Miss Edgeworth makes great fun of one of her sentimental heroines who insists on admiring the beauties of nature otherwise than from the windows of a coach. She takes a country walk, the lanes are muddy, and she leaves the satin slipper of her right foot in one of them. Mary Wollstonecraft pleaded that the lower degree of physical strength of women, and the strain upon that strength caused by maternity, ought to secure for them such conditions as regards exercise, clothing, and food as would make the most of that strength, and not reduce it to a vanishing point.
In the same spirit she argues about the mental capacity of women. Perpetual obedience, she contends, weakens the understanding; responsibility, and the necessity of thinking and deciding, strengthen it. She draws a picture of the obvious practical disadvantage of women being guided in everything by their husbands, and supposes a case in which the husband is a perfectly benevolent and perfectly intelligent despot. He manages everything, decides from the depths of his wisdom all
