ing of the paint-brush and mahl-stick by a woman. Boswell records that Dr. Johnson "thought portrait painting an improper employment for a woman. Public practice of any art, he observed, and staring in men's faces, is very indelicate in a female"; and in another place Boswell tells how the great doctor thought literature as little suited to a "delicate female" as painting. Of a literary lady of his time who was reported to have become attentive to her dress and appearance, Johnson remarked that "she was better employed at her toilet than using her pen."
It need hardly be said that Mary Wollstonecraft anticipated the change that has come about in the public mind as to what is needful in the education of women. How great that change has been is forcibly illustrated by a passage quoted in "The Vindication" from a writer who propounds the view that the study of botany is inconsistent with the preservation of "female delicacy." This might well provoke another sickly qualm" in its essential coarseness of feeling and degrading conception of the works of Nature. Mary Wollstonecraft brings this indelicate delicacy to the right touchstone when she says: "On reading similar passages, I have reverentially lifted up my eyes and heart to Him who liveth for ever and ever, and said, 'O my Father, hast Thou by the very constitution of her nature forbid Thy child to seek Thee in the fair forms of truth? And can her soul be sullied by the knowledge that awfully calls her to Thee?'"
In another all-important respect Mary Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time, and may be regarded,
