Culture is good, and the more we have of it the better; it gives a woman a wider sphere of influence, as well as more enlightened methods of using that influence.

But if dead languages are to take the place of living service; if high mathematics are to work out a low plane of cooking and household management; if a first class in moral science is to involve third class performance of the moral duties involved in family life, then I deliberately say it were better that, like Tennyson's mother, we should be "Not learned save in gracious household ways." I protest with the uttermost earnestness against the care of human life, of human health, and of human comfort being considered a lower thing and of less importance than good scholarship; or that, when we recognize that months and even years will have to be devoted to the attainment of the one, the arts by which we can fulfil those great human trusts which devolve more or less upon every woman can be practised without ever having been learnt at all.
Do not misunderstand me.

Do not think I am decrying a classical education; and, as the daughter of a great mathematician, it is not likely that I should underrate mathematics as a mental discipline.

I am only urging that they should be subordinated to higher and more practical issues.
I am thankfully aware that these remarks do not apply to American women to the same degree in which they apply to our English girls.

The paucity of domestic servants, and the consequent pressure of necessity, have saved you from the fine lady ideal which we have adopted for our girls and the exclusively book education into which we have almost unconsciously drifted.