Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/166

 an anticipation which must have spurred many a female child to diligence. There was no ill-advised questioning of values in our great-grandmothers' day to disturb this point of view. As the excellent Mrs. West observed in her "Letters to a young Lady," a book sanctioned by bishops, and dedicated to the Queen: "We unquestionably were created to be the wedded mates of man. Nature intended that man should sue, and woman coyly yield."

The most appalling thing about the precocious young people of this period was the ease with which they slipped into print. Publishers were not then the adamantine race whose province it is now to blight the hopes of youth. They beamed with benevolence when the first fruits of genius were confided to their hands. Bishop Thirlwall's first fruits, his "Primitiæ," were published when he was eleven years old, with a preface telling the public what a wonderful boy little Connop was;—how he studied Latin at three, and read Greek with ease and fluency at four, and wrote with distinction at seven. It is true that the parent Thirlwall appears to have paid the costs, to have launched