Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/44

 18 "He is merry and very amiable, but seems to me to have at bottom a very granite character. If I do not mistake, he is of a positive, practical, iron nature, inwhich reason preponderates, and possesses a kind of frozen enthusiasm, which is the most dangerous of all. There is something masterful in his full dark eyes, and in many small particulars they are like those of a man accustomed to quell wild animals with his glance—totally different from the mild dignity which lies in Garibaldi's eyes."

From the age of about five-and-twenty onwards the question of raising the status of women occupied a large share in Mathilde's thoughts. She could do little else than meditate upon it, and discuss it by speech and writing with sympathetic friends like Mr. Moncure Conway; not possessing enough business habits and organising talent to be of any service upon a committee, while her public addresses transcended the ordinary range of thought. Though she could not avoid being professedly an advocate of female franchise, she in reality only cared for it inasmuch as the concession would have removed what she regarded as a stigma, the apparent consecration by law of the principle of woman's inferiority to man. She was in favour of women following all callings, except the military and naval, and when invited by the present writer to consider the consequence of throwing a mass of cheap labour into occupations much overstocked, she rejoined, with decision, that the men might emigrate, as they probably may whenever the women shall have preceded them. She seized, nevertheless, with real discernment, upon the root of women's inferiority, the inferiority of women's education. Among the numerous companions of her girlhood, she was the only one who could be considered well educated, and she had educated herself. It