their "enmity" to the moral or intellectual influence of women was and is still, there wrought out in the most awful oppressions and brutal practices the corrupt mind can devise. Mrs. Wilson has done much, for she made the beginning. We glean the following particulars from an article in "Chambers' Journal," written, evidently, by a lady. She tells us that Mrs. Wilson, then Miss Cook, went out to India in 1821.
"Up till this time, the education of natives had been confined to boys, for whom a number of schools had been opened; and as no attempt at conversion was allowed, there was no prejudice against them. One of the most benevolent founders of schools for boys was David Hare, a person who, having amassed a considerable fortune in that city, determined to spend it there instead of in his native land; and not only did he spend his money, but his life, in benefitting the city where he had so long resided. These attempts, as we have said, met with no opposition on the part of the natives; on the contrary, they warmly seconded them, and the schools were crowded with boys willing to learn after the English fashion instead of their own; but the prejudices against educating females were not to be so easily overcome. For the woman, no education of any kind but such as related to making a curry or a pillau had ever been deemed necessary. As long as infancy and childhood lasted, she was the pet and plaything of the family; and when, with girlhood, came the domestic duties of the wife, she entered on them unprepared by any previous moral training. All intellectual acquirements were out of place for one who was not the companion, but the drudge and slave of her husband; and the more ignorant she was, the less intolerable would be the confinement and monotony of her life. In India, all females above the very lowest ranks, and of respectable character, are kept in seclusion after betrothment; and after marriage, none of any rank, except the very highest, are exempt from those duties which we should consider menial, though not really so when kept in due bounds. A wife can never be degraded by preparing her husband's repast; but it is humiliating to be considered unworthy to partake of it with him, and not even to be permitted to enliven it with her conversation. Those females, again, whose station is not high enough to warrant the privileges of seclusion, present a picture painful to contemplate; the blessing of liberty cannot make up for the incessant toil and drudgery to which they are invariably condemned; and the alternations of the climate, added to the exposure, render the woman in the prime of life a withered crone, either depressed into an idiot or irritated into a virago. Though in the present day something has been effected in the way of elevating the social position of the Hindoo female, thirty years ago even that little was considered unattainable. It was evident that while one entire sex remained so utterly uncared for, the instruction of the other would fail to produce the desired effects: and that if India was to be regenerated, her female as well as her male population must be instructed. The task was difficult; for whilst the government was indifferent, the natives of India were all strongly opposed to any measures for ameliorating the condition, social or intellectual, of their women. One zealous friend, however, devoted herself to the task. The work was to be done, and Mrs. Wilson did it.
Animated with a determination to spare no personal exertion, she
