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could be a great novelist, or up to the time of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning that she could be a great poet, or up to the time of
Rosa Bonheur a great painter, or up to the days of
Mrs. Siddons and
Rachel a great actor, or until
Mrs. Somerville's day a great scientific writer.
Even to the present time, for some reason, the corresponding figure among musical composers has not appeared, and any speculations on this point may have a certain value.
Of course some particular sphere must come last in women's successive advances, and it is interesting to inquire why that sphere should be music.
But the inquiry should always proceed in connection with such facts as those already stated-facts indicating that it is not at all a case of proved incapacity, but only of admitted delay.
The general cause of the delay, in all these cases, is essentially the same: it lies partly in specific disadvantages and partly in general repression.
Women have never yet been trained on any large scale, as men are trained, in the science of music.
They have been and still are trained as amateurs only; and I can distinctly remember when the study of harmony or counterpoint was considered as clearly unwomanly as that of Greek.
Where, in spite of this, a woman came of a musical stock, and showed positive marks of genius, she was still held to a subordinate and almost suppressed position — as in the
