4. The type of the higher education was still monastic, both for men and women. No one was able to conceive that both sexes might be educated together with mutual advantage.]
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Les Femmes Savantes, Act II. Scene VII., Van Laun’s translation.
[139] Letter of Nov. 16, 1689.
[140] Letter of June 1, 1680.
[141] Traité du choix et de la méthode des études, Chap. XXXVIII.
[142] Gréard, Mémoire sur l’enseignement secondaire des filles, p. 55.
[143] “The name generally given to a social circle, which for more than half a century gathered around Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, and her daughter, Julie d’Angennes, duchess de Montausier, and which exercised a very conspicuous influence on French language, literature, and civilization.... Her house soon became the place where all who had genius, wit, learning, talent, or taste, assembled, and from these reunions originated the French Academy, the highest authority of French literature, and the salons, the most prominent feature of French civilization.”—Johnson’s Cyclopædia.
[144] See the Letter to Madame de Fontaine, general mistress of the school, Sept. 20, 1691.
[145] Two volumes, 2d edition, 1861.