of man. knowledge at such a period of life, we | tural difference of original conformacould not convey; but we might fix a tion of mind. As long as boys and decided taste for its acquisition, and a girls run about in the dirt, and trundle strong disposition to respect it in others. hoops together, they are both precisely The formation of some great scholars alike. If you catch up one half of these we should certainly prevent, and hinder creatures, and train them to a particular many from learning what, in a few set of actions and opinions, and the years, they would necessarily forget; other half to a perfectly opposite set, of but this loss would be well repaid, course their understandings will differ, if we could show the future rulers of as one or the other sort of occupations the country that thought and labour has called this or that talent into action. which it requires to make a nation There is surely no occasion to go into happy, or if we could inspire them any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, with that love of public virtue, which, in order to explain so very simple a pheafter religion, we most solemnly believe nomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, to be the brightest ornament of the mind that nature has been as bountiful of understanding to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us to consider what are the principal objections commonly made against the communication of a greater share of knowledge to women than commonly falls to their lot at present for though it may be doubted whether women should learn all that men learn, the immense ME BROADHURST is a very good sort disparity which now exists between of a man, who has not written a very their knowledge we should hardly bad book upon a very important sub- think could admit of any rational ject. His object (a very laudable one) defence. It is not easy to imagine to recommend a better system of that there can be any just cause why female education than at present pre- a woman of forty should be more. vals in this country-to turn the atten- ignorant than a boy of twelve years of tion of women from the trifling pursuits age. If there be any good at all in to which they are now condemned-female ignorance, this (to use a very and to cultivate faculties which, under colloquial phrase) is surely too much the actual system of management, might of a good thing. almost as well not exist. To the examination of his ideas upon these points We shall very cheerfully give up a portion of our time and attention. FEMALE EDUCATION. (E. REVIEW, 1809.) Advice to Young Ladies on the Improve meat of the Mind. By Thomas Broadburst. 8vo. London, 1808. Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which either sex enjoys for the cultivation of their understandings:-and we cannot help thinking, that women have fully as much, if not more, idle time upon their hands than men. Women A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity between men and women; as if women were more quick and men more judicious-are excluded from all the serious busias if women were more remarkable for ness of the world; men are lawyers, delicacy of association, and men for physicians, clergymen, apothecaries, roger powers of attention. All and justices of the peace- - sources of this, we confess, appears to us very exertion which consume a great deal fanciful. That there is a difference in more time than producing and suckling the understandings of the men and the children; so that if the thing is a thing women we every day meet with, every- that ought to be done-if the attainbody, we suppose, must perceive; but ments of literature are objects really worthy the attention of females, they cannot plead the want of leisure as an excuse for indolence and neglect. The lawyer who passes his day in exaspe there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the difference of cirmstances in which they have been placed, without referring to any conjec rating the bickerings of Roe and Doe, | sider such an unusual extension of We bar, in this discussion, any objection which proceeds from the mere novelty of teaching women more than they are already taught. It may be useless that their education should be improved, or it may be pernicious; and these are the fair grounds on which the question may be argued. But those who cannot bring their minds to con mal extend: Onnecting me progr We Do N even to th modern har ommen, fr the actual r that all thes first to s tion from p when it is nished that ffect of know en pedante c nothin, ། ? n to see a natural mode that we are a ed from the s because that 2 that she des no merit in 14 • which kom multiplying - L much more tolerable, by making them secured from the perilous inroads of We would fain know, too, if know- But we appeal destruction. In the same manner, we to any one who has lived with cultilove of order, arrangement, and all has not witnessed as much pedantry, forget the principles upon which the vated persons of either sex, whether he the arts of economy depend. They as much wrongheadedness, as much depend not upon ignorance nor idle- arrogance, and certainly a great deal Des; but upon the poverty, confusion, more rudeness, produced by learning and ruin which would ensue from in men than in women: therefore, we Deglecting them. Add to these prin- should make the accusation general ples the love of what is beautiful and or dismiss it altogether; though, with magnificent, and the vanity of display; respect to pedantry, the learned are -and there can surely be no reason- certainly a little unfortunate, that so able doubt but that the order and very emphatic a word, which is occa economy of VOL L private life is amply sionally applicable to all men em N barked eagerly in any pursuit, should be reserved exclusively for them: for, as pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathise, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry,-while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too. -- or which in itself is very faint; then simple pleasures seem to be very nearly synonymous with small pleasures; and if the simplicity were to be a little increased, the pleasure would vanish altogether. As it is impossible that every man should have industry or activity sufficient to avail himself of the advantages of education, it is natural that men who are ignorant themselves, should view, with some degree of jealousy and alarm, any proposal for improving the education of women. But such men may depend upon it, however the system of female education may be exalted, that there will never be wanting a due proportion of failures; and that after parents, guardians, and preceptors have done all in their power to make everybody wise, there will still be a plentiful supply of women who have taken special care to remain otherwise; and they may rest assured, if the utter extinction of ignorance and folly be the evil they dread, that their interests will always be effectually protected, in spite of every exertion to the contrary. We We must in candour allow, that those women who begin, will have something more to overcome than may probably hereafter be the case. cannot deny the jealousy which exists among pompous and foolish men, respecting the education of women. There is a class of pedants, who would be cut short in the estimation of the world a whole cubit, if it were gene Some persons are apt to contrast the acquisition of important knowledge with what they call simple pleasures; and deem it more becoming that a woman should educate flowers, make friendships with birds, and pick up plants, than enter into more difficult and fatiguing studies. If a woman have no taste and genius for higher occupations, let her engage in these, rather than remain destitute of any pursuit. But why are we necessarily to doom a girl, whatever be her taste or her capacity, to one unvaried line of petty and frivolous occupation? If she be full of strong sense and elevated curiosity, can there be any reason why she should be diluted and enfeebled down to a mere culler of simples, and fancier of birds? why books of history and reasoning are to be torn out of her hand, and why she is to be sent, like a butterfly, to hover over the idle flowers of the field? Such amusements are innocent to those whom they can occupy; but they are not innocent to those who have too power-rally known that a young lady of ful understandings to be occupied by them. Light broths and fruits are innocent food only to weak or to infant stomachs; but they are poison to that organ in its perfect and mature state. But the great charm appears to be in the word simplicity — simple pleasure! If by a simple pleasure is meant an innocent pleasure, the observation is best answered by showing, that the pleasure which results from the acquisition of important knowledge is quite as innocent as any pleasure whatever but if by a simple pleasure is meant one, the cause of which can be easily analysed, or which does not last long, eighteen could be taught to decline the tenses of the middle voice, or acquaint herself with the Æolic varieties of that celebrated language. Then women have, of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their instruction, who being bound (as they think), in point of sex to know more, are not well pleased, in point of fact, to know less. But, among men of sense and liberal politeness, a woman who has successfully cultivated her mind, without diminishing the gentleness and propriety of her manners, is always sure to meet with a respect and attention bordering upon enthusiasm. There is in either sex a strong and permanent disposition to appear agreeable to the other: and this is the fair answer to those who are fond of supposing, that a higher degree of knowledge is, upon the whole, the most ledge would make women rather the innocent, the most dignified, and the rivals than the companions of men. most useful method of filling up that Pre-supposing such a desire to please, idleness, of which there is always so it seems much more probable, that a large a portion in nations far advanced common pursuit should be a fresh in civilisation. Let any man reflect, source of interest than a cause of con- too, upon the solitary situation in tention. Indeed, to suppose that any which women are placed, the ill mode of education can create a general treatment to which they are sometimes jealousy and rivalry between the sexes, exposed, and which they must endure is so very ridiculous, that it requires in silence, and without the power of only to be stated in order to be refuted. complaining, and he must feel conThe same desire of pleasing secures vinced that the happiness of a woman all that delicacy and reserve which are will be materially increased in proof such inestimable value to women. portion as education has given to her We are quite astonished, in hearing the habit and the means of drawing men converse on such subjects, to find her resources from herself. them attributing such beautiful effects There are a few common phrases in to ignorance. It would appear, from circulation, respecting the duties of the tenor of such objections, that igno- women, to which we wish to pay some rance had been the great civiliser of the degree of attention, because they are world. Women are delicate and re- rather inimical to those opinions which fined only because they are ignorant; we have advanced on this subject. -they manage their household, only Indeed, independently of this, there is because they are ignorant; - they at- nothing which requires more vigilance tend to their children, only because than the current phrases of the day, of they know no better. Now, we must which there are always some resorted really confess, we have all our lives to in every dispute, and from the sovebeen so ignorant, as not to know the reign authority of which it is often value of ignorance. We have always vain to make any appeal. "The true attributed the modesty and the refined theatre for a woman is the sick chimLanners of women, to their being well ber; "-"Nothing so honourable to a taught in moral and religious duty, woman as not to be spoken of at to the hazardous situation in which all." These two phrases, the delight of they are placed, to that perpetual Noodledom, are grown into commonVigilance which it is their duty to places upon the subject; and are not exercise over thought, word, and ac- unfrequently employed to extinguish tion,-and to that cultivation of the that love of knowledge in women, which, mild virtues, which those who culti-in our humble opinion, it is of so much vate the stern and magnanimous vir- importance to cherish. Nothing, certes expect at their hands. After all, tainly, is so ornamental and delightful let it be remembered, we are not say in women as the benevolent affections; ing there are no objections to the but time cannot be filled up, and life ditfusion of knowledge among the employed, with high and impassioned female sex. We would not hazard virtues. Some of these feelings are of proposition respecting any- rare occurrence- all of short duration thing; but we are saying, that, upon or nature would sink under them. the whole, it is the best method of em- A scene of distress and anguish is an ploying time; and that there are occasion where the finest qualities of fewer objections to it than to any the female mind may be displayed; other method. There are, perhaps, but it is a monstrous exaggeration to 50,000 females in Great Britain, who tell women that they are born only for are exempted by circumstances from all necessary labour: but every human being must do something with their existence; and the pursuit of know such a |