as he who displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scholar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something positive; I establish my pretensions to the name of scholar, and gain the credit of leaming, while I sacrifice all its utility. young Englishman goes to school at six or seven years | mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, old; and he remains in a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learning Latin and Greek:* he has scarcely a notion that there is any other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with which he is most perfectly acquainted, are the intrigues of the Heathen gods: with whom Pan slept?-with whom Jupiter ?-whom Apollo ravished? These facts the English youth get by heart the moment they leave the nursery; and are most sedulously Another evil in the present system of classical eduinstructed in them till the best and most active part of cation is the extraordinary perfection which is aimed life is passed away. Now, this long career of classi- at in teaching those languages; a needless perfection; cal learning, we may, if we please, denominate a foun- an accuracy which is sought for in nothing else. There dation; but it is a foundation so far above ground, that are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or there is absolutely no room to put any thing upon it. nineteen at a public school, without making above ten If you occupy a man with one thing till he is twenty-thousand Latin verses;-a greater number than is confour years of age, you have exhausted all his leisure tained in the Eneid: and after he has made this quan. time: he is called into the world, and compelled to tity of verses in a dead language, unless, the poet act; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks and should happen to be a very weak man indeed, he nevreads no more. If you have neglected to put other er makes another as long as he lives. It may be urged, things in him, they will never get in afterwards;-if and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching the del you have fed him only with words, he will remain a icacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this narrow and limited being to the end of his existence. purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it trouble sacrificed in gaining these little delicacies. It is no uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, would be of use that we should go on till fifty years but for their grey hairs and wrinkles, we might easily of age making Latin verses, if the price of a whole mistake for schoolboys. Their talk is of Latin verses; life were not too much to pay for it. We effect our and it is quite clear, if men's ages are to be dated from object; but we do it at the price of something greater the state of their mental progress, that such men are than our object. And whence comes it that the exeighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their penditure of life and labour is totally put out of the minds have been so completely possessed by exagge-calculation, when Latin and Greek are to be attained? rated notions of classical learning, that they have not In every other occupation, the question is fairly stated been able, in the general school of the world, to form between the attainment, and the time employed in the any other notions of real greatness. Attend, too, to pursuit ;--but in classical learning, it seems to be sufthe public feelings-look to all the terms of applause. ficient if the least possible good is gained by the greatA learned man!-a scholar!-a man of erudition! est possible exertion; if the end is anything, and the Upon whom are these epithets of approbation be- means every thing. It is of some importance to speak stowed? Are they given to men acquainted with the and write French; and innumerable delicacies would science of government? thoroughly masters of the be gained by writing ten thousand French verses: but geographical and commercial relations of Europe? to it makes no part of our education to write French pomen who know the properties of bodies, and their ac-etry. It is of some importance that there should be tion upon each other? No: this is not learning: it is good botanists; but no botanist can repeat, by heart, chemistry, or political economy-not learning. The the names of all the plants in the known world; nor is distinguishing abstract terin, the epithet of Scholar, any astronomer acquainted with the appellation and is reserved for him who writes on the Colic reduplica- magnitude of every star in the map of the heavens. tion, and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of ar- The only department of human knowledge in which ranging defectives in and. The picture which a there can be no excess, no arithmetic, no balance of young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowl-profit and loss, is classical learning. edge, draws-his beau ideal, of human nature-his top The prodigious honour in which Latin verses are and consummation of man's powers-is a knowledge held at public schools, is surely the most absurd of all of the Greek language. His object is not to reason, absurd distinctions. You rest all reputation upon that to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, decline, which is a natural gift, and which no labour can attain. and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which If a lad won't learn the words of a language, his degrahe draws for himself, are the detection of an anapest dation in the school is a very natural punishment for in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case his disobedience, or his indolence; but it would be as which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying reasonable to expect that all boys should be witty or Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classic of this beautiful, as that they should be poets. In either kind were to meet the greatest chemist or the great-case it would be to make an accidental, unattainable, est mechanician, or the most profound political econ- and not a very important gift of nature, the only, or mist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek principal test of merit. This is the reason why boys, scholar, would the slightest comparison between them who make a very considerable figure at school, so very ever come across his mind?-would he ever dream often make no figure in the world; and why other lads, that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were who are passed over without notice, turn out to be equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same valuable important men. The test established in the utility as, Bentley and Heyne? We are inclined to world is widely different from that established in a think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal place which is presumed to be a preparation for the like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the world; and the head of a public school, who is a perpraises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained fect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself considerable doubts whether the king, with all his vic-shrink into absolute insignificance, because he has tories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μ. Another misfortune of classical learning, as taught in England, is, that scholars have come, in process of time, and from the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the end--not the luxury which the difficulty encloses, but the difficulty;-not the filbert, but the shell--not what may read in Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has Unless he goes to the University of Cambridge; and then classics occupy him entirely for about ten years; and divide him with mathematics for four or five more. nothing else to command respect or regard, but a talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language. The present state of classical education cultivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little; and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them. It may be said there are profound inves tigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any understanding, to be met with in classical literature. So there are; but no man likes to add the diffculties of a language to the difficulties of a subject; and to study metaphysics, morals, and politics in Greek, when the Greek alone is study enough without them. In all foreign languages, the most popular works are works of imagination. Even in the French language, which we know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in this country, we have twenty which are mere works of imagination. This is still more true in classical literature; because what their poets and orators have left us, is of infinitely greater value than the remains of their philosophy; for, as society advances, men think more accurately and deeply, and imagine more tamely; works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. So that the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twentythree or twenty-four years of age, is a man principally conversant with works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and unamusing facts as the elements of reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opinions and prove his assertions. A very curious argument is sometimes employed in justification of the learned minutia to which all young men are doomed, whatever be their propensities in future life. What are you to do with a young man up to the age of seventeen? Just as if there was such a want of difficulties to overcome, and of important tastes to inspire, that, from the mere necessity of doing something, and the impossibility of doing any thing else, you were driven to the expedient of metre and poetry-as if a young man within that period might not acquire the modern languages, modern history, experimental philosophy, geography, chronology, and a considerable share of mathematics;-as if the memory of things was not more agreeable and more profitable than the memory of words. The great objection is, that we are not making the most of human life, when we constitute such an extensive, and such minute classical erudition, an indispensable article in education. Up to a certain point we would educate every young man in Latin and Greek; but to a point far short of that to which this species of education is now carried. Afterwards, we would grant to classical erudition as high honours as to every other department of knowledge, but not higher. We would place it upon a footing with many other objects of study; but allow to it no superiority. Good scholars would be as certainly produced by these means as good chemists, astronomers, and mathematicians are now produced, without any direct provision whatsoever for their production. Why are we to trust to the diversity of human tastes, and the vareties of human ambition in every thing else, and distrust it in classics alone? The passion for language is just as strong as any other literary passion. There are very good Persian and Arabic scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash have been dug up from Sanscrit ruins. We have seen, in our own times, a clergyman of the University of Oxford complimenting their majesties in Coptic and Syrophoenician verses; and yet we doubt whether there will be a sufficient avidity in literary men to get at the beauties of the finest writers which the world has yet seen; and though the Bagvat Gheeta has (as can be proved) met with human beings to translate, and other human beings to read it, we think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every man-whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke-begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians. The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools in little country towns; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts. There is a timid and absurd apprehension, on the part of ecclesiastical tutors, of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult and important subjects. They fancy that mental exertion must end in religious scepticism; and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, they confine them to the safe and elegant imbecility of classical learning. A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it but impiety to God and treason to kings. And yet, who vilifies both more than the holy poltroon who carefully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and who knows no better me. thod of teaching the highest duties, than by extirpating the finest qualities and habits of the mind? If our religion is a fable, the sooner it is exploded the better. If our government is bad, it should be amended. But we have no doubt of the truth of the one, or of the excellence of the other; and are convinced that both will be placed on a firmer basis in proportion as the minds of men are more trained to the investigation of truth. At present, we act with the minds of our young men as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of talent is annually destroyed in the universities of England by the miserable jealousy and littleness of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in vain to say we have produced great men under this system. We have produced great men under all systems. Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek; and classical learning is supposed to have produced the talents which it has not been able to extinguish. It is scarcely possible to prevent great men from rising up under any system of education, however bad. Teach men demonology or astrology, and you will still have a certain portion of original genius, in spite of these or any other branches of ignorance and folly. There is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one object, and thoroughly obtaining it; and yet, though it is very splendid, it is far from being useful. Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so employed, have produced many works and much fame in that department; but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had been taught there-if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy-and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixed ratio of its difficulty and utility, the system of such an University would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less. When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. A set of lectures upon political economy would be discouraged in Oxford,* probably despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the inclosure of commons, and to dwell upon imports and exports-to come so near to common life, would seem to be undig. nified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr, or the Bentley of his day, would be scandalized in an University to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet, what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and difficulty? And what ought the term University to mean, but a place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to man kind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and inva riable appeal to these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed up pendant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses, and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot of those, who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast. We should be sorry if what we have said should appear too contemptuous towards classical learning, which we most sincerely hope will always be held in great honour in this country, though we certainly do not wish to it that exclusive honour which it at present *They have since been established. 54 enjoys. A great classical scholar is an ornament, and an important acquisition to his country; but, in a place of education, we would give to all knowledge an equal chance for distinction; and would trust to the varieties of human disposition that every science worth cultivation would be cultivated. Looking always to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the produc tions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mustering the difficulties of the learned languages. We should not care whether he were chemist, naturalist, or scholar; because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied, and subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed. of women from the trifling pursuits to which they are 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; as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of association, and men for stronger powers of attention. AÐI this, we confess, appears to us very fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men and the women we every day meet with, every body, we suppose, must perceive; but there is none surely In those who were destined for the church, we would which may not be accounted for by the difference of undoubtedly encourage classical learning more than circumstances in which they have been placed, with out referring to any conjectural difference of original in any other body of men; but if we had to do with a young man going out into public life, we would exhort conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls run him to contemn, or at least not to affect, the reputa- about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are tion of a great scholar, but to educate himself for the both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these offices of civil life. He should learn what the consti- creatures, and train them to a particular set of actions tution of his country really was, how it had grown into and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly oppoits present state, the perils that had threatened it, the site set, of course their understandings will differ, as malignity that had attacked it, the courage that had one or the other sort of occupations has called this or fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it great. that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to We would bring strongly before his mind the charac- go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in orters of those Englishmen who have been the steady der to explain so very simple a phenomenon. Taking friends of the public happiness; and by their exam- it, then, for granted, that nature has been as bountiful ples, would breathe into him a pure public taste which of understanding to one sex as the other, it is incum would keep him untainted in all the vicissitudes of bent on us to consider what are the principal objecpolitical fortune. We would teach him to burst through tions commonly made against the communication of a the well-paid, and the pernicious cant of indiscriminate greater share of knowledge to women than commonly loyalty; and to know his sovereign only as he dis- falls to their lot at present: for though it may be charged those duties, and displayed those qualities, doubted whether women should learn all that men for which the blood and the treasure of his people are learn, the immense disparity which now exists between their knowledge we would hardly think could confided to his hands. We should deem it of the utmost importance that his attention was directed to the admit of any rational defence. It is not easy to imatrue principles of legislation-what effect laws can gine that there can be any just cause why a woman of produce upon opinions, and opinions upon laws-what forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve subjects are fit for legislative interference, and, when years of age. If there be any good at all in female igmen may be left to the management of their own in-norance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) is sureterests. The mischief occasioned by bad laws, and ly too much of a good thing. the perplexity which arises from numerous laws the causes of national wealth-the relations of foreign trade the encouragement of manufactures and agriculture the fictitious wealth occasioned by paper credit-the laws of population-the management of poverty and mendicity-the use and abuse of monopoly-the theory of taxation-the consequences of the public debt. These are some of the subjects, and some of the branches of civil education to which we would turn the minds of future judges, future senators, and future noblemen, After the first period of life had been given up to the cultivation of the classics, and the reasoning powers were now beginning to evolve themselves, these are some of the propensities in study which we would endeavour to inspire. Great knowedge, at such a period of life, we could not convey; but we might fix a decided taste for its acquisition, and a strong disposition to respect it in others. The formation of some great scholars we should certainly prevent, and hinder many from learning what, in a few years, they would necessarily forget; but this loss would be well repaid-if we could show the future rulers of the country that thought and labour which it requires to make a nation happy, or if we could inspire them with that love of public virtue, which, after religion, we most solemnly believe to be the brightest or nament of the mind of man. FEMALE EDUCATION. (Edinburgh ReviEW, 1810.) Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind. By MR. BROADHURST is a very good sort of a man, who Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which either sex enjoys for the culti Women are exvation of their understandings:-and we cannot help thinking, that women have fully as much, if not more idle time upon their hands than men. cluded from all the serious business of the world; men are lawyers physicians, clergymen, apothecaries, and justices of the peace-sources of exertion which consume a great deal more time than producing and suckling children; so that, if the thing is a thing that ought to be done-if the attainments 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 exasperating the bickerings of Roe and Doe, is certainly as much engaged as his lady who has the whole of the morning before her to correct the children and pay the bills. The apothecary, who rushes from an act of phlebotomy in the western parts of the town to insinuate a bolus in the east, is surely as completely absorbed as that fortunate female, who is darning the garment, or preparing the repast of her Esculapius at home; and in every degree and situation in life, it seems that men must necessarily be exposed to more serious demands upon their time and attention than can are speaking always of the fair demands which ought possibly be the case with respect to the other sex. We to be made upon the time and attention of women; for, as the matter now stands, the time of women is con sidered as worth nothing at all. Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, patching mantua-making, and mending, by which it is impossible they can earn tenpence a day. The intellectual improvement of wo men is considered to be of such subordinate impor tance, that twenty pounds paid for needle-work would give to a whole family leisure to acquire a fund of real vacant understandings till the season of improvement knowledge. They are kept with nimble fingers and is utterly passed away, and all chance of forming more important habits completely lost. We do no therefore say that women have more leisure than men, if it be necessary that they should lead the life of artisans; but we make this assertion only upon the supposition, that it is of some importance women should be instructed; and that many ordinary occupations for which a little money will find a better substitute, should be sacrificed to this consideration. 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 consider such an unusual extension of knowledge, without connecting with it some sensation of the ludicrous, should remember that, in the progress from absolute ignorance, there is a period when cultivation of mind is new to every rank and description of persons. A century ago, who would have believed that country gentlemen could be brought to read and spell with the ease and accuracy which we now frequently remark, or supposed that they could be carried even to the elements of ancient and modern history? Nothing is more common or more stupid, than to take the actual for the possible-to believe that all which is, is all which can be; first, to laugh at every proposed deviation from practice as impossible-then, when it is carried into effect, to be astonished that it did not take place before. manner, we forget the principles upon which the love of order, arrangement, and all the arts of economy depend. They depend not upon ignorance nor idle. ness, but upon the poverty, confusion, and ruin which would ensue from neglecting them. Add to these prin ciples, the love of what is beautiful and magnificent, and the vanity of display :-and there can surely be no reasonable doubt but that the order and economy of private life is amply secured from the perilous inroads of knowledge. We would fain know, too, if knowledge is to produce such baneful effects upon the material and the household virtues, why this influence has not already been felt? Women are much better educated now than they were a century ago; but they are by no means less remarkable for attention to the arrange. ment of their household, or less inclined to discharge the offices of parental affection It would be very easy to show that the same objection has been made at all times to every improvement in the education of both sexes and all ranks-and been as uniformly and completely refuted by experience. A great part of the objections made to the education of women, are ra. ther objections made to human nature than to the fe male sex: for it is surely true that knowledge, where it produces any bad effects at all, does as much mischief to one sex as to the other, and gives birth to fully as much arrogance, inattention to common affairs, and eccentricity, among men, as it does among women. But it by no means follows that you get rid of vanity and self-conceit, because you get rid of learning. Self-complacency can never want an excuse; and the best way to make it more tolerable, and more useful, is to give to it as high and as dignified an ob ject as possible. But, at all events, it is unfair to bring forward against a part of the world an objection which is equally powerful against the whole. foolish women think they have any distinction, they are apt to be proud of it; so are foolish men. appeal to any one who has lived with cultivated per sons of either sex, whether he has not witnessed as much pedantry, as much wrongheadedness, as much arrogance, and certainly a great deal more rudeness, produced by learning in men, than in women; there. fore, we should make the accusation general-or dis. When But we It is said, that the effect of knowledge is to make women pedantic and affected; and that nothing can be more offensive than to see a woman stepping out of the natural modesty of her sex to make an ostentatious display of her literary attainments. This may be true enough; but the answer is so trite and obvious, that we are almost ashamed to make it. All affectation and display proceed from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms; -because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which every body possesses. Who ever heard a lady boast that she understood French?-for no other reason, that we know of, but because every body in these days does understand French; and though there may be some disgrace in being ignorant of that language, there is little or no merit in its acquisition. Dif-miss it altogether; though, with respect to pedantry, fuse knowledge generally among women, and you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare. Vanity and conceit we shall of course witness in men and women as long as the world endures: but by multiplying the attainments upon which these feelings are founded, you increase the difficulty of indulging them, and render them much more tolerable, by making them the proofs of much higher merit. When learning ceases to be uncommon among women, learned women will cease to be affected. A great many of the lesser and more obscure duties of life necessarily devolve upon the female sex. The arrangement of all household matters, and the care of children in their early infancy, must of course depend upon them. Now, there is a very general notion, that the moment you put the education of women upon a better footing than it is at present, at that moment there will be an end of all domestic economy; and that if you once suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory diet. These, and all such opinions, are referable to one great and common cause of error-that man does every thing, and that nature does nothing; and that everything we see is referable to positive institution rather than to original feeling. Can anything, for example, be more perfectly absurd than to suppose that the care and perpetual solicitude which a mother feels for her children, depends upon her ignorance of Greek and mathematics; and that she would desert an infant for a quadratic equation? We seem to imagine that we can break in pieces the solemn institution of nature, by the little laws of a boarding-school; and that the existence of the human race depends upon teaching women a little more, or a little less-that Cimmerian ignorance can aid paternal affection, or the circle of arts and sciences produce its destruction. In the same the learned are certainly a little unfortunate, that so very emphatic a word, which is occasionally applied to all men embarked 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 sympathize, 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 of it too. 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 wi: a birds, and pick up plants, than enter into more difficult and fatiguing studies. If a woman has no taste and genius for higher occupations, let her engage in these, to be sure, 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 is 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 hands, 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 powerful 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 seems to be in the word simplicity-simple pleasures! 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 analyzed, or which does not last long, 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 plea-tary situation in which women are placed, the ill sure would vanish altogether. We must in candour allow that those women who begin will have something more to overcome than may probably hereafter be the case. We 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 generally known that a young lady of eighteen could be taught to decline the tenses of the middle voice, or acquaint herself with the Eolic 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 succesfully 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. stances from all necessary labour: but every numan being must do something with their existence; and the pursuit of knowledge is upon the whole, the most innocent, the most dignified, and the most useful me thod of filling up that idleness, of which there is always so large a portion in nations far advanced in civilization. Let any man reflect, too, upon the solitreatment to which they are sometimes exposed, and which they must endure in silence, and without the power of complaining, and he must feel convinced that the happiness of a woman will be materially in creased in proportion as education has given her the habit and the means of drawing her resources from herself. As it is impossible that every man should have industry or activity sufficiently 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 There are a few common phrases in circulation, rebe exalted, that there will never be wanting a due pro- specting the duties of women, to which we wish to portion of failures; and that after parents, guardians, pay some degree of attention, because they are rather and preceptors have done all in their power to make inimical to those opinions which we have advanced on everybody wise, there will be a plentiful supply of this subject. Indeed, independently of this, there is women who have taken special care to remain other-nothing which requires more vigilance than the cur wise; and they may rest assured, if the utter extinc- rent phrases of the day, of which there are always tion of ignorance and folly is the evil they dread, that some resorted to in every dispute, and from the sovetheir interests will always be effectually protected, in reign authority of which it is often vain to make any spite of every exertion to the contrary. appeal. The true theatre for a woman is the sickchamber;'- Nothing so honourable to a woman as not to be spoken of at all.' These two phrases, the delight of Noodledom, are grown into common-places upon the subject; and are not unfrequently employed to extinguish that love of knowledge in women, which, in our humble opinion, it is of o much importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so ornamental and delightful in women as the benevolent affections; but time cannot be filled up, and life employed, with high and impassioned virtues. Some of these feelings are of rare occurrence--all of short duration-or nature would sink under them. A scene of distress and anguish is an occasion where the finest qualities of the female mind may be displayed; but it is a monstrous exaggeration to tell women that they are born only for scenes of distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, sister, and brother, if they want it ;—it would be a violation of the plainest duties to neglect them. But, when we are talking of the common occupations of life, do not let us mistake the accidents for the occupations;-when we are arguing how the twenty. three hours of the day are to be filled up, it is idle to tell us of those feelings and agitations above the level of common existence, which may employ the remaining hour. Compassion, and every other virtue, are the great objects we all ought to have in view; but no man (and no woman) can fill up the twenty-four hours by acts of virtue. But one is a lawyer, and the other a ploughman, and the third a merchant; and then, acts of goodness and intervals of compassion, and fine feeling, are scattered up and down the common occu pations of life. We know women are to be compassionate; but they cannot be compassionate from eight o'clock in the morning till twelve at night :-and what are they to do in the interval? This is the only question we have been putting all along, and is all that can be meant by literary education. We are 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 an higher degree of knowledge would make wo men rather the rivals than the companions of men. Presupposing such a desire to please, it seems much more probable, that a common pursuit should be a fresh source of interest than a cause of contention. Indeed, to suppose that any mode of education can create a general jealousy and rivalry between the sexes, is so very ridiculous, that it requires only to be stated in order to be refuted. The same desire of pleasing secures all that delicacy and reserve which are of such inestimable value to women. quite astonished, in hearing men converse on such subjects, to find them attributing such beautiful ef fects to ignorance. It would appear, from the tenour of such objections, that ignorance had been the great civilizer of the world. Women are delicate and refined, only because they are ignorant;-they manage their household, only because they are ignorant; they attend to their children, only because they know no better. Now, we must really confess, we have all our lives been so ignorant as not to know the value of ignorance. We have always attributed the modesty and refined manners of women, to their being well taught in moral and religious duty,-to the hazardous situation in which they are placed,-to that perpetual vigilance which it is their duty to exercise over thought, and word, and action, and to that cultivation of the mild virtues, which those who cultivate the stern and magnanimous virtues expect at their hands. After all, let it be remembered, we are not saying there are no objections to the diffusion of knowledge among the female sex. We would not hazard such a proposition respecting any thing; but we are saying, that, upon the whole, it is the best method of employ ing time; and that there are fewer objections to it than to any other method. There are, perhaps, 50,000 females in Great Britain who are exempted by circum. Then, again, as to the notoriety which is incurred by literature-The cultivation of knowledge is a very distinct thing from its publication; nor does it follow that a woman is to become an author merely because she has talent enough for it. We do not wish a lady to write books to defend and reply,-to squabble about the tomb of Achilles, or the plain of Troy,-any more than we wish her to dance at the opera, to play at a public concert, or to put pictures in the exhibition, because she has learned music, dancing, and drawing. The great use of her knowledge will be that it contributes to her private happiness. She may make it public: but it is not the principal object which the friends of female education have in view. Among men, the few who write bear no comparison to the many who read. We hear most of the former, indeed, because they are, in general, the most ostentatious part of literary men; but there are innumerable persons who, without ever laying themselves before the public, have made use of literature to add to the strength of their understandings, and to improve the happiness of their lives. After all, it may be an evi |