ciation of all human knowledge. The puffed up pedant 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.

him untainted in all the vicissitudes of politi cal fortune. We would teach him to burs through the well paid, and the pernicious can of indiscriminate loyalty; and to know his sovereign only as he discharged those duties, and displayed those qualities, for which the We should be sorry if what we have said blood and the treasure of his people are con should appear too contemptuous towards clas-fided to his hands. We should deem it of the sical learning, which we most sincerely hope utmost importance that his attention was di will always be held in great honour in this rected to the true principles of legislation,country, though we certainly do not wish what effect laws can produce upon opinions, to it that exclusive honour which it at pre- and opinions upon laws,-what subjects are fit sent enjoys. A great classical scholar is an for legislative interference, and when men ornament, and an important acquisition to may be left to the management of their own nis country; but, in a place of education, we interests. The mischief occasioned by bad would give to all knowledge an equal chance laws, and the perplexity which arises from for distinction; and would trust to the varieties numerous laws, the causes of national wealth, of human disposition that every science worth the relations of foreign trade, the encoucultivation would be cultivated. Looking always to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the productions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering 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.

In those who were destined for the church, we would undoubtedly encourage classical learning more than in any other body of men; but if we had to do with a young man going out into public life, we would exhort him to contemn, or at least not to affect, the reputation of a great scholar, but to educate himself for the offices of civil life. He should learn what the constitution of his country really was, -how it had grown into its present state, the perils that had threatened it,-the malignity that had attacked it,-the courage that had fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it great. We would bring strongly before his mind the characters of those Englishmen who have been the steady friends of the public happiness; and by their examples, would breathe into him a pure public taste which should keep

ragement 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 knowledge, 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 ornament of the mind of man.

FEMALE EDUCATION.*

EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1810.

MR. BROADHURST is a very good sort of a man, who has not written a very bad book upon a very important subject. His object (a very laudable one) is to recommend a better system of female education than at present prevails in this country-to turn the attention of women from the trifling pursuits to which they are now condemned-and to cultivate faculties which, under the actual system of management, might 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 at-gaged as his lady who has the whole of the

tention.

world; men are lawyers, physicians, clergymen, apothecaries, and justices of the peacesources of exertion which consume a greal 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 enmorning before her to correct the children and A great deal has been said of the original pay the bills. The apothecary, who rushes difference of capacity between men and wo- from an act of phlebotomy in the western parts men; as if women were more quick, and men of the town to insinuate a bolus in the east, is more judicious-as if women were more re-surely as completely absorbed as that fortunate markable for delicacy of association, and men female who is darning the garment, or prepar for stronger powers of attention. All this, we ing the repast of her Esculapius at home; confess, appears to us very fanciful. That there and, in every degree and situation of life, it is a difference in the understandings of the men seems that men must necessarily be exposed to and the women we every day meet with, every more serious demands upon their time and atbody, we suppose, must perceive; but there is tention than can possibly be the case with renone surely which may not be accounted for spect to the other sex. We are speaking alby the difference of circumstances in which ways of the fair demands which ought to be they have been placed, without referring to any made upon the time and attention of women; conjectural difference of original conformation for, as the matter now stands, the time of woof mind. As long as boys and girls run about men is considered as worth nothing at all. in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, both precisely alike. If you catch up one half patching, mantua-making, and mending, by of these creatures, and train them to a particu- which it is impossible they can earn tenpence lar set of actions and opinions, and the other a day. The intellectual improvement of wohalf to a perfectly opposite set, of course their men is considered to be of such subordinate understandings will differ, as one or the other importance, that twenty pounds paid for needlesort of occupations has called this or that ta- work would give to a whole family leisure to lent into action. There is surely no occasion acquire a fund of real knowledge. They are to go into any deeper or more abstruse reason- kept with nimble fingers and vacant undering, in order to explain so very simple a phe- standings till the season for improvement is utnomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that terly passed way, and all chance of forming nature has been as bountiful of understanding more important habits completely lost. We to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us do not therefore say that women have more to consider what are the principal objections leisure than men, if it be necessary that they commonly made against the communication of should lead the life of artisans; but we make a greater share of knowledge to women than this assertion only upon the supposition, that it commonly falls to their lot at present: for though is of some importance women should be init may be doubted whether women should learn structed; and that many ordinary occupations, all that men learn, the immense disparity which for which a little money will find a better substi now exists between their knowledge we should tute, should be sacrificed to this consideration. hardly think could admit of any rational defence. It is not easy to imagine that there can be any just cause why a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve years of If there be any good at all in female ignorance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) is surely too much of a good thing.

age.

Something in this question must depend, no doubt, upon the leisure which either sex enjoys for the cultivation of their understand ings:-and we cannot help thinking, that women have fully as much, if not more, idle time upon their hands than men. Women are excluded from all the serious business of the

* Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind. By THOMAS BROADHURST. 8vo. London, 1808.

We bar, in this discussion, any objection which proceeds from the mere novelty of teach · ing women more than they are aiready 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 unusua! 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 be lieved that country gentlemen could be brought to read and spell with the ease and accuracy which we now so frequently remark,—or supposed that they could be carried up 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.

upon the poverty, confusion, and ruin which would ensue for neglecting them. Add to these principles, 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.

It is said, that the effect of knowledge is to We would fain know, too, if knowledge is to make women pedantic and affected; and that produce such baneful effects upon the materia. nothing can be more offensive than to see a and the household virtues, why this influence woman stepping out of the natural modesty of has not already been felt? Women are much her sex to make an ostentatious display of her better educated now than they were a century literary attainments. This may be true enough; ago; but they are by no means less remarkabut the answer is so trite and obvious, that we ble for attention to the arrangements of their are almost ashamed to make it. All affectation household, or less inclined to discharge the ofand display proceed from the supposition of fices of parental affection. It would be very possessing something better than the rest of easy to show, that the same objection has been the world possesses. Nobody is vain of pos- made at all times to every improvement in the sessing two legs and two arms;-because that education of both sexes, and all ranks—and is the precise quantity of either sort of limb been as uniformly and completely refuted by which every body possesses. Who ever heard experience. A great part of the objections a lady boast that she understood French?-for made to the education of women, are rather no other reason, that we know of, but because objections made to human nature than to the every body in these days does understand female sex: for it is surely true, that knowledge, French; and though there may be some dis- where it produces any bad effects at all, does as grace in being ignorant of that language, there much mischief to one sex as to the other,— is little or no merit in its acquisition. Diffuse and gives birth to fully as much arrogance, inknowledge generally among women, and you attention to common affairs, and eccentricity will at once cure the conceit which knowledge among men, as it does among women. But it occasions while it is rare. Vanity and conceit by no means follows, that you get rid of vanity we shall of course witness in men and women and self-conceit because you get rid of learnas long as the world endures: but by multiplying. Self-complacency can never want an exing the attainments upon which these feelings cuse; and the best way to make it more toleraare founded, you increase the difficulty of in-ble, and more useful, is to give to it as high and dulging them, and render them much more tolerable, by making them the proofs of a much higher merit. When learning ceases to be uncommon among women, learned women will cease to be affected.

as dignified an object 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. When foolish women think they have any distinction, they are apt to be proud of it; so are foolish men. But we appeal to any one who has lived with culti vated persons 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; therefore, we should make the accusation general-or dismiss it altogether; though, with respect to pedantry, the learned are certainly a little unfortunate, that so very emphatic a word, which is occasionally applicable 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 thay have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry,-while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too.

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 every thing we see is referable to positive institution rather than to original feeling. Can any thing, 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 Some persons are apt to contrast the acquisifor a quadratic equation? We seem to ima-tion of important knowledge with what they gine that we can break in pieces the solemn call simple pleasures; and deem it more beinstitution of nature, by the little laws of a coming that a woman should educate flowers, boarding-school; and that the existence of the make friendships with birds, and pick up plants, human race depends upon teaching women a than enter into more difficult and fatiguing a little more or a little less-that Cimmerian studies. If a woman has no taste and genius ignorance can aid paternal affection, or the cir-for higher occupation, let her engage in these ele of arts and sciences produce its destruction.to be sure rather than remain destitute of any In the same manner, we forget the principles pursuit. But why are we necessarily to doom upon which the love of order, arrangement, a girl, whatever be her taste or her capacity, to and all the arts of economy depend. They de- one unvaried line of petty and frivolous occupend rot upon ignorance nor idleness; but pation? If she is full of strong sense and ele

vated curiosity, can there be any reason why | probable, that a common pursuit should be a she should be diluted and enfeebled down to a fresh source of interest than a cause of contenmere culler of simples, and fancier of birds?- tion. Indeed, to suppose that any mode of eduwhy books of history and reasoning are to be cation can create a general jealousy and rivalry torn out of her hand, and why she is to be sent, between the sexes, is so very ridiculous, that it like a butterfly, to hover over the idle flowers requires only to be stated in order to be refuted. of the field? Such amusements are innocent The same desire of pleasing secures all that deto those whom they can occupy; but they are licacy and reserve which are of such inestimanot innocent to those who have too powerful ble value to women. We are quite astonished, understandings to be occupied by them. Light in hearing men converse on such subjects, to broths and fruits are innocent food only to find them attributing such beautiful effects to weak or to infant stomachs; but they are poison ignorance. It would appear, from the tenour to that organ in its perfect and mature state. of such objections, that ignorance had been the But the great charm appears to be in the word great civilizer of the world. Women are delisimplicity simple pleasure! If by a simple cate and refined only because they are ignopleasure is meant an innocent pleasure, the ob- rant;-they manage their household, only beservation is best answered by showing, that cause they are ignorant;-they attend to their the pleasure which results from the acquisition children, only because they know no better. of important knowledge is quite as innocent as Now, we must really confess, we have all our any pleasure whatever: but if by a simple lives been so ignorant as not to know the value pleasure is meant one, the cause of which can of ignorance. We have always attributed the be easily analyzed, or which does not last long, modesty and the refined manners of women, to or which in itself is very faint, then simple plea- their being well taught in moral and religious sures seem to be very nearly synonymous with duty,-to the hazardous situation in which they small pleasures; and if the simplicity were to are placed, to that perpetual vigilance which it be a little increased, the pleasure would vanish is their duty to exercise over thought, word, and altogether. 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 employing 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 circumstances from all necessary labour: but every human 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 method of filling up that idleness, of which there is always s large a portion in nations far advanced in civil ization. Let any man reflect, too, upon the soli We must in candour allow that those women tary situation in which women are placed,who begin will have something more to over-the ill treatment to which they are sometimes come 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 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.

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 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 every body 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 is the evil they dread, that their interests will always be effectually protected, in spite of every exertion to the contrary.

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 women rather the rivals than the companions of men. Presupposing such a desire to please, it seems much more

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 increased in proportion as education has given to her the habit and the means of drawing her resources from her.. self.

There are a few common phrases in circulation, respecting the duties of women, to which we wish to pay some degree of attention, because they are rather inimical to those opinions which we have advanced on this subject. Indeed, independently of this, there is nothing which requires more vigilance than the current phrases of the day, of which there are always some resorted to in every dispute, and from the sovereign authority of which it is often vain to make any appeal. "The true theatre for a woman is the sick-chamber;"-"Nothing so honourable to a woman as not to be spoken of at all." These two phrases, the delight of Noodle dom, 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 so muchi importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so ornamental and delightful in women as the be

nothing to do; and if they come untaught from the schools of education, they will never be in structed in the school of events.

Women have not their livelihood to gain by knowledge; and that is one motive for relaxing all those efforts which are made in the education of men. They certainly have not; but they have happiness to gain, to which knowledge leads as probably as it does to profit; and that is a reason against mistaken indulgence. Besides, we conceive the labour and fatigue of accomplishments to be quite equal to the labour and fatigue of knowledge; and that it takes quite as many years to be charming as it does to be learned.

nevolent affections; but time cannot be filled culties which occur in literature, it can never be up, and life employed, with high and impas- educated at all: if you do not effectually rouse sioned virtues. Some of these feelings are of it by education, it must remain for ever languid. rare occurrence-all of short duration-or na- Uneducated men may escape intellectual degrature would sink under them. A scene of dis-dation; uneducated women cannot. They have tress 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 Another difference of the sexes is, that women have in view; but no man (and no woman) can are attended to, and men attend. All acts of fill up the twenty-four hours by acts of virtue. courtesy and politeness originate from the one But one is a lawyer, and the other a plough-sex, and are received by the other. We can man, and the third a merchant; and then, acts see no sort of reason, in this diversity of condiof goodness, and intervals of compassion and tion, for giving to women a trifling and insigfine feeling, are scattered up and down the nificant education; but we see in it a very powcommon occupations of life. We know women erful reason for strengthening their judgment, are to be compassionate; but they cannot be and inspiring them with the habit of employing compassionate from eight o'clock in the morn-time usefully. We admit many striking differing till twelve at night-and what are they to ences in the situation of the two sexes, and do in the interval? This is the only question many striking differences of understanding, prowe have been putting all along, and is all that ceeding from the different circumstances in can be meant by literary education. which they are placed: but there is not a single difference of this kind which does not afford a new argument for making the education of women better than it is. They have nothing serious to do;-is that a reason why they should be brought up to do nothing but what is trifling? They are exposed to greater dangers ;— is that a reason why their faculties are to be purposely and industriously weakened? They are to form the characters of future men;-is that a cause why their own characters are to be broken and frittered down as they now are? In short, there is not a single trait in that diversity of circumstances, in which the two sexes are placed, that does not decidedly prove the magnitude of the error we commit in neglecting (as we do neglect) the education of

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 evil for ladies to be talked of: but we really think those ladies who are talked of only as Mrs. Marcet, Mrs. Somerville, and Miss Martineau are talked of, may bear their misfortunes with a very great degree of Christian patience. Their exemption from all the necessary business of life is one of the most powerful motives for the improvement of education in women. Lawyers and physians have in their professions a constant motive to exertion; if you neglect their education, they must in a certain degree educate themselves by their commerce with the world: they must learn caution, accuracy, and judgment, because they must incur responsibility. But if you neglect to educate the mind of a woman, by the speculative diffi

women.

If the objections against the better education of women could be overruled, one of the great advantages that would ensue would be the extinction of innumerable follies. A decided and prevailing taste for one or anothe mode of education there must be. A century past, it was for housewifery-now it is for accomplishments. The object now is, to make women artists, to give them an excellence in drawing, music, painting and dancing,-of which, persons who make these pursuits the occupation of their lives, and derive from them their subsistence, need not be ashamed. Now, one great evil of this is, that it does not last. If the whole of life were an Olympic game,-if we could go on feasting and dancing to the end,-this night do; but it is in truth merely a provision for the little interval between coming into life, and settling in it; while it leaves a long and dreary expanse behind, devoid both of dignity and cheerfulness. No mother, no woman who has passed over the few first years of life, sings, or dances, or draws, or plays upon musical instruments. These are merely means for displaying