tions placed on it by the laws of England,
constitute one of the Wrongs of Women.

sant with such corruptions (with whatever is styled by her biographer, asserts in a work
reprobation of the author they may qualify entitled, The Wrongs of Women,' that
their perusal of the book) they are exciting adultery is justifiable, and that the restric-
in others a most mischievous curiosity for
the same unhallowed gratification. Thus
they are daily diminishing in the young and This leads me to dwell a little longer on
timid those wholesome scruples, by which, this most destructive class in the whole wide
when a tender conscience ceases to be in- range of modern corrupters, who effect the
trenched, all the subsequent stages of ruin most desperate work of the passions with-
are gradually facilitated.
out so much as pretending to urge their vio-
We have hitherto spoken only of the Ger-lence, in extenuation of the guilt of indulging
man writings; but because there are multi- them. They solicit this very indulgence
tudes who seldom read, equal pains have with a sort of cold blooded speculation, and
been taken to promote the same object invite the reader to the most unbounded gra-
through the medium of the stage: and this tifications, with all the saturnine coolness of
weapon is, of all others, that against which a geometrical calculation. Theirs is an ini-
it is, at the present moment, the most im- quity rather of phlegm than of spirit: and
portant to warn the more inconsiderate of in the pestilent atmosphere they raise about
my countrywomen.
them, as in the infernal climate described by
Milton-

The parching air

As a specimen of the German drama, it may not be unseasonable to offer a few remarks on the admired play of the Stranger. Burns frore, and frost performs th' effects of fire. In this piece the character of an adultress, which, in all periods of the world, ancient This cool, calculating, intellectual wicas well as modern, in all countries, heathen kedness eats out the very heart and core of as well as christian, has hitherto been held virtue, and like a deadly mildew blights in detestation, and has never been introdu- and shrivels the blooming promise of the huced but to be reprobated, is for the first time man spring. Its benumbing touch commupresented to our view in the most pleasing nicates a torpid sluggishness which paralyzes and fascinating colours. The heroine is a the soul. It descants on depravity as gravewoman who forsook a husband the most af- ly, and details its grossest acts as frigidly, as fectionate and the most amiable, and lived if its object were to allay the tumult of the for some time in a criminal commerce with passions, while it is letting them loose on her seducer. Repenting at length of her mankind, by plucking off the muzzle' of crime, she buries herself in retirement.- present restraint and future accountableThe talents of the poet during the whole ness. The system is a dire infusion, compiece are exerted in attempting to render pounded of bold impiety, brutish sensuality, this woman the object not only of the com- and exquisite folly, which creeping fatally passion and forgiveness, but of the esteem about the heart, checks the moral circulaand affection of the audience. The injured tion, and totally stops the pulse of goodness husband, convinced of his wife's repentance, forms a resolution which every man of true feeling and christian piety will probably approve. He forgives her offence, and promises her through life, his advice, protecThe ravages which some of the old offention, and fortune, together with every thing ders against purity made in the youthful which can alleviate the misery of her con- heart, by the exercise of fervid but licendition, but refuses to replace her in the si- tious imagination on the passions, resembled tuation of his wife! But this is not sufficient the mischief effected hy floods, cataracts, for the German author. His efforts are em- and volcanos. The desolation indeed was ployed, and it is to be feared but too suc- terrible, and the ruin was tremendous; yet cessfully, in making the audience consider it was a train which did not infallibly prethe husband as an unrelenting savage, while clude the possibility of recovery. The counthey are led by the art of the poet anxiously try, though deluged, and devastated, was to wish to see an adultress restored to that not utterly put beyond the power of restorarank of women who have not violated the tion. The harvests indeed were destroyed, most solemn covenant that can be made and all was wide sterility. But though the with man, nor disobeyed one of the most po- crops were lost, the seeds of vegetation were sitive laws which has been enjoined by not absolutely eradicated; so that, after a God. long and barren blank, fertility might finally

by the extinction of the vital principle: thus
not only choking the stream of actual virtue,
but drying up the very fountain of future re-
morse and remote repentance.

About the same time that this first at-return. tempt at representing an adultress in an ex- But the heart once infected with this newemplary light was made by a German dra- ly medicated venom, subtile though slug-, matist, which forms an era in manners, a gish in its operation, resembles what traveldirect vindication of adultery was, for the finst time attempted by a woman, a professed admirer and imitator of the German suicide Werter. The female Werter, as she

When the north wind bloweth it devoureth the mountains, and burneth the wilderness, and cousumeth the grass as fire!' Eccles. xl. 20.

H

lers relate of that blasted spot the dead sea, where those devoted cities once stood, which for their pollutions were burnt with fire from heaven. It continues a stagnant lake of putrifying waters. No wholesome blade ever more shoots up; the air is so tainted that no living thing subsists within its influence. Near the sulphureous pool the very principle of being is annihilated. All is death,

Death, unrepealable, eternal death!

croachments of this crime, suffer not your firmness to be shaken by that affectation of charity, which is growing into a general substitute for principle. Abuse not so noble a quality as Christian candour, by misemploying it in instances to which it does not apply. Pity the wretched woman you dare not countenance; and bless Him who has made you to differ.' If unhappily she be your relation or friend, anxiously watch for the period when she shall be deserted by her betrayer; and see if, by your Christian But let us take comfort. These projects offices, she can be snatched from a perpeare not yet generally realised. These atro- tuity of vice. But if, through the Divine cious principles are not yet adopted into blessing on your patient endeavours, she common practice. Though corruption should ever by awakened to remorse, be not seems with a confluent tide to be pouring anxious to restore the forlorn penitent to in upon us from every quarter, yet there that society against whose laws she has so is still left among us a discriminating judg-grievously offended; and remember that her ment. Clear and strongly marked distinc-soliciting such a restoration, furnishes but tions between right and wrong still subsist. too plain a proof that she is not the penitent While we continue to cherish this sanity of your partiality would believe; since penimind, the case is not desperate. Though that crime, the growth of which always exhibits the most irrefragable proof of the dissoluteness of public manners; though that crime, which cuts up order and virtue by the roots, and violates the sanctity of vows, is awfully increasing,

"Till senates seem,

For purposes of empire less conven'd
Than to release the adult'ress from her bonds:

yet, thanks to the surviving efficacy of a ho-
ly religion, to the operation of virtuous laws,
and to the energy and unshaken integrity
with which these laws are now administer-
ed; and, most of all, perhaps, to a standard
of morals which continues in force, when the
principles which sanctioned it are no more;
this crime, in the female sex at least, is still
held in just abhorrence. If it be practised,
it is not honourable; if it be committed, it is
not justified; we do not yet affect to palliate
its turpitude; as yet it hides its abhorred
head in lurking privacy; and reprobation
hitherto follows its publicity.

tence is more anxious to make its peace with heaven than with the world. Joyfully would a truly contrite spirit commute an earthly for an everlasting reprobation! To restore a criminal to public society, is perhaps to tempt her to repeat her crime, or to deaden her repentance for having committed it, as well as to insult and to injure that society; while to restore a strayed soul to God will add lustre to your Christian character, and brighten your eternal crown.

In the mean time, there are other evils, ultimately perhaps tending to this, into which we are falling, through that sort of fashionable candour, which, as was hinted above, is among the mischievous characteristics of the present day; of which period perhaps it is not the smallest evil, that vices are made to look so like virtues, and are so assimilated to them, that it requires watchfulness and judgment sufficient to analyze and discriminate. There are certain women of good fashion who practise irregula rities not consistent with the strictness of virtue; while their good sense and knowBut on your exerting your influence, with ledge of the world make them at the same just application and increasing energy, may, time keenly alive to the value of reputation. in no small degree, depend whether this cor- They want to retain their indulgences, withruption shall still continue to be resisted. ont quite forfeiting their credit; but finding For the abhorrence of a practice will too their fame fast declining, they cling, by flatprobably diminish, of which the theory is tery and marked attentions, to a few per perused with enthusiasm. From admiring sons of more than ordinary character; and to adopting, the step is short, and the pro- thus, till they are driven to let go their hold, gress rapid; and it is in the moral as in the continue to prop a falling fame. natural world; the motion, in the case of On the other hand, there are not wanting minds as well as of bodies, is accelerated as women of distinction of very correct general they approach the centre to which they are conduct, and of no ordinary sense and virtending. tue, who confiding with a high mind on what Oye to whom this address is particularly they too confidently call the integrity of their directed! an awful charge is, in this instance, own hearts; anxious to deserve a good committed to your hands; as you discharge on the one hand, by a life free from reproach, it or shrink from it, you promote or injure yet secretly too desirous on the other of se the honour of your daughters and the hap-curing a worldly and fashionable reputation; piness of your sons, of both of which you are while their general associates are persons of the depositories. And, while you resolutely honour, and their general resort places of persevere in making a stand against the en-safety; yet allow themselves to be occasion

fame

ally present at the midnight orgies of revelry small degree the principles of the whole riand gaming, in houses of no honourable esti- sing generation. To your direction the mation; and thus help to keep up characters, daughters are almost exclusively commitwhich without their sustaining hand, would ted; and until a certain age, to you also is sink to their just level of contempt and re- consigned the mighty privilege of forming probation. While they are holding out this the hearts and minds of your infant sons. To plank to a drowning reputation, rather, it is you is made over the awfully important to be feared, showing their own strength trust of infusing the first principles of piety than assisting another's weakness, they va- into the tender minds of those who may one lue themselves, perhaps, on not partaking day be called to instruct, not families merely, of the worse parts of the amusements which but districts; to influence, not individuals, may be carrying on; but they sanction them but senates. Your private exertions may at by their presence; they lend their counte- this moment be contributing to the future nance to corruptions they should abhor, and happiness, your domestic neglect, to the futheir example to the young and inexperi- ture ruin, of your country. And may you enced, who are looking about for some such never forget, in this your early instruction sanction to justify them in that to which they of your offspring, nor they, in their future were before inclined, but were too timid to application of it, that religion is the only have ventured upon without the protection sure ground of morals; that private princiof such unsullied names. Thus these re-ple is the only solid basis of public virtue. O spectable characters, without looking to the think that they both may be fixed or forgeneral consequences of their indiscretion, are thoughtlessly employed in breaking down, as it were, the broad fence which should ever separate two very different sorts of society, and are becoming a kind of unnatural link between vice and virtue.

feited for ever according to the use you are now making of that power which God has delegated to you, and of which he will demand a strict account. By his blessing on your pious labours may both sons and daughters hereafter arise and call you blessed.' And in the great day of general account,may every Christian mother be enabled through divine grace to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and Redeemer, 'Behold the children whom thou hast given me!'

There is a gross deception which even persons of reputation practise on themselves. They loudly condemn vice and irregularity as an abstract principle, nay, they stigmatise them in persons of an opposite party, or in those from whom they themselves have Christianity, driven out from the rest of no prospect of personal advantage or amuse- the world, has still, blessed be God! a ment, and in whom therefore they have no strong hold' in this country. And though it particular interest to tolerate evil. But the be the special duty of the appointed 'watchsame disorders are viewed without abhor-man, now that he seeth the sword come uprence when practised by those who in any on the land, to blow the trumpet and warn way minister to their pleasures. Refined the people, which if he neglect to do, their entertainments, luxurious decorations, select blood shall be required of the watchman's music; whatever furnishes any delight rare hand :* yet, in this sacred garrison, imand exquisite to the sense, these soften the pregnable but by neglect, You too have an severity of criticism; these palliate sins; awful post, that of arming the minds of the these varnish over the flaws of a broken rising race with the shield of faith, wherecharacter, and extort not pardon merely but by they shall be able to quench the fiery justification, countenance, intimacy! The darts of the wicked;' that of girding them more respectable will not, perhaps, go all with that sword of the Spirit which is the the length of vindicating the disreputable word of God. Let that very period which vice, but they affect to disbelieve its exist-is desecrated in a neighbouring country, by ence in the individual instance; or, failing a formal renunciation of religion, be solemnin this, they will bury its acknowledged tur- ly marked by you to purposes diametrically pitude in the seducing qualities of the agree-opposite. Let that dishonoured æra in able delinquent. Talents of every kind are which they avowed their resolution to exconsidered as a commutation for a few vices; clude Christianity from the national educaand such talents are made a passport to introduce into honourable society, characters whom their profligacy ought to exclude from it.

tion, be the precise moment scized upon by you for its more sedulous inculcation. And while their children are systematically trained to live without God in the world,' let But the great object to which you, who YOURS, with a more decided emphasis, be are or may be mothers, are more especially consecrated to promote his glory in it. called, is the education of your children. If If you neglect this your bounden duty, we are responsible for the use of influence in the case of those over whom we have no immediate control, in the case of our children we are responsible for the exercise of acknowledged power; a power wide in its extent, indefinite in its effects, and inestimable in its importance. On You depend in no

you will have effectually contributed to expel Christianity from her last citadel. And remember, that the dignity of the work to which you are called, is no less than that of preserving the ark of the Lord.'

Ezekiel, xxxiii. 6.

CHAP II.

disposition to counteract it; together with such a deep view and thorough knowledge On the education of women.—The prevail- of the human heart, as should be necessary ing system tends to establish the errors for developing and controlling its most sewhich it ought to correct.—Dangers ari-cret and complicated workings. And let us sing from an excessive cultivation of the remember that to know the world, as it is called, that is to know its local manners, temporary usages, and evanescent fashions, is not to know human nature: and that where this prime knowledge is wanting, those natural evils which ought to be counteracted will be fostered.

arts.

IT is far from being the object of this slight work to offer a regular plan of female education, a task which has been often more properly assumed by far abler writers; but it is intended rather to suggest a few remarks Vanity, for instance, is reckoned among on the reigning mode, which though it has the light and venial errors of youth; nay, so had many panegyrists, appears to be defec-far from being treated as a dangerous enetive, not only in certain particulars, but as a my, it is often called in as an auxiliary. At general system. There are indeed number- worst, it is considered as a harmless weakless honourable exceptions to an observation ness, which subtracts little from the value which will be thought severe; yet the au- of a character; as a natural effervescence, thor would ask, whether it be not the natu- which will subside of itself, when the first ral tendency of the prevailing and popular ferment of the youthful passions shall have mode to excite and promote those very evils done working. But those persons know litwhich it ought to be the main end and ob-tle of the conformation of the human, and jects of christian instruction to remove? especially of the female heart, who fancy whether the reigning system does not tend that vanity is ever exhausted, by the mere to weaken the principles it ought to operation of time and events. Let those strengthen, and to dissolve the heart it who maintain this opinion look into our plashould fortify? whether, instead of direct-ces of public resort, and there behold if the ing the grand and important engine of edu-ghost of departed beauty is not to its last flitcation to attack and destroy vanity, selfish- ting, fond of haunting the scenes of its past ness and inconsideration, that triple alliance pleasures. The soul, unwilling (if I may in strict and constant league against female virtue; the combined powers of instruction are not sedulously confederated in confirming their strength and establishing their empire?

borrow an allusion from the Platonic mythology) to quit the spot in which the body enjoyed its former delights, still continues to hover about the same place, though the same pleasures are no longer to be found If indeed the material substance; if the there. Disappointments indeed may divert body and limbs, with the organs and senses, vanity into a new direction; prudence may be really the more valuable objects of atten- prevent it from breaking out into excesses, tion, then there is little room for animadver- and age may prove that it is vexation of sion and improvement: but if the immate-spirit; but neither disappointment, prurial and immortal mind; if the heart, out dence, nor age can cure it: for they do not of which are the issues of life,' be the main correct the principle. Nay, the very disapconcern; if the great business of education pointment itself serves as a painful evidence be to implant right ideas, to communicate of its protracted existence. useful knowledge, to form a taste and a Since then there is a season when the sound judgment, to resist evil propensities, youthful must cease to be young, and the and above all to seize the favourable season beautiful to excite admiration, to learn how for infusing principles and confirming ha- to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the bits; if education be a school to fit us for rarest and most valuable arts which can be life, and life be a school to fit us for eternity; taught to woman. And it must be confessed if such, I repeat it, be the chief work and it is a most severe trial for those women to grand ends of education, it may then be be called to lay down beauty, who have noworth enquiring how far these ends are thing else to take up. It is for this sober likely to be effected by the prevailing sys-season of life that education should lay up its rich resources. However disregarded Is it not a fundamental error to consider they may hitherto have been, they will be children as innocent beings, whose little wanted now. When admirers fall away, and weaknesses may perhaps want some correc- flatterers become mute, the mind will be tion, rather than as beings who bring into driven to retire into itself, and if it find no the world a corrupt nature and evil disposi-entertainment at home, it will be driven tions, which it should be the great end of back again upon the world with increased education to rectify? This appears to be force. Yet forgetting this, do we not seem such a foundation-truth, that if I were asked to educate our daughters exclusively for what quality is most important in an, in-the transient period of youth, when it is to structor of youth, I should not hesitate to reply, such a strong impression of the corruption of our nature, as should insure a

tem.

maturer life we ought to advert? Do we not educate them for a crowd, forgetting that they are to live at home? for the world, and

not for themselves? for show, and not for it, peculiarly unfits them for the active duuse? for time, and not for eternity? ties of their own very important condition; Vanity (and the same may be said of self-while, with frivolous eagerness, and secondishness) is not to be resisted like any other hand opportunities, they run to snatch a few vice, which is sometimes busy and some- of those showy acquirements which decotimes quiet; it is not to be attacked as a sin-rate the great. This is done apparently gle fault which is indulged in opposition to a with one or other of these views; either to single virtue; but it is uniformly to be con-make their fortunes by marriage, or if that trolled, as an active, a restless, a growing fail, to qualify them to become teachers of principle, at constant war with all the chris- others: hence the abundant multiplication tian graces; which not only mixes itself into of superficial wives, and of incompetent and all our faults, but insinuates itself into all illiterate governesses. The use of the penour virtues too; and will, if not checked ef- cil, the performance of exquisite but unne-, fectually, rob our best actions of their re-cessary works, the study of foreign lanwards. Vanity, if I may use the analogy, is,guages and of music, require (with some exwith respect to the other vices, what feeling is in regard to the other senses; it is not confined in its operation to the eye, or the ear, or any single organ, but is diffused through the whole being, alive in every part, awakened and communicated by the slight

est touch.

*

:

bler females, the chief part of whose time is required for domestic offices, are little likely to fall in the way of foreigners; and so far from enjoying opportunities for the acquisition of foreign literature, they have seldom time to possess themselves of much of that valuable knowledge which the books

ceptions which should always be made in favour of great natural genius) a degree of leisure which belongs exclusively to affluence. One use of learning languages is, not that we may know what the terms which express the articles of our dress and our table are called in French or Italian; nor Not a few of the evils of the present day that we may think over a few ordinary arise from a new and perverted application phrases in English, and then translate them, of terms: among these, perhaps, there is not without one foreign idiom; for he who canone more absurd, misunderstood, or misap-not think in a language cannot be said to unplied, than the term accomplishments. This derstand it but the great use of acquiring word in its original meaning signifies com- any foreign language is, either that it enapleteness, perfection. But I may safely ap-bles us occasionally to converse with fopeal to the observation of mankind, whether reigners, unacquainted with any other, or they do not meet with swarms of youthful that it is a key to the literature of the counfemales, issuing from our boarding schools, try to which it belongs. Now those humas well as emerging from the more private scenes of domestic education, who are introduced into the world, under the broad and universal title of accomplished young ladies, of all of whom it cannot very truly and correctly be pronounced, that they illustrate the definition, by a completeness which leaves nothing to be added, and a perfection of their own country so abundantly furnish ; which leaves nothing to be desired. and the acquisition of which would be so This frenzy of accomplishments, unhap-much more useful and honourable than the pily, is no longer restricted within the usual limits of rank and fortune; the middle orders have caught the contagion, and it rages downward with increasing and destructive violence, from the elegantly dressed but slenderly portioned curate's daughter to the It would be well if the reflection, how eaequally fashioned daughter of the little gerly this redundancy of accomplishments is tradesman, and of the more opulent but not seized on by their inferiors, were to operate more judicious farmer. And is it not obvi-as in the case of other absurd fashions; the ous, that as far as this epidemical mania has rich and great being seldom brought to respread, this very valuable part of society is nounce any mode of custom, from the mere declining in usefulness, as it rises in its ill-consideration that it is preposterous. or that founded pretensions to elegance? till this it is wrong; while they are frightened into rapid revolution of the manners of the mid- its immediate relinquishment, from the dle class has so far altered the character of pressing consideration that the vulgar are the age, as to be in danger of rendering ob- beginning to adopt it. solete the heretofore common saying, that But, to return to that more elevated, and most worth and virtue are to be found in the on accouut of their more extended influence middle station. For I do not scruple to as-only, that more important class of females, sert, that in general, as far as my little ob- to whose use this little book is more immeservation has extended, this class of females, diately dedicated. Some popular authors, in what relates both to religious knowledge and to practical industry, falls short both of the very high and the very low. Their new course of education, and the indolent habits of life and elegance of dress connected with VOL. I.

46

paltry accessions they make by hammering out the meaning of a few passages in a tongue they but imperfectly understand, and of which they are never likely to make any use.

• Those among the class in question, whose own good sense leads them to avoid these mistaken pursuits, cannot be offended at a reproof which does not belong to them.