The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 15

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A. Constable, 1810

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Page 286 - The object is, to give to children resources that will endure as long as life endures, — habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy, — occupations that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and therefore death less terrible...
Page 35 - 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 be read in Greek, but Greek itself.
Page 286 - 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 the grace and vivacity of youth, which every woman gives up as she gives up the dress and the manners of eighteen. She has no wish to retain them; or, if she has, she is driven out of them by diameter and derision.
Page 281 - ... 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 cultivated 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...
Page 40 - ... 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...
Page 37 - So that the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three 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 materials of reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left...
Page 38 - 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.
Page 171 - But, in one case, they were the tools of a king plotting against his people ; in the other, the ministers of a free government acting upon enlarged principles, and with energies which no state that is not in some degree republican can supply. How forcibly must the contemplation of these men in such opposite situations teach persons engaged in political life, that a free and popular government is desirable, not only for the public good, but for their own greatness and consideration, for every object...
Page 293 - ... affection, by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The education of women favours public morals ; it provides for every season of life, as well as for the brightest and the best ; and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of...
Page 285 - ... 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 difficulties which occur in literature, it can never be educated at all : if you do not effectually rouse it by education, it must remain for ever languid. Uneducated men may escape intellectual degradation ; uneducated women cannot.

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