apprise her that human life is a true history, many passages of which will be dull, obscure, and uninteresting; some perhaps tragical; but, that whatever gay incidents and pleasing scenes may be interspersed in the progress of the piece, yet finally "one event happeneth to all;" to all there is one awful and infallible catastrophe. Apprise her that the estimation which mankind forms of merit is not always just, nor is its praise very exactly proportioned to desert; tell her that the world weighs actions in far different scales from "the balance of the sanctuary," and estimates worth by a far different standard from that of the gospel. Apprise her that while her purest intentions may be sometimes calumniated, and her best actions misrepresented, she will, on the other hand, be liable to receive commendation on occasions wherein her conscience will tell her she has not deserved it; and that she may be extolled by others for actions for which, if she be honest, she will condemn herself.

Do not, however, give her a gloomy and discouraging picture of the world, but rather seek to give her a just and sober view of the part she will have to act in it. And restrain the impetuosity of hope, and cool the ardour of expectation, by explaining to her, that this part, even in her best estate, will probably consist in a succession of petty trials, and a round of quiet duties, which, if well performed, though they will make little or no figure in the book of fame, will prove of vast importance to her in that day when another "book is opened, and the judgment is set, and every one will be judged according to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or bad."

Say not these just and sober views will cruelly wither her young hopes, blast her budding prospects, and deaden the innocent satisfactions of life. It is not true. There is, happily, an active spring in the mind of youth, which bounds with fresh vigour and uninjured elasticity from any such temporary depression. It is not meant that you should darken her prospect, so much as that you should enlighten the eyes of her understanding to contemplate it. And though her feelings, tastes, and passions will all be against you, if you set before her a faithful delineation of life, yet it will be something to get her judgment on your side. It is no unkind office to assist the short view of youth with the aids of longsighted experience; to enable them to discover spots in the brightness of that world which dazzles them in prospect, though it is probable they will after all choose to believe their own eyes rather than the offered glass.

CHAPTER VIII.

On female study, and initiation into knowledge.-Error of cultivating the imagination to the neglect of the judgment. - Books of reasoning recommended.

As this little work by no means assumes the character of a general scheme of education, the author has purposely avoided expatiating largely on any kind of instruction, but as it happens to be connected, either immediately or remotely, with objects of a moral or religious nature. Of course, she has been so far from thinking it necessary to enter into the enumeration of those popular books which are used in general instruction,

With such books the

that she has purposely forborne to mention any. rising generation is far more copiously and ably furnished than any that has preceded it; and out of an excellent variety, the judicious instructor can hardly fail to make such a selection as shall be beneficial to the pupil.

But while due praise ought not to be withheld from the improved methods of communicating the elements of general knowledge; yet is there not some danger that our very advantages may lead us into error, by causing us to repose so confidently on the multiplied helps which facilitate the entrance into learning, as to render our pupils superficial through the very facility of acquirement? Where so much is done for them, may they not be led to do too little for themselves; and besides that exertion may slacken for want of a spur, may there not be a moral disadvantage in possessing young persons with the notion that learning may be acquired without diligence, and knowledge be attained without labour? Sound education never can be made a "primrose path of dalliance." Do what we will, we cannot cheat children into learning, or play them into knowledge, according to the conciliating smoothness of the modern creed, and the selfish indolence of modern habits. There is no idle way to any acquisitions which really deserve the name. And as Euclid, in order to repress the impetuous vanity of greatness, told his sovereign that there was no royal way to geometry; so the fond mother may be assured that there is no short cut to any other kind of learning; no privileged by-path cleared from the thorns and briars of repulse and difficulty, for the accommodation of opulent inactivity or feminine weakness. The tree of knowledge, as a punishment, perhaps, for its having been at first unfairly tasted, cannot now be climbed without difficulty; and this very circumstance serves afterwards to furnish not only literary pleasures, but moral advantages. For the knowledge which is acquired by unwearied assiduity is lasting in the possession, and sweet to the possessor, both perhaps in proportion to the cost and labour of the acquisition. And though an able teacher ought to endeavour, by improving the communicating faculty in himself, (for many know what they cannot teach,) to soften every difficulty; yet in spite of the kindness and ability with which he will smooth every obstruction, it is probably among the wise institutions of Providence that great difficulties should still remain. For education is but an initiation into that life of trial to which we are introduced on our entrance into this world. It is the first breaking-in to that state of toil and labour, to which we are born, and to which sin has made us liable; and in this view of the subject, the pains taken in the acquisition of learning may be converted to higher uses than such as are purely literary.

Will it not be ascribed to a captious singularity, if I venture to remark, that real knowledge and real piety, though they may have gained in many instances, have suffered in others, from that profusion of little, amusing, sentimental books, with which the youthful library overflows? Abundance has its dangers, as well as scarcity. In the first place, may not the multiplicity of these alluring little works increase the natural reluctance to those more dry and uninteresting studies, of which, after all, the rudiments of every part of learning must consist? And, secondly, is there not some danger (though there are many honourable exceptions) that some of those engaging narratives may serve to infuse into the youthful heart a sort of

spurious goodness, a confidence of virtue, a parade of charity? And that the benevolent actions, with the recital of which they abound, when they are not made to flow from any source but feeling, may tend to inspire a self-complacency, a self-gratulation, a "stand by, for I am holier than thou?" May not the success with which the good deeds of the little heroes are uniformly crowned, the invariable reward which is made the instant concomitant of well-doing, furnish the young reader with false views of the condition of life, and the nature of the Divine dealings with men? May they not help to suggest a false standard of morals, to infuse a love of popularity and an anxiety for praise, in the place of that simple and unostentatious rule, of doing whatever good we do, "because it is the will of God?" The universal substitution of this principle would tend to purify the worldly morality of many a popular little story. And there are few dangers which good parents will more carefully guard against, than that of giving their children a mere political piety; that sort of religion which just goes to make people more respectable, and to stand well with the world; a religion which is to save appearances, without inculcating realities; a religion which affects to "preach peace and good will to men," but which forgets to give "glory to God in the highest."*

There is a certain precocity of mind, which is much helped on by these superficial modes of instruction: for frivolous reading will produce its correspondent effect in much less time than books of solid instruction; the imagination being liable to be worked upon, and the feelings to be set a-going, much faster than the understanding can be opened and the judgment enlightened. A talent for conversation should be the result of instruction, not its precursor; it is a golden fruit, when suffered to ripen gradually on the tree of knowledge; but if forced in the hotbed of a circulating library, it will turn out worthless and vapid in proportion as it was artificial and premature. Girls who have been accustomed to devour a multitude of frivolous books, will converse and write with a far greater appearance of skill, as to style and sentiment, at twelve or fourteen years old, than those of a more advanced age, who are under the discipline of severer studies: but the former having early attained to that low standard which had been held out to them, become stationary; while the latter, quietly progressive, are passing through just gradations to a higher strain of mind; and those who early begin with talking and writing like women, commonly end with thinking and acting like children.

I would not however prohibit such works of imagination as suit this early period. When moderately used, they serve to stretch the faculties and expand the mind; but I should prefer works of vigorous genius and pure unmixed fable to many of those tame and more affected moral stories which are not grounded on Christian principle. I should suggest the use, on the one hand, of original and acknowledged fictions; and on the other, of accurate and simple facts; so that truth and fable may ever be kept separate and distinct in the mind. There is something that kindles fancy,

An ingenious (and in many respects useful) French treatise on education, has too much encouraged this political piety; by considering religion as a thing of human convention, rather than of Divine institution; as a thing creditable, rather than commanded by erecting the doctrine of expediency in the room of Christian simplicity, and wearing away the spirit of truth by the substitution of occasional deceit, equivocation, subterfuge, and mental reservation.

awakens genius, and excites new ideas, in many of the bold fictions of the East. And there is one peculiar merit in the Arabian and some other Oriental tales, which is, that they exhibit striking, and in many respects faithful views of the manners, habits, customs, and religion of their respective countries; so that some tincture of real local information is acquired by the perusal of the wildest fable, which will not be without its uses in aiding the future associations of the mind in all that relates to Eastern history and literature.

The irregular fancy of women is not sufficiently subdued by early application, nor tamed by labour, and the kind of knowledge they commonly do acquire is easily attained; and being chiefly some slight acquisition of the memory, something which is given them to get off by themselves, and not grounded in their minds by comment and conversation, it is easily lost. The superficial question-and-answer way, for instance, in which they often learn history, furnishes the mind with little to lean on; the events being detached and separated, the actions having no links to unite them with each other; the characters not being interwoven by mutual relation; the chronology being reduced to disconnected dates, instead of presenting an unbroken series; of course, neither events, actions, characters, nor chronology, fasten themselves on the understanding, but rather float in the memory as so many detached episodes, than contribute to form the mind and to enrich the judgment of the reader, in the important science of men and manners.

The swarms of abridgments, "beauties," and compendiums, which form too considerable a part of a young lady's library, may be considered in many instances as an infallible receipt for making a superficial mind. The names of the renowned characters in history thus become familiar in the mouths of those who can neither attach to the ideas of the person, the series of his actions, nor the peculiarities of his character. A few fine passages from the poets (passages, perhaps, which derived their chief beauty from their position and connexion) are huddled together by some extract-maker, whose brief and disconnected patches of broken and discordant materials, while they inflame young readers with the vanity of reciting, neither fill the mind nor form the taste; and it is not difficult to trace back to their shallow sources the hackneyed quotations of certain accomplished young ladies, who will be frequently found not to have come legitimately by any thing they know. I mean, not to have drawn it from its true spring, the original works of the author, from which some beauty-monger has severed it. Human inconsistency in this, as in other cases, wants to combine two irreconcilable things; it strives to unite the reputation of knowledge with the pleasures of idleness, forgetting that nothing that is valuable can be obtained without sacrifices, and that if we would purchase knowledge we must pay for it the fair and lawful price of time and industry. For this extract reading, while it accommodates itself to the convenience, illustrates the character, of the age in which we live. The appetite for pleasure, and that love of case and indolence which is generated by it, leave little time or taste for sound improvement; while the vanity, which is equally a characteristic of the existing period, puts in its claim also for indulgence, and contrives to figure away by these

little snatches of ornamental reading, caught in the short intervals of successive amusements.

Besides, the taste, thus pampered with delicious morsels, is early vitiated. The young reader of these clustered beauties conceives a disrelish for every thing which is plain; and grows impatient, if obliged to get through those equally necessary though less showy parts of a work, in which perhaps the author gives the best proof of his judgment by keeping under that occasional brilliancy and incidental ornament, of which these superficial students are in constant pursuit. In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skilfully woven them.

The remark, however, as far as it relates to abridgments, is by no means of general application; there are many valuable works, which from their bulk would be almost inaccessible to a great number of readers, and a considerable part of which may not be generally useful. Even in the best-written books there is often superfluous matter; authors are apt to get enamoured of their subject, and to dwell too long on it: every person cannot find time to read a longer work on any subject, and yet it may be well for them to know something on almost every subject; those, therefore, who abridge voluminous works judiciously, render service to the community. But there seems, if I may venture the remark, to be a mistake in the use of abridgments. They are put systematically into the hands of youth, who have, or ought to have, leisure for the works at large; while abridgments seem more immediately calculated for persons in more advanced life, who wish to recall something they had forgotten; who want to restore old ideas, rather than acquire new ones; or they are useful for persons immersed in the business of the world, who have little leisure for voluminous reading: they are excellent to refresh the mind, but not competent to form it: they serve to bring back what had been formerly known, but do not supply a fund of knowledge.

Perhaps there is some analogy between the mental and bodily conformation of women. The instructor therefore should imitate the physician. If the latter prescribe bracing medicines for a body of which delicacy is the disease, the former would do well to prohibit relaxing reading for a mind which is already of too soft a texture, and should strengthen its feeble tone by invigorating reading.

By softness, I cannot be supposed to mean imbecility of understanding, but natural softness of heart, and pliancy of temper; together with that indolence of spirit which is fostered by indulging in seducing books, and in the general habits of fashionable life.

I mean not here to recommend books which are immediately religious, but such as exercise the reasoning faculties, teach the mind to get acquainted with its own nature, and to stir up its own powers. Let not a timid young lady start if I should venture to recommend to her, after a proper course of preparatory reading, to swallow and digest such strong meat as Watts's or Duncan's little book of Logic, some parts of Mr. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, and Bishop Butler's Analogy.