"A stranger, ignorant of the trade, Quoth Dick, "My work is yet in bits, Says John, "Thou say'st the thing I mean, This world, which clouds thy soul with doubt, "As when we view these shreds and ends "No plan, no pattern, can we trace; Nor see the beauteous upper side. "But when we reach that world of light, "What now seem random strokes will there Then shall we praise what here we spurn'd, For then the carpet shall be turn'd.” "Thou'rt right," quoth Dick; "no more I'll grumble My impious doubts are put to flight, For my own carpet sets me right." THE PROPER EDUCATION FOR FEMALES. Since, then, there is a season when the youthful must cease to be young, and the beautiful to excite admiration; to learn how to grow old gracefully is, perhaps, one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to woman. And it must be confessed it is a most severe trial for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life that education should lay up its rich resources. However disregarded they may hitherto have been, they will be wanted now. When admirers fall away, and flatterers become mute, the mind will be compelled to retire into itself; and if it find no entertainment at home, it will be driven back again upon the world with increased force. Yet, forgetting this, do we not seem to educate our daughters exclusively for the transient period of youth, when it is to 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 use? for time, and not for eternity? Not a few of the evils of the present day arise from a new and perverted application of terms; among these, perhaps, there is not one more abused, misunderstood, or misapplied, than the term accomplishments. This word, in its original meaning, signifies completeness, perfection. But I may safely appeal to the observation of mankind, whether they do not meet with swarms of youthful females, issuing from our boarding-schools, as 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 which leaves nothing to be desired. It would be well if we would reflect that we have to educate not only rational but accountable beings; and, rêmembering this, should we not be solicitous to let our daughters learn of the welltaught and associate with the well-bred? In training them, should we not carefully cultivate intellect, implant religion, and cherish modesty? Then whatever is engaging in manners would be the natural result of whatever is just in sentiment and correct in principle; softness would grow out of humility, and external delicacy would spring from purity of heart. Then the decorums, the proprieties, the elegancies, and even the graces, as far as they are simple, pure, and honest, would follow as an almost inevitable consequence; for to follow in the train of the Christian virtues, and not to take the lead of them, is the proper place which religion assigns to the graces. It will be prudent to reflect that in all polished countries an entire devotedness to the fine arts has been one grand source of the corruption of the women; and so justly were these pernicious consequences appreciated by the Greeks, among whom these arts were carried to the highest possible perfection, that they seldom allowed them to be cultivated to a very exquisite degree by women of great purity of character. And while corruption, brought on by an excessive cultivation of the arts, has contributed its full share to the decline of states, it has always furnished an infallible symptom of their impending fall. The satires of the most penetrating and judicious of the Roman poets, corroborating the testimonies of the most accurate of their historians, abound with invectives against the general depravity of manners introduced by the corrupt habits of female education, so that the modesty of the Roman matron, and the chaste demeanor of her virgin daughters, which, amid the stern virtues of the state, were as immaculate and pure as the honor of the Roman citizen, fell a sacrifice to the luxurious dissipation brought in by their Asiatic conquest; after which the females were soon taught a complete change of character. They were instructed to accommodate their talents of pleasing to the more vitiated tastes of the other sex; and began to study every grace and every art which might captivate the exhausted hearts and excite the wearied and capricious inclinations of the men; till, by a rapid, and at length complete, enervation, the Roman character lost its signature, and, through a quick succession of slavery, effeminacy, and vice, sunk into that degeneracy of which some of the modern Italian states now serve to furnish a too just specimen. QUALITIES THAT ARE PREFERABLE TO GENIUS. Patience, diligence, quiet and unfatigued perseverance, industry, regularity, and economy of time,-as these are the dispositions I would labor to excite, so these are the qualities I would warmly commend. So far from admiring genius, or extolling its prompt effusions, I would rather intimate that excellence, to a certain degree, is in the power of every competitor; that it is the vanity of overvaluing herself for supposed original powers, and slackening exertion in consequence of that vanity, which often leaves the lively ignorant, and the witty superficial. A girl who overhears her mother tell the company that she is a genius, and is so quick that she never thinks of applying to her task till a few minutes before she is to be called to repeat it, will acquire such a confidence in her own abilities that she will be advancing in conceit as she is falling short in knowledge. Whereas, if she were made to suspect that her want of application rather indicated a deficiency than a superiority in her understanding, she would become industrious in proportion as she became modest; and by thus adding the diligence of the humble to the talents of the ingenious, she might really attain a degree of excellence which mere quickness of parts, too lazy because too proud to apply, seldom attains. There is a custom among teachers, which is not the more right for being common;-they are apt to bestow an undue proportion of pains on children of the best capacity, as if only geniuses were worthy of attention. They should reflect that in moderate talents, carefully cultivated, we are, perhaps, to look for the chief happiness and virtue of society. If superlative genius had been generally necessary, its existence would not have been so rare; for Omnipotence could easily have made those talents common, which we now consider as extraordinary, had they been necessary to the perfection of his plan. Besides, while we are conscientiously instructing children of moderate capacity, it is a comfort to reflect that if no labor will raise them to a high degree in the scale of intellectual distinction, yet they may be led on to perfection in that road in which "a wayfaring man, though simple, shall not err." And when a mother feels disposed to repine that her family is not likely to exhibit a group of future wits and growing beauties, let her console herself by looking abroad into the world, where she will quickly perceive that the monopoly of happiness is not engrossed by beauty, nor that of virtue by genius. GOD RULES NATIONS, AND EDUCES GOOD FROM ILL. A careful perusal of the historical and prophetical parts of Scripture will prepare us for reading profane history with great advantage. In the former we are admitted within the vail; we are informed how the vices of nations drew down on them the wrath of the Almighty, and how some neighboring potentate was employed as the instrument of divine vengeance; how his ambition, his courage and military skill were but the means of fulfilling the divine prediction, or of inflicting the divine punishment; how, when the mighty conqueror, the executioner of the sentence of Heaven, had performed his assigned task, he was put aside, and was himself, perhaps, in his turn, humbled and laid low. Such are the familiar incidents of historic and prophetic Scripture. Do we then mean to admit that the Almighty approves of these excesses in individuals, by which his wisdom often works for the general benefit? God forbid! Nothing, surely, could be less approved by him than the licentiousness and cruelty of our eighth Henry, though he overruled those enormities for the advantage of the community, and employed them, as his instruments, for restoring good government, and for introducing, and at length establishing, the Reformation. England enjoys the inestimable blessing, but the monarch is not the less responsible personally for his crimes. We are equally certain that God did not approve of the insatiable ambition of Alexander, or of his incredible acquisition of territory by means of unjust wars. Yet, from that ambition, those wars and those conquests, how much may the condition of mankind have been meliorated! The natural humanity of this hero, which he had improved by the study of philosophy under one of the greatest masters in the world, disposed him to turn his conquests to the benefit of mankind. He founded seventy cities, says his historian, so situated as to promote commerce and diffuse civilization. Plutarch observes that, had those nations not been conquered, Egypt would have had no Alexandria, Mesopotamia no Seleucia. He also informs us that Alexander introduced marriage into one conquered country, and agriculture into another; that one barbarous nation, which used to eat their parents, was led by him to reverence and maintain them; that he taught the Persians to respect, and not to marry, their mothers, the Scythians to bury, and not to eat, their dead. To adduce one or two instances more, where thousands might be adduced. Did the Almighty approve those frantic wars which arrogated to themselves the name of holy? Yet, with all the extravagance of the enterprise, and the ruinous failure which attended its execution, many beneficial consequences, as has been already intimated, were permitted, incidentally, to grow out of them. The Crusaders, as their historians demonstrate,' beheld in their march countries in which civilization had made a greater progress than in their own. They saw foreign manufactures in a state of improvement to which they had not been accustomed at home. They perceived remains of knowledge in the East, of which Europe had almost lost sight. Their native prejudices were diminished in witnessing improvements to which the state of their own country presented comparative barbarity. The first faint gleam of light dawned on them, the first perceptions of taste and elegance were awakened, and the first rudiments of many an art were communicated to them by this personal acquaintance with more polished countries. Their views of commerce were improved, and their means of extending it were enlarged. It is scarcely necessary to add that the excess to which the popes carried their usurpation, and the Romish clergy their corruptions, was, by the providence of God, the immediate cause of the Reformation. The taking of Constantinople by the Turks, though in itself a most deplorable scene of crimes and calamities, became the occasion of most important benefits to other countries, by compelling the only accomplished scholars then in the world to seek an asylum in the western parts of Europe. To these countries they carried with them the Greek language, which ere long proved one of the providential means of introducing the most important event that has occurred since the first establishment of Christianity. If, therefore, God often "educes good from ill," yet man has no right to count upon his always doing it in the same degree in which he appoints that good shall be productive of good. To resume the illustration, therefore, from a few of the instances already adduced,-what an extensive blessing might Alexander, had he acted with other views and to other ends, have proved to that world whose happiness he impaired by his ambition, and whose morals he corrupted by his example! How much more effectually and immediately might the Reformation have been 1 See especially ROBERTSON'S State of Europe. |