It may be said that the education of women is now much improved and heightened—that the days are past when raising paste and mending tuckers were the most esteemed of female accomplishments ;-but, after all, what is a woman's education, even at present ?—She learns French, it is true,-but is she admitted to the stores which the language contains ?-She is taught the words-the nouns, verbs, and participles of the tonguebut are they used as an engine for expanding her mind, or enlarging her stock of ideas?-She learns Italian, that she may warble an opera song ;-dancing, that she may display her shape;-music-because every body does So. But are the treasures of thought-the triumphs of intellect-ever opened to her view?-Is she not kept frittering among words, while her mind should be occupied with things?-Is she not taught to consider every subject of the least extent, substance, or solidity, as so totally beyond her reach, that "a woman's reason" has become proverbial for no reason at all? One would think that the favourers of this system considered a woman as a parrot, in whom to learn to gabble a few sentences is the utmost stretch of its understanding. We shall be told that to call forth and exercise the intellectual powers of women in the same way as is usual with men, would render them masculine, and take away from that delicacy which is their greatest charm. Let us examine a little what this jargon means. If by delicacy be meant that vapid, mawkish, eau-sucrée sort of deportment which generally passes under the name, we should rejoice at its extermination:-but if real delicacy— that is, spotless freedom from grossness in mind and manner be inferred, it is not only compatible with the utmost power and cultivation of mind, but it may almost be called inseparable from them. In like manner,

it is the fashion to brand every woman with the epithet of masculine who talks about any thing more than her dress-her equipage-or the approaching marriage or divorce of her acquaintances. That is, every silly and uninformed woman is determined to call all possessing talent and knowledge unfeminine, and as the former class are so much the more numerous, they have pretty well succeeded in rendering inanity and womanly deportment synonymous. We agree in the fullest manner in reprobating every thing coarse or boisterous in a woman, but if possessing and exerting vigour of mind be masculine, we wish from our hearts that all the females of our acquaintance were so.

Many men, we are aware, have a jealous and shrinking fear that giving women the same mental exercitations and advantages as their own sex, would render their principles less pure and firm-in plain language, their moral conduct looser. This opinion has very wide operation, and adds in many to that dread and dislike of intellectual women which fear of personal eclipse or competition has originally caused. For our own part, we know few opinions more unfounded, or more pernicious. If it be true that Knowledge is Power, it is still more true that Knowledge is Virtue. The more the mind is cultivated, the more plainly are the positive inferiorities and disadvantages of Vice brought into view. Setting what ought to be aside, the direct self-interest of correct conduct becomes more indisputably apparent. Besides, a weak and ignorant woman may be led astray by means and temptations which would prove wholly hurtless to one of higher faculties. Not only are her guardings more numerous and stronger, but the weapons of offence against her are fewer in number and weaker in force. In this case, also, so many would not be placed in cir

cumstances of danger-fewer women would possess that pitch of folly which now induces so many to marry a fool with a title, or a brute with ten thousand a-year. There would be fewer marriages of interest and ambition on the one hand, and of precipitate folly on the other. There would be more unions of reason and affection. More women would love their husbands, and, consesequently, fewer would betray them. If it be objected that men are, in point of fact, less moral than women,— it may be answered, at once, that it arises from their being scarcely taught to consider morality a virtue-from that which is regarded as the last crime in the one sex, being almost looked on as an accomplishment in the other.

We consider the real original difference of the intellectual powers of the two sexes to be very small indeed— the ultimate and acquired difference is manifestly extreme. Women are esteemed unfit for this subject, and unfit for the other they are left totally uninstructed upon them-and then people turn round, and argue conversely that this very want of knowledge proves the unfitness. If you were to educate a man in the same manner, would not the results be the same? If he were to be told that it was absurd and impossible for him to reason and think, and you were to withhold from him all materials for reasoning and thought, would not his deductions be as ridiculous, and his reflections as insignificant as those of the veriest Miss that ever played on a piano ?—and yet would it be a fair conclusion to draw from this, that men have not, and cannot have, minds above the very moderate level of that of the young lady aforesaid?

It may be asked cui bono?-to what use, for what purpose, give to women this higher mental cultivation? We

answer in one word,-to increase their own happiness, and that of the many whose happiness, in so large a share, depends on them. If a woman be so married that her husband be much from her, how much does she need resources to occupy her solitary time-powers to render grateful that home to which her husband returns from the toils of business and exertion? If, from domestic tastes or unambitious dispositions, he lives much at home, how still more needful are the qualities which give value and charm to daily intercourse-which make us find in the inmates of our homes and hearts a society the most delightful as well as the most constant? And yet, how many do we see who would never choose for their friend one of a mind similar to that of her whom they single out as the woman of their love? They seek in him one who can give them counsel in difficulty-consolation in sorrow-and the support of an energetic mind in seasons of irresolution and despondency. How much more delightful would it be to add to these offices of friendship that nameless and endearing charm which arises from the friend being of the opposite sex; to conjoin to them that softness-that sweetness--that devotedness-which the most powerful-minded woman always retains, and which no man ever possesses. Instead of this, while in their occasional companion, they require sense and information, they are contented that their constant companion should be a fool.

Lastly, and perhaps above all, the first forming of our children's minds is intrusted to women.-Is not this of itself sufficient to render the highest mental powers desirable in them?-How many-how very many have felt in the whole course of their after-life the ill effects of the early training of a foolish mother! It is not every man who can ever entirely shake himself free from VOL. II. PART I.

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the nonsenses which have been dosed into him in childhood-it is few who can do it at an early period of life.The fable of the thief who bit off his mother's ear is of much more general application than is usually thought. But if the mother mis-trained the boy, who mis-trained the mother?-That is the jet of our argument.

There are two points, however, on which we wish not to be mistaken. The first is, we would not be thought to undervalue or decry the accomplishments which are usually taught to women. We are not blind to their grace and becomingness. Where a real taste for drawing, or, still more, for music, is evinced, it should be cultivated to the utmost. The delight which nearly all derive from listening to sweet sounds is very materially increased by their being breathed by a beautiful or beloved object. But that a girl with neither eye, ear, nor voice, should be tortured into drawing, playing, and singing, that hours upon hours, every day for years, should be sacrificed to a disliked or indifferent art,that, in a word, these things should be considered necessaries of education instead of additions to it,-is, we must think, equally pernicious and absurd. And, after all, in a person to whom these tastes are not natural, they speedily pass away. A couple of years' marriage makes many an instrument and voice mute-and many a portfolio thrown neglected by-where money, labour, talents, whole years, had been devoted to the acquisition of the accomplishment.

The other matter concerning which we wish to be clearly understood, is, that we would not for the world have any thing we have said construed into admiration or approbation of "the blues."-We have an utter abhorrence of the whole race-the more so as they have served to draw into disgrace the system we have been