a prodigy by her little circle; surrounded with flatterers, she has no opportunity of getting to know that her fame is derived not from her own powers but her position, and that when her verses come to be stripped of all their extraneous appendages, and the fair author is driven off her vantage-ground of partiality, sex, and favour, she will commonly sink into the level of ordinary capacities; while those quieter women, who have meekly set down in the humble shades of prose and prudence, by a patient perseverance in rational studies, rise afterwards much higher in the scale of intellect, and acquire a stock of sound knowledge for far better purposes than mere display. And though it may seem a contradiction, yet it will generally be found true, that girls who take to scribbling are the least studious. They early acquire a false confidence in their own unassisted powers; it becomes more gratifying to their natural vanity to be always pouring out their minds on paper, than to be pouring into them fresh ideas from richer sources. But instead of extolling the effusions of these self-dependent scribblers for the facility with which they are produced, it would be kind in their friends to blame them for their crudeness; and when the young pretenders are eager to prove in how short a time such a poem has been struck off, it would be well to regret that they had not either taken a longer time, or forborne from writing at all; as in the former case the work would be less defective, and in the latter the writer would have discovered more humility and self-distrust.

What is called dry tough reading, independent of the useful knowledge it conveys, is useful as an habit

Far be it from me to

;

and wholesome as an exercise. desire to make scholastic ladies or female dialectitians but there is little fear that the kind of books here recommended, if thoroughly studied and not superficially skimmed, will make them pedants or induce conceit; for by showing them the possible powers of the human mind, you will bring them to see the littleness of their own to get acquainted with the mind, to regulate and form it, and to show it its own ignorance, does not seem the way to puff it up. But let her who is disposed to be elated with her literary acquisitions, check her vanity by calling to mind the just remarks of Swift, "that after all her boasted acquirements a

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woman will, generally speaking, be found to possess "less of what is called learning than a common school"boy." Neither is there any fear that this kind of reading will convert ladies into authors. The direct contrary effect will be likely to be produced by the perusal of writers, who throw the generality of readers at such an unapproachable distance, as to check presumption instead of exciting it. But such is the frightful facility of novel-writing, that every raw girl while she reads, is tempted to fancy that she can also write. This is however, by no means intended to exclude works of imagination, which must always make the ornamental part, and of course a very considerable part of female studies.-More.

Mothers, rather than confide the health, life, and happiness of your children to the hands of strangers, employ the latter in the management of your house

hold affairs. No price is adequate to healthful and well-educated children; they will amply repay you for all the tears, the time, trouble, and care bestowed on them, as well as for the eventual losses you may sustain for their sakes in your economical concerns.

Every sensible mother and prudent housewife, will so arrange her various domestic occupations, as to enable her to pay sufficient attention to the nursery: nor will she suffer her valuable time to be wasted by inferiour pursuits that can be easily managed by others.-Struve,

CHAPTER XVI.

Reading, Grammar, Languages, Rhetoric, Logic.

“

Bur if our young gentleman has not been instructed in all the subtilties of logic, you will ask what will become of him if he be attacked with the sophistic subtilty of some syllogism? viz. " a Westphalia "ham makes a man drink; drink quenches thirst; "therefore a Westphalia ham quenches thirst;" why let him laugh at it, or borrow some pleasant evasion, and it will be more discreet to do so, than to go about to answer it. One offering at this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes, Chrysippus took him short saying, "Reserve these baubles to play with children, and do "not by such fooleries divert the serious thoughts of a "man of years."

If these "ridiculous subtilties," as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth, they are dangerous; but if they signify no more than only to make him laugh, I do not see why they should be so considerable, that a man need to be fortified against them.

Zeno used to say, that he had two sorts of disciples, one that he used to call curiars, to learn things, and these were his favourites; the other that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking is not a very good and commendable quality, but not so excellent and so necessary as some would make it; and I am scandalized that our whole life should be spent in nothing else. I would first understand my own language, and that of my neighbours, with whom most of my business and conversation lies. No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great use, but we buy them too dear. Some men of the greatest learning and judgment used to tell my father, that the tedious time we apply to the learning the tongues of those who had them for nothing, is the sole cause we cannot arrive at the grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge with the ancient Greeks and Romans. My father therefore committed me to the care of a German,' who was very fluent and a great critic in Latin, and this man had me continually in his arms, and spoke to me no other language but Latin, so that by six years old I spoke Latin fluently.-Montaigne.

A foreign language is only an instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a lin

guist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he had not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear so many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasant and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head well filled by long reading, and observing with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit: besides, the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned throughly to them, they might forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language