think, that there are many duties, the effectual performance of which requires strength of fibre to be added to intellectual ability, and which are therefore eminently suited to the powers of man. There are also duties of equal importance, the proper discharge of which demands an union of tenderness with forbearance, of perseverance with softness, and for these the struc ture of woman is best adapted. Society requires both parts to be performed; nature divides them between the sexes; life is too short for each to perform both; and the distance between them is increased as perfection is approached in either. That choice of study is doubtless the most wise which is most in the line of our duty: for accomplishments are not of absolute but relative estimation. All women, it is true, are not equally charged with the softer duties and cares of life: all are not born to become wives and mothers: still it will not be denied that such is the hopeful destination of the sex in general: and we are treating of generals of the rule and not of the exceptions. Nor are we afraid to say, notwithstanding the ridicule with which the sentiment has of late been attacked,* that where women have no families of their own to attend to, the duty of taking upon themselves a portion of the cares with which others of their sex are overburthened, of solacing the sick, and instructing the forsaken, multiplies its claims in proportion to their leisure. Neither is this all. Propriety of character, consistency of deportment, the value of attainments, and the suitableness of occupations, are determined by reference not to the accidental situation of particular individuals, but to the moral destination of the sex in general.

All men are not designed for the profession of arms, but because soldiers are always men, and cases may be easily imagined in which courage and personal exposure may become the duties of all men, the quality of bravery belongs generally to the male character. All women are not destined to act the part of mothers, but because only women can be such, tenderness for infancy, and a commiserating disposition of the heart, are associated with the character of women in general.

Though deeply impressed with these sentiments, we are still as anxious as Madame de Genlis herself for the culture of the female mind. Those who are charged with the earliest care of their species, whose high and delicate trust it is, to give the first bias to the heart, and first to stir the reasoning faculty, while both are to be insensibly engaged on the side of virtue, to act their parts well, should themselves be proficients in reason and virtue, and have learned, by engrafting reflection on reading, to

See Edin. Review, No, 30. p. 306.

anticipate in others the prejudices and difficulties which hinder the first steps of intellectual advancement.

To some persons this province of literature appears very contemptible, and particularly when under the management of those, who, in the old-fashioned style of discipline, endeavour to lay the foundation of education in religion, and to give to God the first fruits of his gift of reason. To some men goodness is weakness, piety is parade, and devotion hypocrisy; and nothing is so ridiculous as a spectacled old lady teaching to the young the maxims of household morality according to the catechism of our church. Generous guardians of the rights of infants! with what happy auspices does your revolutionary career in the national education commence! Perish primers and horn-books, and all the lumber of the nursery! Behold a rising generation of unbreeched philosophers, and lisping free-thinkers; a golden period approaches in which every man is to be qualified to be his own instructor, and in which the religion of the poor is to become the fruit of their own meditations, the result of their own discriminating choice, unincumbered by creeds and vulgar catechisms. Liberal and manly times! when the nation's children are confided to those who dissent from its church, under the patronage of princes, nobles, statesmen, ecclesiastics, writers, and reviewers.

Do we dare, amidst these new lights, to avow our veneration for the memory of the "feeble old lady"* of Brentford, whom the champions of the liberal plan of modern education for the poor, have classed with the writers of horn-books and nursery legends? Yet such is our infatuation, that when we think upon the labours of that good woman, who was most emphatically departing in peace, while her manly assailants were pursuing her to the grave, we are disposed to consider her utility to mankind as infinitely outweighing the whole aggregation of female worth collected in this French volume before us; and we found our admiration of her singly upon her wise and orthodox industry in disseminating religious knowledge among the poor, and her watchful jealousy of latitudinarian systems.

In a word, we are of opinion that such a cultivation of the female mind as has a tendency to dispose and qualify it for the care of the young, the friendless, and the forsaken, comprises objects and attainments of as much ornament as utility. In the due preparation for such a career of usefulness, the manners are polished in proportion as the heart is enlarged. Nor is this beneficent range of activity inconsistent with every reasonable attention to exterior accomplishments, in the ordinary sense of the term. Religious sobriety, concern for the interests of the

* See Edinb. Review, No. 17, Art. 12.

soul, and feeling for human indigence, while they superadd a grace invincible to common accomplishments, correct the extravagant appreciation of them which gives to them so undue a hold upon the heart, and so exorbitant a claim upon the time of reasonable beings. But we are very far from denying that the diligent reading of our best authors, the talent of graceful, and in a good cause, of forcible writing, and the exercise of the understanding on subjects of practical theology and preceptive truths, are strictly within the compass of female pretensions. If objects and employments like these should steal something from the laborious impertinence of fashionable life, we should be glad to be accomplices in the theft. In such a crime we will to the utmost, in our character of reviewers, act the part of aiders and abettors, whatever hue and cry may be raised against us by that numerous party in the country, who, as patrons or writers, with a liberalizing and levelling rage, are for demolishing the prescriptive barriers of national religion, and all thorough-bred English morality.

From contemplating the sickly cast of female literature, principles, and manners, which this volume of petticoated French worthies presents to us, it is impossible not to turn for refreshment to the estimable character of a genuine English lady, literate without pedantry, elegant without affectation, dignified without constraint, cheerful at home and circumspect abroad, gentle, humane, devout. We should greatly prefer the domestic circle of such a person, to what are called the "good societies" of Paris. A Mrs. Elizabeth Carter is more to our taste than a Madame du Deffand, a Miss Talbot than a Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse, and a Mrs. Hannah More than even a Madame de Genlis. We are aware that we shall have all the esprits forts of our own country on the French side of the comparison. It matters not; we are partly at war with these gentlemen; and though some of them in their contemptuous idiom may rank the English authoress last mentioned among "feeble old ladies," we must venture to declare ourselves her grateful admirers. Admire her we must, because with more than female courage, but with every feminine grace, she has devoted that zeal, which neither ner own infirmities, nor the malice of her defamers, can subdue, to the best interests of humanity:-because her life has been a scene of such virtuous exertion as to unite the indolent, the envious, and the profligate in a confederacy against her fame and honour:-in a word, because she has contrived by her thorough acquaintance with the heart, and its accessible points, by her felicity of expression, her originality of thought, and above all, by her versatility of talent, to render the subject of highest concern to man so entertaining and attractive, as to beat

in the race of popularity all the prurient productions of this novel-writing age, all the sentimental rubbish of the German press, and all the varnished tales of suicide and adultery. We repeat that, after dwelling on the disgusting scenes of Parisian impertinence, the coteries of dissipated old countesses, French flattery, French perfidy, and French intrigue; the folly and vice, in short, which compose the principal features even of some of the characters selected by Madame de Genlis for our admiration; it is to us a grateful relief to contemplate the social retirement and literate ease of this accomplished woman, and that assemblage of moral worth which she collects about her, and to which she is the proper centre of attraction.

in

After thus expressing our admiration of the British females mentioned above, and particularly of her who has appeared to us to merit the largest share of our feeble praise, it will be mistaking us greatly to suppose us unwilling to allow any accomplishment of their minds beyond what is necessary to good housewifery. It has been observed, that a few pounds spent needlework would give to the female part of a family leisure to acquire a fund of real knowledge. But this appears to us to be a very erroneous and silly view of the question; which is not whether a gain is acquired answerable to the time consumed in these accomplishments, but whether the entire substitution of intellectual industry for those manual and subordinate occupations, would not give a new direction to the female character, and superinduce upon it by degrees a new order of sentiments and habits, ill suited to those relations which they are destined to fill in the great providential plan of social existence. The character of human beings, if not always determined, is always influenced by the nature of their employments. This truth has been well understood by those who have drawn the best portraitures of female perfection. The domestic companions of Hector and Ulysses were no ordinary specimens of the sex. In the interior of their apartments, surrounded by their maidens, they blazoned in embroidery the trophies of their husbands, and shortened the suspense of their return by amusements which endeared them to their recollections.

Our readers must by this time perceive, or we have taken very fruitless pains to mark our meaning distinctly, that it is not the literature of the sex, but a violence in the devotion to it, which we disapprove. Needlework, and housewifery in general, are to some a necessary part of the science of economy; but in another view, though a collateral one, they seem to be a highly important part of female education. They provide for those mis

chances of life from which few, if any, are exempt; they balance against the romantic tendency of the female mind, by recalling it to the real necessities of the human condition; they give the thoughts a turn towards usefulness, cleanliness, and convenience; and there is something of value too, in a cast of occupations, (if the remark may be forgiven,) which by rendering a lady independent of the tongue for amusement, disposes her to cherish those intervals of quiescent happiness which are not unprofitably employed in silence and attention.

These are a few of those reasons by which we are induced to think that the addiction of females to literature and science may be of too strenuous a cast. We not only think so because it renders them less useful, but because it renders them less pleasing. But then it is asked, why should any degree of addiction to letters produce more pedantry in women than in men? And why should pedantry, granting it to be the consequence of this addiction, be more offensive in the one sex than in the other? To questions like these experience and feeling afford the best answer. There are some palpable truths which dogmatism may discountenance, arrogance affright, and sophistry pervert; but which are nevertheless recognized in the heart, and established in the constitution of nature. It may be asked, why should softness be considered as the attribute of the sex? Why should gentleness, timidity, and modesty impart such grace and attractiveness to female manners? The best answer is the practical one. It is because we are formed to admire and love these qualities in woman; because, with the advancement of true civilization and refinement, these female qualities advance in price; and because a state of competition and emulation is not a state of love and reciprocal tenderness. In the dependence of the one upon the protection of the other consists the real bond of union between the sexes. Inequality produces reciprocity, and on this is founded the moral relation between man and woman. The pursuits of the sex must, therefore, be different: not so different as to destroy by diversity of taste, but so different as to supply by variety of materials, the intellectual commerce of the sexes. Fortitude that ennobles the male, and softness that adorns the female, may be mixed in secondary degrees with their opposites in each. As a foundation for mutual esteem, each ought to feel enough of either quality to know its value in the other. Man's true elevation is placed in the severer studies, while the softer dignity of woman, inferior in the intellectual scale, advances by a different course to the same on a superior height in moral goodness. Some acquaintance with these severer studies is necessary to raise in the other sex the esteem of them in ours; and on the other hand, the man of learning, and courage, and virtue,