who has no value for the mellow perfections and cultivated taste of a sensible, reading, and thinking woman, is finished only on one side of the manly character. But if these perfections are inverted; if a woman places her chief merit in literary excellence, she deranges the plan of nature, and disturbs its harmony. But nature is revenged. When this is the case, adieu to feminine attraction! and to many of the charities of mother, sister, daughter, friend. For the deportment of woman, soft, attractive, frank, ingenuous, are substituted the stare of unconcern, the look of defiance, the vivacity of the disputant, and the parade of the scholar. These are among the numerous blots which efface in the female pedant the lovely traces of woman. Upon the whole, we do not think a little learning is always a dangerous thing in a lady, so long as it has reference to her condition of life and the sphere of her duties. In man, from whom much is expected, his little learning is rarely confessed to be little. It enables him to feel and envy the superiority of others, between whom and himself there is a natural competition. He swells out his little, therefore, beyond its natural compass, the better to cover his ignorance. Having not enough for the illustration of truth, he finds it tell most in opposition to it, and is in danger of being seduced by his vanity into wilful error. But moderation even in things good in themselves is commendable in a woman. The learning that best becomes her is that which she can best manage, and which best consists with a natural manner and useful understanding. If a lady can interpret the following passage from Juvenal, she will do well to attend to the valuable hint it conveys. "Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis. Non habeat matrona tibi quæ juncta recumbit A great laugh is endeavoured to be raised at what are called simple pleasures. We have in the present day some laughing philosophers: not of that ancient sort indeed whose ridicule was excited by the follies of their fellow creatures. Innocence, chastity, and religion are among the topics of modern pleasantry; especially with our men of strong thinking. For our parts, we are not disposed to join in this laugh; because, notwithstanding this well-intended raillery, we cannot help think-. ing that there does exist a class of simple pleasures, in which it is not merely safe for a woman to indulge, but which not to love or to be capable of loving, argues some original defect in the heart and in the understanding. But let us not be understood to mean by simple pleasures, the entertainments of cup and ball, or bandalore. Neither do we confine the idea to the picking up of plants, the collecting of shells, the instruction of parrots, the fabrication of pin-cushions, and the pasting of charades upon firescreens. But to contemplate the Creator's works, to study them, to imitate them, to fill the eye and the imagination with them, to cling to the sentiments they inspire, and to pursue them to their. ultimate grand conclusions; to ride, to walk, to meditate, to luxuriate in the cheerful influence of fine weather; to train vegetation, to plant and improve the garden, to mitigate the moral and physical evils that press around one, by reconciling, relieving, and instructing; are all, when modified by virtuous education, enjoyments of simple relish and home-bred felicity; all capable of flourishing in innocence and retirement, with little aid from artificial culture. These may properly be ranked among simple pleasures, because they want no machinery to set them up. They have at first hand, that is, at nature's, their subjects and incitements; they are the companions of virtuous leisure and unsophisticated habits. But to qualify for these cheap and innocent pleasures there must be a proper preparatory education; a first impulse must be given to the sensibilities, which may set them forward in a right direction. Before the works of the Deity can be made to interest and delight, the fear and love of his power and goodness must be established in our minds upon other grounds than the fluctuating foundations of taste. No education can be profitable without the sanction of religion. It should, however, be presented to the mind, not as a task, but as a recreation; which it is well fitted to become when judiciously inculcated. It affords a natural entertainment to the sprightly curiosities of children, an excellent exercise to their opening faculties, and a sufficient in citement to all the good propensities of the young mind. It is the Sun in the system of education; the dispenser of light and heat to the whole, and by its attractive power it maintains every part in its proper place and destination. From leaving it out of the system, or from giving it only a secondary place, results that complexity, disproportion, and disorder, which have found their way into almost every scheme and treatise of education, and to this cause is to be ascribed the multiplication of these treatises in such a fatiguing succession of vapid productions. Were religion properly attended to in female education, young women might be trusted with more learning and more accomplishments, without danger to the equilibrium of their minds, and the modesty of their manners. Without religion intellectual education is mutilated; but moral education is reduced to a solecism. The fitness of morals and the beauty of virtue are VOL. I. New Series. P frigid arguments to young understandings. They require the support of unnatural expedients and forced measures. But the principle of pious obedience is taught to children by their wants, and confirmed by the unceasing consciousness of dependence. They must of necessity feel it towards their fathers and mothers; and it is easy for them to carry it upwards to the universal Parent and Protector. For the sake, therefore, of these simple pleasures, of which we think not the less highly because coxcombs deride them, we recommend it to those to whose care the rising generation of females is entrusted, to make this emphatic use of religion in their institutions. Besides its own complete perfection and solitary pre-eminence, transcending all comparative value, it is of admirable use as an auxiliary in the formation of the character and manners. Its rules are short, simple, and practicable, and will enable teachers, if tolerably instructed themselves, to do very well without those problematical expedients and refined methods of culture with which officious speculation is for ever tormenting them. But we are anxious before we dismiss this part of our subject to remind our readers, that when we make mention of religion in the British Review, which we may find frequent occasions for doing, we would be understood to mean the religion of the scriptures, embracing the peculiar doctrines of Christianity as they are professed by the church of England, and not a religion of man's manufacture, adapted to his convenience here, and secularized to his worldly feelings and tastes. Next to the diffusion of a stupid prejudice against this view of religion, by giving it the appellation of methodism, the envier of human happiness could contrive no better instrument for the destruction of religion altogether, than the fatal adoption of a national education without the national religion for its basis. We have said thus much upon the importance of religion in education, because we perceive with concern that the philosophic pride of the age is making strenuous efforts to discredit its efficacy; and that some of our female writers, and one in particular, for whose genius and talents we entertain the highest respect, and whose influence on education, whether we regard her incomparable skill in the composition of instructive tales without the hackneyed theme of love, or her accurate knowledge of the ways by which the understanding is to be assisted in the acquisition of knowledge, cannot be viewed without great approbation, mixed with anxiety, have bestowed an exclusive attention on what they call moral and intellectual culture, leaving religion, like a wild flower, to its own spontaneous growth from seeds, scattered as chance may have directed, on good ground, or on stony places. With respect to accomplishments, commonly so called, we hold the same opinions with some of our more philosophical contemporaries. It is not to be denied, that, they engross much too large a portion of education for acquirements which are in season only for so small a portion of existence, and that while they last they are greatly inferior in dignity and utility to studies which spread their lustre over the whole of life, and which, instead of affording occasions of ostentatious exhibition, short intervals of triumph, and momentary displays, enter into the constitution of the mind, and nourish the understanding; render solitude reflective, and society exhilarating. But inferior as they are, and short lived in their importance, it would be better, in our opinion, to give to them entire all the docile part of life, without interruption from reason or reflection, than that reason and reflection should be cultivated independently of religion, and trained under the discipline of a vain philosophy. When knowledge is thus constituted on a right foundation, we are very far from denying it to the female sex. But let it, besides this right foundation, have also a right bearing. The first and noblest use of knowledge in woman is to lay the ground of knowledge in others. Elementary education is chiefly in their hands. A great and awful trust! It was the Spartan mothers that perpetuated the succession of the Spartan discipline. Just notions and elevated principles do not come unbidden: they do not sow themselves, like forest trees, or the vegetation of the plains. To be properly assimilated with the stamina of the child; to grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength, they should pre-exist in the parent, and pass out of her by a careful process of transfusion. In this way the child may acquire what the poet calls "Compositum jus, fasque animo, sanctosque recessus A taste for literature and valuable knowledge cannot be taught without being felt. To bribe the early curiosities to the exercise and development of the mind, the early instructor must have been well instructed, and have acquired the art of blending information with delight. The powers, the beauties, the copious use of the mother tongue can only be known, felt, and transmitted by talents improved by various and studious reading in English literature, aided by some acquaintance with other idioms. And it is, perhaps, to the want of this preparation of the mother's mind for the task of early instruction, that the melancholy blank in respect to all the primary, professional, and practical acquirements of reading, articulation, elocution, reasoning, and composition, left by the education of our princi pal schools, so often remains to the end of life, disgracing the pulpit, the senate, and the bar. The pleasure that occupies the highest place, and fills the widest space in rational existence, is free intellectual conversa. tion. If women are to be our companions, we must share this pleasure with them, or we give them only a vain compliment→→→ a nominal rank the title without the estate. The most solid parts of intellectual culture are theirs by imprescriptible right as rational beings: it is the fairest of all their privileges, and our own sex has an equal interest in maintaining it for them against a perverse arrangement, which gives up their first years to fugi tive attainments, that sparkle in the sunshine of youth, but perish, and their memorial with them, as age increases the want of resource. We are obliged to Madame de Genlis for giving us this op portunity of detailing our sentiments on this subject, as they are not quite in the fashion of the day, and may want a little explaining and defending. We are also, in common with others, obliged to the same lady for many sensible observations con tained in her introductory pages to the volume before us. We must, indeed, do her the justice to say, that whatever may have been her departures in practice from her own rules, (and on this subject we can say nothing from personal knowledge,) all the productions of her pen which have come under our inspection have in the main been true to the cause of piety and virtue. It is something for a being on the confines of another world to be able to say to her soul; WHATEVER THOU HAST THOUGHT or DONE AMISS, THOU HAST NOT INCREASED THE SUM OF THY TRANSGRESSIONS BY THE CRIMES OF OTHERS, NOR ADDED AUGHT TO THY RECKONING WITH GOD, BY ENDEAVOURS TO INTERCEPT THE HOPES OF INNOCENCE, and to SHORTEN THE ARM OF HIS MERCY. We are glad to do Madame de Genlis this piece of justice. It is the more creditable to her, in consideration of the dangerous examples by which she has been surrounded. The literature of her day has been much in the hands of those by whom the devil's work is done gratuitously, without the apology of passion or temptation; of those who love vice, not for itself, but for the ruin which it spreads: frigid speculators in debauchery! who for the mere luxury of doing harm, plot in their chambers against the peace of mankind; scattering pollution from their pens, and amusing themselves with calculations of eventual mischief. We have often admired the sterling sense of Madame de Genlis on the subject of education, and are astonished when we are told that, with a theory so opposite to that of the philosophers of her own |