Talents of every kind are considered as a commutation for a few vices; and such talents are made a passport to introduce into honourable society characters whom their profligacy ought to exclude from it. But the great object to which you, who are or may be mothers, are more especially called, is the education of your children. If we are responsible for the use of influence in the case of those over whom we have no immediate control, in the case of our children we are responsible for the exercise of acknowledged power: a power wide in its extent, indefinite in its effects, and inestimable in its importance. On You depend in no small degree the principles of the whole rising generation. To your direction the daughters are almost exclusively committed; and until a certain age, to you also is consigned the mighty privilege of forming the hearts and minds of your infant sons. To You is made over the awfully important trust of infusing the first principles of piety into the tender minds of those who may one day be called to instruct, not families merely, but districts; to influence, not individuals, but senates. Your private exertions may at this moment be contributing to the future happiness, your domestic neglect, to the future ruin, of your country. And may you never forget, in this your early instruction of your offspring, nor they, in their future application of it, that religion is the only sure ground of morals; that private principle is the only solid basis of public virtue. O, think that they both may be fixed or forfeited for ever, according to the use you are now making of that power which God has delegated to you, and of which he will demand a strict account. By his blessing on your pious labours, may both sons and daughters hereafter" arise and call you blessed.' And in the great day of general account, may every Christian mother be enabled through divine grace to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and Redeemer, "Behold the children whom thou hast given me !" Christianity, driven out from the rest of the world, has still, blessed be God! a "strong hold" in this country. And though it be the special duty of the appointed "watchman, now that he seeth the sword come upon the land, to blow the trumpet and warn the people, which, if he neglect to do, their blood shall be required of the watchman's hand;*" yet, in this sacred garrison, impregnable but by neglect, You too have an awful post, that of arming the minds of the rising race with the "shield of faith, whereby they shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked;" that of girding them with that "sword of the Spirit which is the word of God." Let that very period which is desecrated in a neighbouring country by a formal renunciation of religion, be solemnly marked by You to purposes diametrically opposite. Let that dishonoured æra in which they avowed their resolution to exclude Christianity from the national education, be the precise moment seized upon by You for its more sedulous inculcation. And while their children are systematically trained to "live without God in the world," let YOURS, with a more decided emphasis, be consecrated to promote his glory in it! If you neglect this your bounden duty, you will have effectually contributed to expel Christianity from her last citadel. And remember, that the dignity of the work to which you are called, is no less than that of " preserving the ark of the Lord." * Ezekiel, xxxiii. 6. CHAPTER II. On the education of women.-The prevailing system tends to establish the errors which it ought to correct. arising from an excessive cultivation of the arts. Dangers It is far from being the object of this slight work to offer a regular plan of female education, a task which has been often more properly assumed by far abler writers; but it is intended rather to suggest a few remarks on the reigning mode, which, though it has had many panegyrists, appears to be defective, not only in certain particulars, but as a general system. There are indeed numberless honourable exceptions to an observation which will be thought severe ; yet the author would ask, whether it be not the natural tendency of the prevailing and popular mode to excite and promote those very evils which it ought to be the main end and object of Christian instruction to remove? Whether the reigning system does not tend to weaken the principles it ought to strengthen, and to dissolve the heart it should fortify? Whether, instead of directing the grand and important engine of education to attack and destroy vanity, selfishness, and inconsideration, that triple alliance, in strict and constant league against female virtue; the combined powers of instruction are not sedulously confederated in confirming their strength and establishing their empire? If indeed the material substance, if the body and limbs, with the organs and senses, be really the more valuable objects of attention, then there is little room for animadversion and improvement: but if the immaterial and immortal mind; if the heart, "out of which are the issues of life," be the main concern; if the great business of education be to implant right ideas, to communicate useful knowledge, to form a correct taste, and a sound judgment, to resist evil propensities, and, above all, to seize the favourable season for infusing principles and confirming habits; if education be a school to fit us for life, and life be a school to fit us for eternity; if such, I repeat it, be the chief work and grand ends of education, it may then be worth inquiring how far tnese ends are likely to be effected by the prevailing system. Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps want some correction, rather than as beings who bring into the world a corrupt nature and evil dispositions, which it should be the great end of education to rectify? This appears to be such a foundation-truth, that if I were asked what quality is most important in an instructor of youth, I should not hesitate to reply, "Such a strong impression of the corruption of our nature, as should ensure a disposition to counteract it; together with such a deep view and thorough knowledge of the human heart, as should be necessary for developing and controlling its most secret and complicated workings." And let us remember, that to know the world, as it is called, that is, to know its local manners, temporary usages, and evanescent fashions, is not to know human nature; and that where this prime knowledge is wanting, those natural evils which ought to be counteracted will be fostered. Vanity, for instance, is reckoned among the light and venial errors of youth; nay, so far from being treated as a dangerous enemy, it is often called in as an auxiliary. At worst, it is considered as a harmless weakness, which subtracts little from the value of a character; as a natural effervescence, which will subside of itself, when the first ferment of the youthful passions shall have done working. But those persons know little of the conformation of the human, and especially of the female heart, who fancy that vanity is ever exhausted by the mere operation of time and events. Let those who maintain this opinion look into our places of public resort, and there behold if the ghost of departed beauty is not, to its last flitting, fond of haunting the scenes of its past pleasures. The soul, unwilling (if I may borrow an allusion from the Platonic mythology) to quit the spot in which the body enjoyed its former delights, still continues to hover about the same place, though the same pleasures are no longer to be found there. Disappointments indeed may divert vanity into a new direction; prudence may prevent it from breaking out into excesses, and age may prove that it is ation of spirit:" but neither disappointment, prudence, nor age can cure it; for they do not correct the principle. Nay, the very disappointment itself serves as a painful evidence of its protracted exist ence. 66 vex 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 driven to retire into itself; and if it find no entertainment at home, it will be driven |