500 EDUCATION AND LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 



life, to acquire even a moderate knowledge of its varied contents. 

 The consequences were unavoidable : they learnt nothing;; the mind 

 was a waste a blank, or, at the least, scribbled over with the names 

 alone of sciences and accomplishments, whilst the heart was either 

 utterly debased or its affections so perverted, that they had lost all 

 sense of the true ends of woman's peculiar social station. Filial 

 duties were naturally forgotten, as they had been separated for years 

 from home discipline. Marriage was considered as a matter of con- 

 venience and calculation, and brides undertook to fulfil the most 

 sacred obligations, without knowing how or in what way these 

 affected them : they were married, that was enough; or if they re- 

 mained single, their education afforded them nothing to enable them 

 to pass away their lives usefully and comfortably, as the great object 

 seemed to be to shake off at once even the feeble hold knowledge 

 might have taken upon them, by the force of habit, during their 

 school years : they had, as they expressed it, " finished their 

 education," and so all was ended. The same objections do not 

 apply with equal force to the males ; in some respects a public 

 education may be considered as beneficial to these, as being in ac- 

 cordance with the bustling and independent career which they are, 

 generally speaking, destined to run. In this respect, therefore, pub- 

 lic education might be plausibly defended; but surely no defence 

 could be offered for the ridiculous studies which, in this country, 

 formed the plan of education. They were just of a piece with the 

 fashionable routine of ladies' schools; and totally unfitted to make 

 men useful citizens, or to enable them to occupy with credit either 

 magisterial or senatorial offices. 



The literature which I found prevailing amongst these boarding- 

 school and university pupils, and their equally wise parents, was just 

 what might have been expected. With minds whose deeper powers 

 had been utterly neglected, and whose wish for knowledge had de- 

 generated into listless indifference, there could of course be no taste 

 for any reading beyond a flimsy novel or equally flimsy work on 

 science. Provided the eye is pleased, the vacant mind is satisfied ; 

 and nothing was seen beyond trashy volumes filled with pictures 

 and mutilated quotations ; and this bore out strongly the report 

 I had received from the providers of these unsatisfactory literary 

 banquets. 



My enquiries were next directed to a class inferior to these sons 

 and daughters of the plebeian aristocracy namely, the shopkeepers 

 and retail dealers : of grace or polish of manner there was little, but 

 I found more sound intelligence than I had yet seen ; and their 

 mode of education partook more of common sense and utility than 

 that pervading their superiors. Their children were generally sent to 

 a day-school to be taught reading and writing, essential matters to 

 their station and occupation. The evenings were however spent at 

 home, and their services employed in little domestic offices. They 

 thus learnt how to live ; and their morals and social habits were 

 formed under the eyes of their parents. I found that these were the 

 chief consumers of the penny publications, to the exclusion of higher 

 works. Heavy complaints were made of bad times, and these were 



