178 ON FEMALE EDUCATION AND OCCUPATIONS. 



reason; the jarrings which so frequently prove des- 

 tructive to the affections and to the peace of 

 domestic life, have their source in petty jealousies, 

 narrow prejudices, and selfish irritations. In the mis- 

 tress or wife of a month, men might be justified for 

 looking no further than external graces and accom- 

 phshments ; but if in the mother of his children and 

 the companion of his life, the sensible man finds not a 

 rational friend, marriage will indeed become a galling 

 yoke, requiring all his fortitude to endure patiently. 



Even in the present times, when more elaborate 

 attention is paid to female education, to what is it 

 principally directed ? Still true to the text of volup- 

 tuousness, to vanity, and external ornament. The 

 taste merely, and not the reason, is cultivated. Most 

 young females, whatsoever their rank in life may be, 

 are tmined to the arts only, and to accomplishments 

 for exhibition and show. Disdaining the mere useful, 

 all aspire to the ornamental, and a plain tradesman 

 must now despair of getting a wife who will deign to 

 be of any utility in her family, or whose refined habits 

 and ideas will not make her shrink in disgust from the 

 husband, whom necessity only compelled her to ac- 

 cept. All are ladies, no women are to be found ; 

 social intercourse is become a mere theatre of exhibi- 

 tion ; friendship and rational conversation give place 

 to the piano, the harp, and the quadrille, where rival 

 mothers and emulous daughters reckless of the secret 

 weariness snd suppressed yawns of the suffering audi- 

 tors and spectators, contest the palm of admiration 

 and the meed of applause. 



Nothing is more worthless to every purpose of utility 

 than a mere smattering in the fine arts ; to the wealthy 

 and the unoccupied it may serve to beguile an idle 

 hour, or to amuse leisure ; but an indifferent artist, a 

 mere tame and spiritless copyist, a tasteless and me- 

 chanical strummer on any instrument, be the instru- 

 ment what it may, is utterly valueless ; such exhibitions 

 delight only the doating parent, and will be endured 

 by others but during the transient season of youth. 



