222 



ON FEMALE EDUCATION AND OCCUPATIONS. 



Continued and Concluded from Page 180. 



Accomplishments, in the present rage for them, 

 are become, not the recreation but the arduous, ab- 

 sorbing business of female life. They are considered 

 worthless if not cultivated to an excess, that enfeebles 

 the body, engrosses the time, and leaves little leisure 

 either for the exercise that strengthens the former, or 

 for the knowledge and thought by which the latter 

 only can be invigorated. If more solid studies are 

 affected to be taught in our female schools, (or estab- 

 lishments in fashionable phraseology,) they must be 

 in subordination to those which the vanity of parents 

 and the mandates of fashion alike imperiously demand 

 and crave. Those who preside over schools, however 

 qualified by good principles and good sense, (and some 

 such respectable individuals doubtless there are,) are 

 not at liberty to use their own judgments as to the re- 

 lative importance of the studies of their pupils, or the 

 distribution of their time ; they are themselves merely 

 agents and instruments, it is not what they judge right 

 and best, but what is required from them that they 

 must perform. Even where their good sense leads 

 them to exact from their pupils some attention to the 

 more solid acquirements, grammar, history, geography, 

 &:c., the time allowed for these studies is necessarily so 

 short as to permit only a very superficial acquaintance 

 with them. This mode of education affords no 

 encouragement to women of superior talents to under- 

 take the management of schools which, consequently, 

 for the most part, fall into the hands of persons little 

 fitted to be the guides of youth, and whom specula- 

 tions of interest merely prompt to the undertaking. 



Another evil also necessarily results from the multi- 

 fareous objects that claim the attention of the youthful 

 student, that no one can be completely or adequately 

 attained ; even from the most industrious and diligent 

 a mere smattering in the majority of them is only to 

 be expected. The freshness and vigour of health, the 



