ON FEMALE EDUCATION AND OCCUPATIONS. 225 



The dependent situation of woman in society, and 

 her subjugation to the caprices and passions of man, 

 are at the root of all moral and mental degradation. 

 She must continue to suit herself to those passions and 

 caprices, while those afford her the only means of pro- 

 curing for herself social consideration ; the only means, 

 generally speaking, of obtaining the accommodations 

 and comforts of civilized life. If the maternal duties 

 and domestic avocations of those who have a numerous 

 offspring claim a large share of their attention and 

 time, an active mind may still find leisure for more 

 than these ; and, at all events, become, by a more ra- 

 tional and useful mode of education, better fitted for 

 the discharge of such duties. Do readino; and reflex- 

 ion, does the pursuit of any useful art, any branch of 

 trade suited to her station and sex, take a woman out 

 of her family more than dissipation, fashionable accom- 

 plishments, and the opportunities sought and made 

 for their exhibition ? Are the more fortunate among 

 the sex, those who move in a superior rank of life, to 

 whom the exertion of their faculties to aid in the sup- 

 port of their families is not necessary, are they render- 

 ed, by solid studies, less valuable as the companions 

 and friends of their husbands, as the guides and in- 

 structors of their children than they would otherwise 

 be ? Contrast with some modern young females the 

 following portrait from an elegant writer.* — 



"The conversation of Hortensia is rather cheerful than gay, and 

 more instructive than sprightly, but the more distinguished features 

 of her mind are her memory and her judgment; both which she 

 possesses in higher degree than is usually found in persons of our 

 sex. She has read most of the capital authors both in English and 

 French. There is scarcely a remarkable event, in ancient or modern 

 history, of which she cannot give a clear and judicious account. 

 To the mathematics she is not wholly a stranger; and though she 

 did not think proper to pursue to any great length her inquiries of 

 that nature, yet the facility with which she entered into the reason- 

 ing of that science, discovered a capacity for attaining a knowledge 

 even of its abstruser branches. Her observations upon these sub- 



* Fitzosborne. 



VOL. II.— 1833. d2 



