A84 
‘large town; the machinery is beauti- 
fully executed: and here are two 
:team-engines. About ten miles from 
Petersburgh there are a foundry and 
gas works, supposed to be the largest 
in Europe. At ‘another place, about 
twelve miles from the capital, the peo- 
ple are employed in casting cannon, 
mortars, &c. When I was there, they 
had just completed one for throwing a 
shot of 120 pounds weight. Here, also, 
they manufacture all the mathematical, 
optical, and philosophical instruments, 
of every description, for the army and 
navy. Here are also an iron foundry, 
a steam-engine manufactory, anchor- 
smiths, carpenters, and shipwrights: all 
kinds of edge-tools are made here, 
where no starving poor are to be seen: 
every person can have bread enough, 
although made of coarse rye. The 
peasantry look cheerful and hardy, and 
are well, though coarsely, clad. 
Your’s, &c. 
—<—=a>——— 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
Femate Epucation. 
mY, fare confused notions people 
i generally have of education! 
One parent will tell you that it means 
paying thirty pounds a year to the 
master of a boarding-school, for pro- 
mising to teach his son reading, writing 
and arithmetic, English grammar and 
French Grammar. Another understands, 
by the term, £60 or £100 a year, paid 
for his son’s instruction in Latin and 
Greek at a public school; or three 
times that sum expended at the college 
in teaching him just what he likes, pro- 
vided he like Latin, Greek or mathe- 
matics. When the lords of the crea- 
tion are so easily satisfied with such 
definitions and such realities, it would 
be hardly gallant to expect greater 
severity from the fair sex. A girl, or 
“young lady,” as she is now termed, 
the former word being obsolete, must, 
in the first place, go to an establish- 
ment (i. e. boarding-school), or have a 
private governess at home; she may 
learn to read, to write, and to sew, at 
choice, but she must learn to play on 
the piano, ear or no ear; to sing, voice 
or no voice; and French grammar and 
the use of the globes; also to draw and 
to dance; and to walk, like a trussed 
fowl, with her companions, two by two. 
It would be the height of vulgarity to 
omit any one of these accomplish- 
ments: not a tradesman’s daughter, 
between Hyde Park and Whitechapel, 
would listen for a moment to such an 
E. G. 
Female Education. 
innovation. | Young: ladies of higher 
rank are still more indefatigable in 
their accomplishments; victory over 
one instrument does not suffice; the 
harp must be contended with: Italian, 
German, or Latin, whichever be in 
fashion, must be acquired, and even 
mineralogy mouthed at. The only use 
of such male education is to put money 
into the schoolmaster’s pocket; and of 
such female education, to entrap a hus- 
band, whose ears, apparently, are ex- 
pected to be somewhat larger than his 
brains. . 
But the real use of education is to 
make a boy happy in his youth, a good 
relative, an intelligent man of business, 
and a wise and honest member of 
the state when grown up. This, it 
seems, is to be attained by Latin and 
Greek, bad French, and University ma- 
thematics: and a female is to be taught 
the duties of a wife, mother, and regula- 
tor of a family, by practising eight hours 
a day on the piano, and learning French 
and the harp. In the language of the 
world, to receive a good education is to 
become learned,—to become learned is 
to know what is taught or talked of at 
colleges—to swallow the husk of learn- 
ing—to become a pedant: or, in the 
case of a female, to become a blue- 
stocking, who reads novels, talks about 
every thing, knows nothing, and ne- 
glects her proper duties. No wonder, 
then, that people say women should 
not be well educated, and that “ learn- 
ed” women are avoided like the 
plague. 
Now I contend that neither this, nor 
accomplishments, nor. both united, are 
good education; and that good female 
education is the only mean of subvert- 
ing blue-stockingism, or puppy-nursing, 
or female sanctification, or snuff-taking, 
or triple language-learning, or eternally 
piano-practising, or any other female 
nuisance. 
There are only two reasons why a 
woman should not. be well educated, 
namely, that she is physically or men- 
tally incapable of receiving a good edu- 
cation, or that her situation and duties 
do not require it. 
If mental talent depended upon mus- 
cular strength, what sages our bruisers 
and porters would be! It is evident 
that the female frame, though feebler 
than that of the male, by no means 
precludes intellectual improvement. 
With regard to the mental incapacity 
of the’ sex, it proves nothing, to assert 
that the female intellect is inferior se 
the 
