Tin: MODKL CIRI.. 4;, 



choice will be a good one ; for she can find so much more good than bad. 

 It is unwise to forbid girls to read novels. They are to-day the best 

 reading. Fiction, too, is natural to the youthful mind. It is absurd to 

 suppose that Heaven gave us our imagination and rosy dreams for notic- 

 ing. They are the drapery of fact, and are intended to soften for us the 

 dreary outlines of duty. No girl was ever injured, if she were worth 

 saving, by a little novel -reading. Indeed, the most ethical writers of the 

 <lay have learned that, if a fact is worth knowing, it had better be con- 

 veyed in the agreeable form of a fiction. What girl would ever learn BO 

 much of Florentine history in any other way as she learns by reading 

 " Romola ? " What better picture of the picturesque past than " The L 

 1 >ays of Pompeii ? " Walter Scott's novels are the veriest mine of English 

 and Scotch history ; and we might go on indefinitely. 



As for studies for girls, it is always best to teach them Latin, as a solid 

 foundation for the modern languages, if for nothing else ; as much arith- 

 metic as they can stand ; and then go on to the higher education and the 

 culture which their mature minds demand, if they desire it and are equal 

 to it. 



But no mother should either compel or allow her daughter to study to 



detriment of her health. The moment a girl's body begins to suffer, 



then her mind must be left free from intellectual labour. With some 



nen brain-work is impossible. It produces all sorts of diseases, and 



makes them at once a nervous wreck. With other women intellectual 



labour is a necessity. It is like exercise of the limbs. It makes them 



\v strong and rosy. No woman who can study and write, and at the 



time eat and sleep, preserve her complexion and her temper, need !> 



afraid of intellectual labour. But a mother must watch her young Mu- 



dfiit closely, else in the ardour of emulation amid the excisemen: 



school she may break down, and her health leave her in an hour. It is 



the inexperienced Lc'irl who ruins her health by intelleetual labour. 



T<> many a woman intelleetual labour is, however, a necessity. It car- 

 oil' nervousness ; it is a delightful r -treat from disappointment; it is 

 a perfeet armour ai::nnst ennui. What the convent life is to the devotee, 

 what the fashionable arena is to the belle, what the inner M-i.-mv of p,,li- 

 to the Euroj-ran woman of ambition, literary work is to certain in- 

 t'-ll'-etual women. So a m .ther need n.! fear to encourage her daughter 

 in it, it .ud finds that her health will 



r it. 



tain fashionable .schools have ruined the health of 

 . parti-u!arl\ (then the moms are .situated at the top of 



