I2S Education. [CllAP. XXV. 



in short, a revolution radical and unprecedented, 

 with respect to their treatment and character, 

 has taken place, and M^rought very perceptible 

 effects in society. Female education has been 

 more an object of attention, and been conducted 

 upon more liberal principles within the last thirty 

 years, in every cultivated part of Europe, and in 

 America, than at any former period. Some of 

 the ablest pens have been employed in prescribing 

 plans for the cultivation of their minds ; semina- 

 ries of learning, particularly adapted to their ad- 

 vantage, have been instituted ; women have of 

 course become, in general, better informed ; the 

 sex has furnished more instances of learning and 

 talents than ever before; a female of elevated un- 

 derstanding, and of respectable literary acquire- 

 ments, is no longer a wonderful phenomenon. 

 Corresponding to the increase of cultivation be- 

 stowed upon them, they have risen higher in the 

 scale of intellect, and evinced a capacity to vie 

 with the other sex in literature, as well as moral 

 excellence. In a word, at the close of the eigh- 

 teenth century it had become as rare and disgrace- 

 ful for a woman to be ignorant, within certain 

 limits, as at the commencement of it such igno- 

 rance was common. 



As there is no truth more generally admitted, 

 than that every step in the progress of civilisation 

 brinsrs new honour to the female sex, and increases 

 their importance in society; so there is, perhaps, 

 no fact which better establishes the claim of the 

 eighteenth century to much progress in kno\yledge 

 and refinement, than the improvements in female 

 education to v.hich it has given rise. It is a pro- 



