Ghap. XXV.] Education. 141 



see females receive the best education which their 

 circumstances will afford. And every one who 

 considers the importance of enlightening and 

 forming the minds of the young, and who recol- 

 lects that this task must, for a number of the 

 first years of life, be almost entirely intrusted to 

 mothers, will perceive the propriety of having 

 them more accurately and extensively informed 

 than they commonly are. But when women carry 

 the idea of their equality with the other sex so far 

 as to insist, that there should be no difference m 

 their education and pursuits; when they con- 

 tend that every kind of study or occupation is 

 equally fit and desirable for them to pursue as 

 for men * ; when they imagine and act on the 

 presumption, that they have talents as well suited 

 to every species of employment and enterprise; 

 they mistake both their character, their dignity, 

 and their happiness. The God of nature has 

 raised everlasting barriers against such wild and 

 mischievous claims. To urge them is to renounce 



* It is by no means the intention of the writer to say, that the 

 profound investigations of mathematical or metaphysical science 

 are unfit for all females. Where persons of this sex are so circum- 

 stanced, with regard to property and employment, as to render 

 investigations of this kind convenient and agreeable, there a|:- 

 pears no rational objection to their engaging in them. But when 

 females devote themselves to studies of this nature, to the neg- 

 lect of religious and moral improvement, which are indispensa- 

 bly necessary for every sex and age ; and to the omission also 

 of geography, history, chemistry, and some of the more attrac- 

 tive branches of natural history, if they do not depart from the 

 province of their sex, they certainly have a singular taste as to 

 what is most useful and most ornamental in females, situate as 

 they are in society. 



