Chap. XXV.] Education. 143 



instead of proving that a taste for literature is 

 improper or injurious in females, it only serves 

 to admonish us, that their studies should be morq 

 extensive and better directed ; that an acquaint- 

 ance with novels only will never make any wo- 

 man a good housewife, mother, friend, or Chris- 

 tian J and that literature in them, as ^vell as the 

 other sex, though in itself an invaluable blessing, 

 may be perverted into a heavy curse. 



The elegant accomplishments of music and 

 draiving were also more commonly made a part 

 of female education, at the close of the eighteenth 

 century, than at any former period with the his- 

 tory of which we are acquainted. We now see 

 every day, in the houses of those who belong to 

 the middle class of society, instruments of music, 

 and productions of the pencil, which a century 

 ago were rarely seen in the houses of the most 

 conspicuous and wealthy. This increase of atten- 

 tion to music, as a part of female education, dur- 

 ing the last century, is more especially remark- 

 able in Great Britain and America. 



On the subject oi Education, the centur}^ under 

 review has given birth to a doctrine, which, 

 though noticed in a former chapter, is yet too re- 

 markable and too pregnant with mischief, to be 

 suffered to pass without more particujlar conside- 

 ration in the present. It is, that education has 

 a kind of intellectual and moral omnipotence ; that 



mar, geography, historj% chemistry, ^'c, give all their reading- 

 hours to Novels, would do well to ask themselves, how far this 

 kind of employment is likely to qualify them to be dignified 

 heads of families, respectable companions of their husbands, or 

 u^sful members of society. 



