DAUGHTERS 329 



clearing of the head and opening of the mind, most essen- 

 tial to those who have the heavy responsibility of training 

 the young. If there is one thing above all others that 

 repeats its faults ad nauseam and is blindly conservative, 

 it is the management of children in the nursery and 

 schoolroom. Mr. Herbert Spencer's book has fortunately 

 now reached a very cheap edition. It is a book created 

 by the hand of genius, and not the result of personal 

 experience. I humbly bow to it in grateful thanks for 

 all the good I derived from its perusal. 



The second book is called ' Levana, or The Doctrine 

 of Education,' by Jean Paul Frederick Eichter, and is 

 only accessible to me through the translation into 

 English. It is a book full of thought and wisdom, and it 

 speaks of prosaic things in a poetic manner ; and though 

 the opening chapters apply to both sexes, it refers rather 

 to the training of daughters than of sons, as being the 

 first and most important business of a mother. I can 

 strongly recommend its perusal ; at the same time a good 

 deal of it is, of course, out of date. It is written by a 

 German, and entirely from a man's point of view. The 

 book is full of love and tenderness, and may perhaps be 

 thought very high-flown and old-fashioned in these days. 

 This does not matter ; it speaks of the undying facts of 

 Nature, which will last as long as the world does. I 

 cannot resist copying here one passage, which I believe 

 will come home tenderly to every mother who is about 

 to give away in marriage a loved young daughter : 



' Certainly a wisely and purely educated maiden is so 

 poetic a flower of the dull world, that the sight of this 

 glorious blossom hanging, some years after the honey- 

 moon, with yellow faded leaves in unwatered beds, must 

 grieve any man who beholds it with a poet's eye ; and 

 who must, consequently, in sorrow over the common 

 usefulness and servitude of the merely human life, over 



