1832-37. LADIES NEGLECT MENTAL CULTIVATION. 91 



I do not wish to see young ladies blue -stockings, i.e., female 

 pedants, or to see one grain of their high-toned morality and 

 purity lost, to give place to literature or science ; yet I believe 

 they would add to their own happiness by affording the mind a 

 more extensive and interesting circle of subjects for thought, 

 did they study, with some little care, our litterateurs and scien- 

 tific men. But mothers will keep their daughters scouring and 

 dusting, and sewing and mending, and darning stocking-heels, 

 to teach 'five hundred points' of housewifery; and to that 

 every moment of time and study is given, because, forsooth, 

 mamma read no books when a Miss (except stolen novels) but 

 on a Sunday, and cannot see why the daughters should need 

 what the mothers had not ; and this absurd ' stocking- darning 

 system' is pursued by women of strong, active, intellectual 

 minds, of which mismanagement I have seen too many 

 examples. But this winter shall see me do my utmost to sug- 

 gest an improvement among my own small circle. I must not 

 forget, when talking of ladies, to make honourable mention of 

 Miss - , a pretty young coquette, who promises to have 

 beauty, handsomeness, and nonchalance, in equal doses. She is 

 a happy young girl of some fourteen or so, already bent on 

 making conquests, and resolved to lead a whole host of discom- 

 fited suitors at her chariot, ' May I be there to see ! ' but only 

 to see, and not to feel her coquettislmess." 



