a“ 
nient determination in favour of the 
pencil. The allurements of beauty, 
heightened by the grace of accomplish. 
ments, have, it must be confessed, per- 
suaded very wise men to turn traitors to 
the lawful sovereignty of intellect; but 
there is room for surmise in all such in- 
starees, that the power of beauty would 
have done as much alone, and that the 
accomplishments, if at all accessories to 
the oflence, shared but a small part of 
the guilt. Ifdisplay, and not use; if to 
gain, au idle admirer, and not a faithful 
triend, be the object of:the education of 
females, the prevailing practice is well 
contrived for the purpose. It may then 
be demanded with reason, of what use 
are literary attainments to woman? 
Why must the lovely trifler be con- 
demned to the drudgery of travelling with 
painful steps in the hard track of ele- 
mentary learning, in order to arrive at a 
correct and radical knowledge of words 
and things. The terror with which the 
minds of many men of undoubted 
courage are still agitated, on the pro- 
posal of giving much more exercise and 
light to the understanding of woman, 
seems to have sprung froin the strange 
apprehension, that if her youth be prin- 
cipally devoted to the study of letters, 
literature must become not the enter- 
tainment and the solace, but the bust- 
ness, of her life ; that it is impossible to 
give solidity to her mind, without at the 
same time infecting her manners with 
pedantry; that if habits of mental ap- 
plication and reflection be formed, the 
needle will be exchanged for the pen, 
and that the whole sex, armed with this 
formidable weapon, will rush into the- 
field of literary conflict, each more ter- 
rible than the modern chevalier D’Eon, 
or the Amazon of antiquity: “ Penthesilea 
Jfurens, mediisque.in millibus ardet.” 'To 
expose the vanity of such apprehensions, 
it is only necessary to remark, that but 
a small proportion of well-educated men 
affect literary fame; the far greater part 
aye content to possess the advantages of 
learning without wishing to enrol them- 
selves among men of letters. There is 
no reason to expect a different issue, if 
the generality of women were well 
taught. Besides, it 1s well provided by 
nature, that mo practice shall be long 
prevalent in either sex, which is known 
to be generally odious to the other. 
But it is not the present design to enter 
upon a formal refutation of an opinion, 
which it is probable at no very remote 
period will be pronounced obsolete, 
2 
we 
On Education. 
[July 1, 
A prejudice of more recent-date, and 
much more liberal in its aspect, must now 
pass under review, This respects net the 
objects of education, but the pursuits by 
which those objects are best secured. 
Its advocates have taken care to clothe 
it im terms sufficiently popular and im- 
posing, and such as seem to justify the 
Mnputation of prejudice and pedantry to 
its opponents, iducation, they say, 
should be so conducted as to store the 
mind with the knowledge, not of words, 
but of facts and things. “ The time 
which is occupied in forming an ac- 
quaintance with the learned languages, 
as they are called, might ‘be employed 
more advantageously in collecting various 
information from the different sources of 
natural and civil history, geography, 
astronomy, and experimental philosophy, 
The child should be taught to read the 
book of nature, to drink in knowledge at 
the fountain-head, to explore the pro- 
perties of things rather than bestow great 
labour, and often with little success, on | 
the dissection of languages which have 
long been numbered with the dead. To 
come to a fair decision on this question, it 
is necessary to explain that there is no dis- 
pute as to the place which should be as- 
signed ro mathematical studies: they are 
strictly elementary, and yield precedence 
to none. The only question is, Whether 
language, as well as science, should be 
studied an its elements, or whether the 
time which is given to classical learning, 
would be better employed in storing the 
memory with historical facts, philoso- 
,plica] discoveries as far as they can be 
made intelligible, and with whatever is 
most curious in art and nature? The 
question must also be made general ; and 
all those cases must be excluded in which 
the kind of education is determined by 
the particular profession to which the 
child is destined. The opposite opinions 
will be best tried by considering what 
are the objects of education, and what 
are the most probable means of attaining 
them. Education has two objects: the. 
acquisition of knowledge and of habits. 
The latter of these is the most impor- 
tant. That course of instruction must 
be acknowledged to be the best, which 
is best adapted to develop the powers of 
the mind, and to call them into vigorous 
action, to qualify the mind to become its’ 
own instructor, to acquaint it with. its 
own uses, and enable it to think, coms 
bine, compare, discriminate, decide be- 
twixt contending probabilities, deteet 
I 
errors, and discover truths. As words 
: are 
