the general consequences of their indiscretion, are thoughtlessly employed in breaking down, as it were, the broad fence which should ever separate two very different sorts of society, and are becoming a kind of unnatural link between vice and virtue. grace to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and Redeemer, Behold the children whom thou hast given me !' Christianity, driven out from the rest of the world, has still, blessed be God! a strong hold in this country. And though it be the special duty of the appointed watchman now that he seeth the sword come upon the land, to blow the trumpet and warn the people, which if he neglect to do, their blood shall be required of the watchman's hand :'* yet, in this sacred garri. · There is a gross deception which even persons of reputation practise on themselves. They loudly condemn vice and irregularity as an ab. stract principle, nay, they stigmatise them in persons of an opposite party, or in those from whom they themselves have no prospect of per-son, impregnable but by neglect, You too have an sonal advantage or amusement, and in whom therefore they have no particular interest to tolerate evil. But the same disorders are viewed without abhorrence when practised by those who in any way minister to their pleasures. Refined entertainments, luxurious decorations, select music; whatever furnishes any delight rare and exquisite to the sense, these soften the se. verity of criticism; these palliate sins; these varnish over the flaws of a broken character, and extort not pardon merely but justification, countenance, intimacy! The more respectable will not, perhaps, go all the length of vindicating the disreputable vice, but they affect to disbelieve its existence in the individual instance; or, failing in this, they will bury its acknowledged turpitude in the seducing qualities of the agreeable delinquent. Talents of every kind are considered as a commutation for a few vices; and such talents are made a passport to introduce into honourable society, characters whom their profligacy ought to exclude from it. But the great object to which you, who are or may be mothers, are more especially called, is the education of your children. If we are responsible for the use of influence in the case of those over whom we have no immediate control, awful post, that of arming the minds of the rising race with the shield of faith, whereby they shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked;' that of girding them with that sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.' Let that very period which is desecrated in a neighbouring country, by a formal renunciation of religion, be solemnly marked by you to pur. poses diametrically opposite. Let that dishonoured era in which they avowed their resolu tion to exclude Christianity from the national education, be the precise moment seized upon by you for its more sedulous inculcation. And while their children are systematically trained to live without God in the world,' let YOURS, with a more decided emphasis, be consecrated to promote his glory in it. If you neglect this your bounden duty, you will have effectually contributed to expel Christianity from her last citadel. And remember, that the dignity of the work to which you are called, is no less than that of preserving the ark of the Lord.' CHAP. II. tem tends to establish the errors which it ought to correct.-Dangers arising from an excessive cultivation of the arts. in the case of our children we are responsible On the education of women.—The prevailing sysfor the exercise of acknowledged power; a power wide in its extent, indefinite in its effects, and inestimable in its importance. On you de. pend in no small degree the principles of the whole rising generation. To your direction the Ir is far from being the object of this slight daughters are almost exclusively committed; work to offer a regular plan of female education, and until a certain age, to you also is consigned a task which has been often more properly asthe mighty privilege of forming the hearts and sumed by far abler writers; but it is intended minds of your infant sons. To you is made over rather to suggest a few remarks on the reigning the awfully important trust of infusing the first mode, which though it has had many panegy. principles of piety into the tender minds of those rists, appears to be defective, not only in certain who may be one day called to instruct, not fa- particulars, but as a general system. There are milies merely, but districts; to influence, not indeed numberless honourable exceptions to an individuals, but senates. Your private exertions observation which will be thought severe; yet may at this moment be contributing to the fu- the author would ask, whether it be not the nature happiness, your domestic neglect, to the tural tendency of the prevailing and popular future ruin of your country. And may you never mode to excite and promote those very evils forget, in this your early instruction of your off-which it ought to be the main end and objects spring, nor they, in their future application of of christian instruction to remove? whether the it, that religion is the only sure ground of mo. reigning system does not tend to weaken the rals; that private principle is the only solid ba-principles it ought to strengthen, and to dissolve sis of public virtue. O think that they both may be fixed or forfeited for ever according to the use you are now making of that power which God has delegated to you, and of which he will demand a strict account. By his blessing on your pious labours may both sons and daughters hereafter arise and call you blessed.' And in the great day of general account, may every Christian mother be enabled through divine the heart it should fortify? whether, instead of THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. If indeed the material substance; if the body, ful must cease to be young, and the beautiful to and limbs, with the organs and senses, be really excite admiration, to learn how to grow old the more valuable objects of attention, then there gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and most is little room for animadversion and improve- valuable arts which can be taught to woman. ment: but if the immaterial and immortal mind; And it must be confessed it is a most severe trial if the heart, out of which are the issues of life,' for those women to be called to lay down beauty, be the main concern; if the great business of who have nothing else to take up. It is for education be to implant right ideas, to commu- this sober season of life that education should nicate useful knowledge, to form a taste and a lay up its rich resources. However disregarded When admirers fall away, and sound judgment, to resist evil propensities, and they may hitherto have been, they will be above all to seize the favourable season for in- wanted now. fusing principles and confirming habits; if flatterers become mute, the mind will be driven education be a school to fit us for life, and life to retire into itself, and if it find no entertain. ment at home, it will be driven back again upon be a school to fit us for eternity; if such, I repeat it, be the chief work and grand ends of the world with increased force. Yet forgetting education, it may then be worth enquiring how this, do we not seem to educate our daughters far these ends are likely to be effected by the exclusively for the transient period of youth, when it is to maturer life we ought to advert? prevailing system. Do we not educate them for a crowd, forgetting that they are to live at home? for the world, and not for themselves? for show, and not for use? for time, and not for eternity? it is uniformly to be controlled, as an active, a restless, a growing principle, at constant war with all the christian graces; which not only mixes itself into all our faults, but insinuates into ali our virtues too; and will, if not checked effectually, rob our best actions of their rewards. Vanity, if I may use the analogy, is with respect to the other vices, what feel. ing is in regard to the other senses; it is not confined in its operation to the eye, or the ear, or any single organ, but is diffused through the whole being, alive in every part, awakened and communicated by the slightest touch. Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps want some correction, rather than as beings who bring into the world a corrupt Vanity (and the same may be said of selfnature and evil dispositions, which it should be the great end of education to rectify? This ishness) is not to be resisted like any other vice, appears to be such a foundation-truth, that if I which is sometimes busy and sometimes quiet; were asked what quality is most important in an it is not to be attacked as a single fault which instructor of youth, I should not hesitate to re-is indulged in opposition to a single virtue; but ply, such a strong impression of the corruption of our nature, as should insure a disposition to Counteract it; together with such a deep view and thorough knowledge of the human heart, as should be necessary for developing and controlling its most secret and complicated workings. And let us remember that to know the world, as it is called, that is to know its local manners, temporary usages and evanescent fashions, is not to know human nature: and that where this prime knowledge is wanting, those natural evils which ought to be counteracted will be fostered. Vanity, for instance, is reckoned among the light and venial errors of youth; nay, so far from being treated as a dangerous enemy, it is often called in as an auxiliary. At worst, it is considered as a harmless weakness, which subtracts little from the value of a character; as a natural effervescence, which will subside of itself, when the first ferment of the youthful passions shall have done working. But those persons know little of the conformation of the human, and especially of the female heart, who fancy that vanity is ever exhausted, by the mere Let those who operation of time and events. maintain this opinion look into our places of public resort, and there behold if the ghost of departed beauty is not to its last flitting, fond of haunting the scenes of its past pleasures. The soul, unwilling (if I may borrow an allusion from the Platonic mythology) to quit the spot in which the body enjoyed its former delights, still continues to hover about the same place, though the same pleasures are no longer to be found there. Disappointments indeed may divert vanity into a new direction; prudence may prevent it from breaking out into excesses, and age may prove that it is vexation of spirit;' but neither disappointment, prudence, nor age can curc it: for they do not correct the principle. Nay, the very disappointment itself serves as a painful evidence of its protracted existence. Since then there is a season when the youth. Not a few of the evils of the present day arise from a new and perverted application of terms: among these, perhaps, there is not one more absurd, misunderstood, or misapplied, than the term accomplishments. This word in its original meaning signifies completeness, perfection. But I may safely appeal to the observation of man. kind, whether they do not meet with swarms of youthful females, issuing from our boarding schools, as well as emerging from the more private scenes of domestic education, who are introduced into the world, under the broad and universal title of accomplished young ladies, of all of whom it cannot very truly and correctly be pronounced, that they illustrate the definition, by a completeness which leaves nothing to be added, and a perfection which leaves nothing to be desired. This frenzy of accomplishments, unhappily, is no longer restricted within the usual limits of rank and fortune; the middle orders have caught the contagion, and it rages downward with increasing and destructive violence, from the elegantly dressed but slenderly portioned curate's danghter to the equally fashioned daughter of the little tradesman, and of the more opulent but not more judicious farmer. And is it not obvious, that as far as this epidemical mania has spread, this very valuable part of society is declining in usefulness, as it rises in But to return to that more elevated, and on account of their more extended influence only, that more important class of females, to whose use this little book is more immediately dedicat ed. Some popular authors, on the subject of female instruction, had for a time established a fantastic code of artificial manners. They bad refined elegance into insipidity, frittered down delicacy into frivolousness, and reduced manner into minauderie. But to lisp, and to amble, and to nick-name God's creatures,' has nothing to do with true gentlenses of mind; and to be silly makes no necessary part of softness. Another class of contemporary authors turned all the force of their talents to excite emotions, to inspire sentiment, and to reduce all mental and moral excellence into sympathy and feeling. These softer qualities were elevated at the expense of principle; and young women were incessantly hearing unqualified sensibility extolled as the perfection of their nature; till those who really possessed this amiable quality, instead of directing, and chastising, and restraining it, were in danger of fostering it to their hurt, and excellence from its excess; while those less interesting damsels, who happened not to find any of this amiable sensibility in their hearts, but thought it creditable to have it somewhere, fancied its seat was in the nerves; and here indeed it was easily found or feigned; till a false and excessive display of feeling became so predominant, as to bring in question the actual existence of that true tenderness, without which, though a woman may be worthy, she can never be amiable. its ill-founded pretensions to elegance? till this rapid revolution of the manners of the middle class has so far altered the character of the age, as to be in danger of rendering obsolete the heretofore common saying, that most worth and virtue are to be found in the middle station.' For I do not scruple to assert, that in general, as far as my little observation has extended, this class of females, in what relates both to religious knowledge and to practical industry, falls short both of the very high and the very low. Their new course of education, and the indolent habits of life and elegance of dress connected with it, peculiarly unfits them for the active duties of their own very important condition; while, with frivolous eagerness, and second-hand opportunities, they run to snatch a few of those showy acquirements which decorate the great. This is done apparently with one or other of these views; either to make their fortunes by marriage, or if that fail, to qualify them to become teachers of others: hence the abundant multiplication of superficial wives, and of incompetent and illiterate governesses. The use of the pencil, the performance of ex-began to consider themselves as deriving their quisite but unnecessary works, the study of foreign languages and of music, require (with some exceptions which should always be made in favour of great natural genius) a degree of leisure which belongs exclusively to affluence.* One use of learning languages is, not that we may know what the terms which express the articles of our dress and our table are called in French or Italian; nor that we may think over a few ordinary phrases in English, and then translate them, without one Fashion then, by one of her sudden and rapid foreign idiom; for he who cannot think in a turns, instantaneously struck out both real senlanguage cannot be said to understand it: but sibility and the affectation of it from the standthe great use of acquiring any foreign language ing list of female perfections; and, by a quick is, either that it enables us occasionally to con- touch of her magic wand, shifted the scene, and verse with foreigners, unacquainted with any at once produced the bold and independent other, or that it is a key to the literature of the beauty, the intrepid female, the hoyden, the country to which it belongs. Now those hum- huntress, and the archer; the swinging arms, bler females, the chief part of whose time is re- the confident address, the regimental, and the quired for domestic offices, are little likely to fall four-in-hand. Such self-complacent heroines in the way of foreigners; and so far from enjoy-made us ready to regret their softer predecessors, ing opportunities for the acquisition of foreign literature, they have seldom time to possess themselves of much of the valuable knowledge which the books of their own country so abundantly furnish; and the acquisition of which would be so much more useful and honourable than the paltry accessions they make by hammering out the meaning of a few passages in a tongue they but imperfectly understand, and of which they are never likely to make any use. It would be well if the reflection, how eagerly this redundancy of accomplishments is seized on by their inferiors, were to operate as in the case of other absurd fashions; the rich and great being seldom brought to renounce any mode of custom, from the mere consideration that it is preposterous, or that it is wrong; while they are frightened into its immediate relinquishment, from the pressing consideration that the vulgar are beginning to adopt it. who had aimed only at pleasing the other sex, while these aspiring fair ones struggled for the bolder renown of rivalling them the project failed; for, whereas the former had sued for admiration, the latter challenged, seized, compelled it; but the men, as was natural, continued to prefer the more modest claimant to the sturdy competitor. It would be well if we, who have the advantage of contemplating the errors of the two extremes, were to seek for truth where she is commonly to be found, in the plain and obvious middle path, equally remote from each excess; and while we bear in mind that helplessness is not delicacy, let us also remember that mascu line manners do not necessarily include strength of character, nor vigour of intellect. Should we not reflect also, that we are neither to train up Amazons nor Circassians, but that it is our business to form Christians? that we have to edu. cate not only rational, but accountable beings? and, remembering this, should we not be solicitous to let our daughters learn of the welltaught, and associate with the well-bred? In THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. training them, should we not carefully cultivate I to hazard enumerating the variety of musical Whether we have made the best use of the errors of our predecessors, and of our own numberless advantages, and whether the prevailing system be really consistent with sound policy, true taste, or Christian principle, it may be worth our while to inquire. Would not a stranger be led to imagine by a view of the reigning mode of female education, that human life consisted of one universal holiday, and that the grand contest between the several competitors was, who should be most eminently qualified to excel, and carry off the prize, in the various shows and games which were intended to be exhibited in it? And to the exhibitors themselves, would he not be ready to apply sir Francis Bacon's observations on the Olympian victors, that they were so excellent in these unnecessary things, that their perfection must needs have been acquired by the neglect of whatever was necessary? Before the evil has past redress, it will be prudent to reflect that in all polished countries an entire devotedness to the fine arts has been one grand source of the corruption of the women; and so justly were these pernicious consequences appreciated by the Greeks, among whom these arts were carried to the highest possible perfection, that they seldom allowed them to be cultivated to a very exquisite degree by women of great purity of character. And if the ambition of an elegant British lady should be fired by the idea that the accomplished females of those polished states were the admired companions of the philosophers, the poets, the wits, and the artists of Athens; and their beauty or talents, so much the favourite subjects of the What would the polished Addison who thought muse, the lyre, the pencil, and the chissel, that that one great end of a lady's learning to dance their pictures and statues furnished the most was, that she might know how to sit still grace- consummate models of Grecian art: if, I say, the fully; what would even the pagan historian* of accomplished females of our day are panting the great Roman conspirator, who could com- for similar renown, let their modesty chastise memorate it among the defects of this hero's ac- their ambition, by recollecting that these celecomplished mistress, 'that she was too good a brated women are not to be found among the chaste wives and the virtuous daughters of the singer and dancer for a virtuous woman;'what would these refined critics have said, had Aristideses, the Agises, and the Phocions; but they lived as we have done, to see the art of that they are to be looked for among the Phrynes, dancing lifted into such importance that it can- the Laises, the Aspasias, and the Glyceras. I not with any degree of safety be confided to one am persuaded the truly Christian female, whatever be her taste or talents, will renounce the instructor; but a whole train of successive masters are considered as absolutely essential to its desire of any celebrity when attached to impuperfection? What would these accurate judges rity of character, with the same noble indignaof female manners have said, to see a modest tion with which the virtuous biographer of the young lady first delivered into the hands of a above-named heroes renounced any kind of fame military sergeant to instruct her in the feminine which might be dishonestly attained, by exclaimart of marching? and when this delicate acqui-ing, 'I had rather it should be said there never sition is attained, to see her transferred to a professor, who is to teach her the Scotch steps; which professor, having communicated his indispensable portion of this indispensable art, makes way for the professor of French dances: and all, perhaps, in their turn, either yield to, or have the honour to co-operate with, a finishing master; each probably receiving a stipend which would make the pious curate or the learned chaplain rich and happy? The science of music, which used to be communicated in so competent a degree to a young lady by one able instructor, is now distributed among a whole band. She now requires, not a master, but an orchestra. And my country readers would accuse me of exaggeration, were * Sallust. was a Plutarch, than that they should say Plutarch was malignant, unjust, or envious.'+ * Since the first edition of this work appeared the author has received from a person of great eminence the following statement, ascertaining the time employed in the acquisition of music, in one instance. As a general calculation, it will perhaps be found to be so far from exaggerated, as to be below the truth. The statement concludes with remarking, that the individual who is the Suppose your pupil to begin at six years of age, and to subject of it is now married to a man who dislikes music! continue at the average of four hours a-day only, Sunday excepted, and thirteen days allowed for travelling annually, till she is eighteen, the statement stands thus to 1200; that number multiplied by twelve, which is the 300 days multiplied by four, the number of hours amount number of years, amounts to 14,400 hours! No censure is levelled at the exertions of real genius, which is as valuable as it is rare; but at the absurdity of that system which is erecting the whole sex into artists: that indelicate statue-like exhibition of the fe male figure, which by its artfully disposed folds, its seemingly wet and adhesive drapery, so defines the form as to prevent covering itself from becoming a veil? This licentious mode, as the acute Montesquieu observed on the dances of the Spartan virgins, has taught us to strip chastity itself of modesty.' ་ May the author be allowed to address to our own country and our own circumstances, to both of which they seem peculiarly applicable, the spirit of that beautiful apostrophe of the most polished poet of antiquity to the most victorious nation? Let us leave to the inhabitants of conquered countries the praise of carrying to the very highest degree of perfection, sculpture and the sister arts; but let this country direct her own exertions to the art of governing mankind in equity and peace, of showing mercy to the submissive, and of abasing the proud among surrounding nations.'* And while this corruption brought on by an excessive cultivation of the arts, has contributed its full share to the decline of states, it has always furnished an infallible symptom of their impending fall. The satires of the most penetrating and judicious of the Roman poets, corroborating the testimonies of the most accurate of their historians, abound with invectives against the general depravity of manners introduced by the corrupt habits of female education. The bitterness and gross indelicacy of some of these satirists (too gross to be either quoted or referred to) make little against their authority in these points; for how shocking must those corruptions have been, and how obviously offensive their causes, which could have appeared so highly disgusting to minds so coarse as not likely to be scandalized by slight deviations from decency! The famous ode of Horace, attributing the vices and disasters of his degenerate country to the same cause, might, were it quite free from the above objections, be produced, I will not presume to say as an exact picture of the existing manners of this country; but may I not venture to say, as a prophecy, the fulfilment of which cannot be very remote ? It may however be observed, that the modesty of the Roman External improvement. Children's balls. French matron, and the chaste demeanour of her virgin daughters, which amidst the stern virtues of the LET me not however be misunderstood.-The state were as immaculate and pure as the honour customs which fashion has established, when of the Roman citizen, fell a sacrifice to the luxu- they are not in opposition to what is right, when rious dissipation brought in by their Asiatic they are not hostile to virtue, should unquestionconquests; after which the females were soon ably be pursued in the education of ladies. Piety taught a complete change of character. They maintains no natural war with elegance, and were instructed to accommodate their talents of Christianity would be no gainer by making her pleasing to the more vitiated tastes of the other disciples unamiable. Religion does not forbid sex; and began to study every grace and every that the exterior be made to a certain degree art, which might captivate the exhausted hearts the object of attention. But the admiration be and excite the wearied and capricious inclina-stowed, the sums expended, and the time lavishtions of the men; till by a rapid and at length complete enervation, the Roman character lost its signature, and through a quick succession of slavery, effeminacy, and vice, sunk into that degeneracy of which some of the modern Italian states serve to furnish a too just specimen. It is of the essence of human things that the same objects which are highly useful in their season, measure, and degree, become mischievous in their excess, at other periods and under other circumstances. In a state of barbarism, the arts are among the best reformers; and they go on to be improved themselves, and improving those who cultivate them, till having reached a certain point, those very arts which were the instruments of civilization and refinement, become instruments of corruption and decay; enervating and depraving in the second instance, by the excess and universality of their cultivation, as certainly as they refined in the first. They become agents of voluptuousness.-They excite the imagination; and the imagination thus excited, and no longer under the government of strict principle, becomes the most dangerous stimulant of the passions; promotes a too keen relish for pleasure, teaching how to multiply its sources, and inventing new and pernicious modes of artificial gratification. May we not rank among the present corrupt consequences of this unbounded cultivation, the unchaste costume, the impure style of dress, and CHAP. III. governesses. ed on arts, which add little to the intrinsic value of life, should have limitations. While these arts should be admired, let them not be admired above their just value: while they are practised, let it not be to the exclusion of higher employments while they are cultivated, let it be to amuse leisure, not to engross life. But it happens unfortunately, that to ordinary observers, the girl who is really receiving the worst instruction often makes the best figure; while in the more correct but less ostensible edu. cation, the deep and sure foundations to which the edifice will owe its strength and stability lie out of sight. The outward accomplishments have the dangerous advantage of addressing themselves more immediately to the senses, and * Let me not be suspected of bringing into any sort of comparison the gentleness of British government with ciples of Roman dominion. To spoil, to butcher, and to the rapacity of Roman conquests, or the tyrannical princommit every kind of violence, they call, says one of the ablest of their historians, by the lying name of gorerament, and when they have spread a general desolation, they call it peace. (1) With such dictatorial, or as we might now read, directorial, inquisitors, we can have no point of contact; and if I have applied the servile flattery of a delightful poet to the purpose of English happiness, it was only to show wherein true national grandeur consists, and that every Country pays too dear a price for those arts and embel lishments of society which endanger the loss of its mo rals and manners. (1) Tacitus' Life of Agricola, speech of Galgaous to his soldiers; |