nise three or four hours every day, to play without an ear, and to sing without a voice; and, after many years of irksome drudgery, to discover that her soul was not tuned to harmony, and that all her meritorious exertions cannot supply natural defects.

Music and drawing are very delightful, but they are surely not essential. A woman may be very good, very clever, very pleasing, without them; nay, much more pleasing than when she is, as it were, forced into their service, and made to affect a taste. For then there will be a perpetual display of some laboured studio, or some double octave bravura, the only merit of which is its painful execution. And for a woman to play and draw only a little is equally distressing to her friends and to herself; for they are constrained to admire, and she to execute, in spite of the consciousness of insincerity on the one hand, and of failure on the other.

The loss of time which these useless efforts involve is, perhaps, their least evil. To force the inclination in things indifferent has a bad moral effect. Constrained studies are seldom successful; and, frequently, the error is universal, and pervades the system. Certain things are to be acquired, certain rules observed, whatever be the ability, taste, or temper. Natural inferiority, instead of feeling itself assisted, is, not unfrequently, wholly discouraged by this unbending routine; and the innate and peculiar talent, if such there be, languishes for want of culture. Still more lamentable is the effect on disposition. How often is irritability the consequence of wounded sensitiveness; and how often does the severity which may be requisite

to restrain the impetuous, freeze and paralyse the diffident and tender! Many a gentle spirit has been crushed; many a feeling heart chilled; many an amiable disposition rendered fretful and peevish, by a want of sympathy in instruc

tors.

It would be far more wise to study the peculiarities of temper and talent, and to adapt our treatment accordingly. It is surely not desira. ble that the characters of all young women should be as uniform as is their hand-writing; and it is as absurd to attempt universal conformity of mind as it is of mode. To make no allowance for moral and intellectual difference is, indeed, a greater mistake, than for a little woman to adopt a French coiffure, or a plain woman a conspicuous dress, merely in compliance with fashion.

On the other hand, how much may be effected by a tender and judicious treatment! How may the timid be encouraged, and the languid stimulated, and the latent spark of genius fanned! How may even the dull be roused to exertion, and be made to feel, at least, sympathy, in what is refined and intellectual!

Adaptation is indeed the great secret in education;-adaptation to circumstance as well as to character, and, one might almost say, to inclination, as well as to ability. For, though there is a danger in over-indulgence in this respect, there is even more danger in over-restraint; and if the favourite exercise of the mind be not prejudicial, it is surely better to encourage and direct than to thwart it. It is, as in the choice of a profession;-few rise to eminence whose wishes are counteracted,-so few

attain proficiency in that to which they are strongly disinclined. And though this may be but an excuse for indolence, and, of course, must, in such cases, be over-ruled, it may, too, be an intuitive instinct, whose intimations, at least, merit attention. For as the appetite often points out what the stomach will bear, so the taste often indicates what the intellect will master.

The education of women should, of course, be strictly feminine. Yet this affects more the manner than the matter of instruction; for it is not so much what is taught, as the way in which it is taught, and the use made of it, that determines character. Knowledge, in itself, has no tendency to make a woman unfeminine, any more than it has to make a man proud; but it is the self-sufficiency which is sometimes instilled as its accompaniment, which produces assumption and conceit in the one case, and arrogance in the other.

On

Perfect acquirement demands time and application; and it has this good effect, that while it satisfies and fixes the mind, it does not cheat it into a false estimate of its own powers. the contrary, superficial knowledge dazzles by the rapidity of its attainment; and while it impresses us with a notion of our own superiority, leads us to despise those who have travelled by slower steps. It is thus that young women sometimes entertain an overweening idea of their own talents. They are, as the phrase is, well educated; that is, they have been taught a great many things, and they think to impress others with the same opinion of their proficiency with which they delude themselves.

It is, indeed, no wonder that young women should be so very clever now-a-days. There are so many helps to learning, and steps to Parnassus. There are so many pioneers to level the way, that it is a libel any longer to call it steep. If grammar be dry and abstruse, its necessity is superseded;-if the dictionary be irksome, there is the interlined translation;if the classic author be obscure and ponderous, there is the lucid paraphrase, and the elegant abridgement. Be the nut ever so hard, the kernel is extracted. Our very babies may suck the sweets of Froissart, Robertson, and Hume, and follow with infantile curiosity the retreat of the Ten Thousand.

Youth is now such a very busy time. There are so many languages that must be learnt; so many accomplishments that must be mastered; so many sciences with which we must be familiar. A little while ago, French was a rare acquirement, but what girl now does not sigh with Filicaja, or weep with Klopstock? The versatility of female talent, is, indeed, abundantly improved. Master succeeds to master, and class to class. The day of the scholar, like that of the instructor, is parcelled out into hours; and the sixth portion of each, which is cribbed by the former to run to a new pupil, is not unfrequently all that is allowed to the latter to prepare for a new teacher.

It is well that mechanics can assist; that the inclination of the hand may be given by the cheiroplast, and the intricacies of time defined by a pendulum, and the problems of perspective resolved by a lens. Could the modern school.

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room be preserved like the saloons of Pompeii, it might pass in succeeding centuries for a refined inquisition. There would be found stocks for the fingers, and pulleys for the neck, and weights and engines of suspicious form and questionable purpose; and, in spite of all our vaunts of philanthropy, we might pass in future ages for the inventors of ingenious tortures.

But for what end is all this apparatus? It is certainly very right that knowledge should be simplified, that the child of the nineteenth century should profit by its illumination, and that little girls, instead of poring out their eyes at embroidered frames, should be treated as moral and intelligent beings. But where there is such over-feeding, is it possible that there can be digestion? Where there is such an anxiety to impart brilliancy, is it not for display rather than for use?

It is quite different with boys. They are still kept, for the most part, to their old drudgery. They must still fight their way through classic lore, through crabbed grammars, and corrupt texts; they must still go to Aristotle for logic, to Newton for science, to Thucydides and to Livy for history; and though they are assisted in their difficult path by the labours of past and present generations, they must still work hard before they can reap the fruit. And better far that they should do so; that they should encounter the fag of the student before they can carry off the glory of the scholar.

It would be well if the same principle were acted on with regard to girls; if their education were more solid and less flashy, and if, instead