warned by the monitory annals of successive ages. While she reads with horror that Belshazzar was rioting with his thousand nobles at the very moment when the Persian army was bursting through the brazen gates of Babylon; is she very sure that she herself, in an almost equally imminent moment of public danger, has not been nightly indulging in every species of dissipation? There is scarcely one great event in history which does not, in the issue, produce effects upon which human foresight could never have calculated. The success of Augustus against his country produced peace in many distant provinces, who thus ceased to be harrassed and tormented by this oppressive republic. Could this effect have been foreseen, it might have sobered the despair of Cato, and checked the vehemence of Brutus. In politics, in short in every thing except in morals and religion, all is to a considerable degree uncertain. This reasoning is not meant to show that Cato ought not to have fought, but that he ought not to have dissolved in dissolute pleasures with the endesponded even after the last battle; and certainly, even upon his own principles, ought not to have killed himself. It would be departing too much from my object to apply this argument, however obvious the application, against those who were driven to unreasonable distrust and despair by the late successes of a neighbouring nation. But all knowledge will be comparatively of little value, if we neglect self-knowledge; and of self-knowledge history and biography may be made successful vehicles. It will be to little purpose that our pupils become accurate critics on the characters of others, while they remain ignorant of themselves; for while to those who exercise a habit of self-application a book of profane history may be made an instrument of improvement in this difficult science; so without such an habit the Bible itself may, in this view, be read with little profit. It will be to no purpose that the reader weeps over the fortitude of the Christian hero, or the constancy of the martyr, if she do not bear in mind that she herself is called to endure her own common trials with something of the same temper: if she do not bear in mind that, to controul irregular humours, and to submit to the daily vexations of life, will require, though in a lower degree, the exertion of the same principle, and supplication for the aid of the same spirit which sustained the Christian hero in the trying conflicts of life; or the martyr in his agony at the stake. May I be permitted to suggest a few instances, by way of specimen, how both sacred and common history may tend to promote self-knowledge? And let me again remind the warm admirer of suffering piety under extraordinary trials, that if she now fail in the petty occasions to which she is actually called out, she would not be likely to bave stood in those more trying occasions which excite her admiration. When she is deploring the inconsistency of the human heart, while she contrasts in Mark Anthony his bravery and contempt of ease at one period, with his licentious indulgences at another; or while she laments over the intrepid soul of Cæsar, whom she had been following in his painful marches, or admiring in his contempt of death, now snaring queen of Egypt; let her examine whether she herself has never, though in a much lower degree, evinced something of the same inconsistency? whether she who lives perhaps an orderly, sober, and reasonable life during her summer residence in the country, does not plunge with little scruple in the winter into all the most extravagant pleasures of the capital? whether she never carries about with her an accommodating kind of religion, which can be made to bend to places and seasons, to climates and customs, to times and circumstances; which takes its tincture from the fashion without, and not its habits from the principle within; which is decent with the pious, sober with the orderly, and loose with the licentious? While she is admiring the generosity of Alexander in giving away kingdoms and provinces, let her, in order to ascertain whether she could imitate this magnanimity, take heed if she herself is daily seizing all the little occasions of doing good, which every day presents to the affluent? Her call is not to sacrifice a province; but does she sacrifice an opera ticket? She who is not doing all the good she can under her present circumstances, would not do all she foresees she should, in imaginary ones, were her power enlarged to the extent of her wishes. While she is inveighing with patriotic indignation, that in a neighbouring metropolis, thirty theatres were open every night in time of war and public calamity, is she very clear that in a metropolis which contains only three, she was not almost constantly at one of them in time of war and public calamity also? For though in a national view it may make a wide difference whether there be in the capital three theatres or thirty, yet, as the same person can only go to one of them at once, it makes but little difference as to the quantum of dissipation in the individual. She who rejoices at successful virtue in a history, or at the prosperity of a person While she is applauding the self-denying whose interests do not interfere with her saint who renounced his ease, or chose to own, may exercise her self-knowledge by embrace death, rather than violate his duty, examining whether she rejoices equally at let her ask herself if she has never refused the happiness of every one about her and to submit to the paltry inconvenience of giving up her company, or even altering her dinner-hour on a Sunday, though by this trifling sacrifice her family might have been enabled to attend the public worship in the afternoon. let her remember she does not rejoice at it in the true sense, if she does not labour to promote it. She who glows with rapture at a virtuous character in history, should ask her own heart, whether she is equally ready to do justice to the fine qualities of her ac quaintance, though she may not particularly ing that no brilliancy of genius, no diversity love them; and whether she takes unfeigned of attainments, should ever be allowed as a pleasure in the superior talents, virtues, commutation for defective principles and fame, and fortune of those whom she pro- corrupt ideas.* fesses to love, though she is eclipsed by them? CHAP. X. In like manner, in the study of geography On the use of definitions, and the moral benes and natural history, the attention should be fits of accuracy in language. habitually turned to the goodness of Providence, who commonly adapts the various pro- their cradles to learn words before they knew 'PERSONS having been accustomed from ductions of climates to the peculiar wants of the ideas for which they stand, usually con the respective inhabitants. To illustrate my tinue to do so all their lives, never taking meaning by one or two instances out of a the pains to settle in their minds, the deterthousand. The reader may be led to ad- mined ideas which belong to them. This mire the considerate goodness of Providence in having caused the spiry fir, whose slender want of a precise signification of their words, foliage does not obstruct the beams of the when they come to reason, especially in morsun, to grow in the dreary regions of the al matters, is the cause of very obscure and north, whose shivering inhabitants could uncertain notions. They use these undeterspare none of its scanty rays; while in the mined words confidently, without much torrid zone, the palm tree, the plantane, and troubling their heads about a certain fixed the banana, spread their umbrella leaves to meaning, whereby, besides the ease of it, break the almost intolerable fervors of a they obtain this advantage, that as in such vertical sun. How the camel, who is the discourse they are seldom in the right, so they sole carrier of all the merchandise of Tur- are seldom to be convinced that they are in key, Persia, Egypt, Arabia and Barbary to draw those persons out of their mistakes, the wrong, it being just the same to go about who is obliged to transport his incredible who have no settled notions, as to dispossess burthens through countries in which pasture is so rare, can subsist twenty-four hours a vagrant of his habitation who has no settled without food, and can travel loaded, many be understood, words serve not for that end abode. The chief end of language being to days without water, through dry and dusty when they do not excite in the hearer the deserts, which supply none; and all this, not from the habit, but from the conforma- same idea which they stand for in the mind of the speaker.'t tion of the animal: for naturalists make this conformity of powers to climates a rule of judgment in ascertaining the native countries of animals, and always determine it to be that to which their powers and properties are most appropriate. broad sanction of the great author here queI have chosen to shelter myself under the ted, with a view to apply this rule in philology to a moral purpose; for it applies to the veracity of conversation as much as to its Thus the writers of natural history are correctness; and as strongly recommends perhaps unintentionally magnifying the ope- unequivocal and simple truth, as accurate rations of Providence, when they insist that and just expression. Scarcely any one peranimals do not modify and give way to the haps has an adequate conception how much influence of other climates; but here they cidation of truth; and the side of truth is clear and correct expression favours the elutoo commonly stop; neglecting, or perhaps refusing, to ascribe to infinite goodness this obviously the side of morals; it is in fact one wise and merciful accommodation. And and the same cause; and it is of course the here the pious instructor will come in, in aid same cause with that of true religion also. of their deficiency: for philosophers too sel- It is therefore no worthless part of educa dom trace up causes, and wonders, and bless-tion, even in a religious view, to study the ings to their Author. And it is peculiarly precise meaning of words, and the approprito be regretted that a late justly celebrated ate signification of language. To this end I French naturalist, who, though not famous know no better method than to accustom for his accuracy, possessed such diversified young persons very early to a habit of definpowers of description that he had the talent ing common words and things; for, as defiof making the driest subjects interesting; to-nition seems to lie at the root of correctness, gether with such liveliness of delineation, that to be accustomed to define English words in his characters of animals are drawn with a English, would improve the understanding spirit and variety rather to be looked for in more than barely to know what these words an historian of men than of beasts: it is to be are called in French, Italian, or Latin. Or regretted, I say, that this writer, with all his rather, one use of learning other languages excellencies, is absolutely inadmissible into is, because definition is often involved in etthe library of a young lady, both on account ymology; that is, since many English words of his immodesty and his impiety; and if in take their derivation from foreign or ancient wishing to exclude him, it may be thought wrong to have given him so much commen- * Goldsmith's History of Animated Nature has dation, it is only meant to show that the au-wished that some judicious person would publish a many references to a Divine Author. It is to be thor is not led to reprobate his principles from new edition of this work, purified from the indeli fasensibility to his talents. The remark is cate and offensive parts. rather made to put the reader on remember- + Locke.. THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. languages, they cannot be so accurately understood without some knowledge of those languages: but precision of any kind, either moral or philological, too seldom finds its way into the education of women. It is perhaps going out of my province to observe, that it might be well if young men also, before they entered on the world, were to be furnished with correct definitions of certain words, the use of which is become rather ambiguous; or rather they should be instructed in the double sense of modern phraseology. For instance; they should be provided with a good definition of the word honour in the fashionable sense, showing what vices it includes, and what virtues it does not include; the term good company, which even the courtly Petronius of our days has defined as sometimes including not a few immoral and disreputable characters: religion, which in the various senses assigned it by the world, sometimes means superstition, sometimes fanaticism, and sometimes a mere disposition to attend on any kind of form of worship: the word goodness, which is made to mean every thing that is not notoriously bad; and sometimes even that too, if what is notoriously bad be accompanied by good hulittle almsmour, pleasing manners, and giving By these means they would go forth armed against many of the false opinions which, through the abuse or ambiguous meaning of words, pass so current in the world. But to return to the youthful part of that sex which is the more immediate object of With correct definition this little work. they should also be taught to study the shades of words, and this not merely with a view to accuracy of expression, though even that involves both sense and elegance, but with a view to moral truth. Of all the parts of speech, the interjection The habit of exaggerating trifles, together with the grand female failing of excessive mutual flattery, and elaborate general professions of fondness and attachment, is inconceivably cherished by the voluminous private correspondences in which some girls are indulged. In vindication of this practice it is pleaded that a facility of style, and an easy turn of expression, are acqusitions to be de rived from an early interchange of sentiments by letter-writing; but even if it were so, these would be dearly purchased by the sacrifice of that truth, and sobriety of sentiment, that correctness of language, and that ingenuous simplicity of character and man. ners so lovely in female youth. These Next to pernicious reading, imprudent and And boundless violent friendships are the most dangerous snares to this simplicity. correspondences with different confidants, whether they live in a distant province, or, as it often happens, in the same street, are the fuel which principally feeds this dangerous flame of youthful sentiment. In those correspondences the young friends often encourage each other in the falsest notions of human life, and the most erroneous views of each other's character. Family affairs are It may be thought ridiculous to assert, that divulged, and family faults aggravated. morals have any connexion with the purity Vows of everlasting attachment and excluof language, or that the precision of truth sive fondness are in a pretty just proportion may be violated through defect of critical bestowed on every friend alike. exactness in the three degrees of compari epistles overflow with quotations from the son: yet how frequently do we hear from most passionate of the dramatic poets; and the dealers in superlatives, of most admira- passages wrested from their natural meanble, superexcellent, and quite perfect' peo-ing, and pressed into the service of sentiple, who, to plain persons, not bred in the ment, are, with all the violence of misapplischool of exaggeration, would appear mere cation, compelled to suit the case of the hecommon characters, not rising above the roic transcriber. But antecedent to this epistolary period of level of mediocrity! By this negligence in the just application of words, we shall be as life they should have been accustomed to the much misled by these trope and figure ladies, most scrupulous exactness in whatever they when they degrade as when they panegyrize; relate. They should maintain the most critfor to a plain and sober judgment, a trades- ical accuracy in facts, in dates, in numbering, man may not be the most good-for-nothing in describing, in short, in whatever pertains, fellow that ever existed,' merely because it either directly or indirectly, closely or reIt is so very difficult for persons of was impossible for him to execute in an hour, motely, to the great fundamental principle, an order which required a week; a lady truth. may not be the most hideous fright the great liveliness to restrain themselves within world ever saw,' though the make of her the sober limits of strict veracity, either in gown may have been obsolete for a month; their assertions or narrations, especially nor may one's young friend's father be a when a little undue indulgence of fancy is monster of cruelty,' though he may be a apt to procure for them the praise of genius quiet gentleman who does not choose to live and spirit, that this restraint is one of the watering-places, but likes to have his earliest principles which should be worked daughter stay at home with him in the coun-into the youthful mind. at The conversation of young females is also in danger of being overloaded with epithets. temporary customs, or because the subject As in the warm season of youth hardly any one which will be most forcibly impressed thing is seen in the true point of vision, so by a strong figure. The loftiness of the exhardly any thing is named in naked simplici-pression deducts nothing from the weight of ty; and the very sensibility of the feelings is the circumstance; the imagery animates the partly a cause of the extravagance of the reader without misleading him; the boldest expression. But here, as in other points, illustration, while it dilates his conception the sacred writers, particularly of the New of the subject, detracts nothing from its ex Testament, present us with the purest mod-actness; and the divine spirit, instead of els; and its natural and unlaboured style of suffering truth to be injured by the opulence expression is perhaps not the meanest evi- of the figures, contrives to make them fresh dence of the truth of the Gospel. There is and varied avenues to the heart and the unthroughout the whole narratives, no over-derstanding. charged character, no elaborate description, nothing studiously emphatical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped out. There is little panegyric, and less in CHAP. XI. ly instruction shown by analogy with hu man learning. vective; none but on great, and awful, and On religion. The necessity and duty of ear justifiable occasions. The authors record their own faults with the same honesty as if they were the faults of other men, and the IT has been the fashion of our late innovafaults of other men with as little amplifica- tors in philosophy, who have written some of tion as if they were their own. There is the most brilliant and popular treatises on edperhaps no book in which adjectives are so ucation, to decry the practice of early instilsparingly used. A modest statement of the ling religious knowledge into the minds of fact, with no colouring and little comment, children. In vindication of this opinion it with little emphasis and no varnish, is the ex- has been alleged, that it is of the utmost im ample held out to us for correcting the ex-portance to the cause of truth, that the mind uberances of passion and of language, by of man should be kept free from prepossesthat divine volume which furnishes us with ions; and in particular, that every one the still more important rule of faith and should be left to form such judgment on relistandard of practice. Nor is the truth low-gious subjects as may seem best to his own ered by any feebleness, nor is the spirit dilu- reason in maturer years. ted, nor the impression weakened by this so- This sentiment has received some coun berness and moderation; for with all this tenance from those better characters who plainness there is so much force, with all this have wished, on the fairest principle, to ensimplicity there is so much energy, that a courage free inquiry in religion; but it has few slight touches and artless strokes of been pushed to the blameable excess here Scripture characters convey a stronger out-censured, chiefly by the new philosophers; line of the person delineated, than is some- who, while they profess only an ingenuous times given by the most elaborate and finish-zeal for truth, are in fact slily endeavouring ed portrait of more artificial historians. to destroy Christianity itself, by discounteIf it be objected to this remark, that many nancing, under the plausible pretence of free parts of the sacred writings abound in a lofty, inquiry, all attention whatever to the relifigurative, and even hyperbolical style; this gious education of our youth. objection applies chiefly to the writings of It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are the Old Testament, and to the prophetical instilling principles into the tender mind, to and poetical parts of that. But the metapho- take peculiar care that those principles be rical and florid style of those writings is dis- sound and just; that the religion we teach tinct from the inaccurate and overstrained be the religion of the Bible, and not the inexpression we have been censuring; for that ventions of human error or superstition only is inaccuracy which leads to a false and that the principles we infuse into others, be inadequate conception in the reader or hear- such as we ourselves have well scrutinized, er. The lofty style of the eastern, and of and not the result of our credulity or bigotother heroic poetry, does not so mislead; ry; not the mere hereditary, unexamined for the metaphor is understood to be a meta- prejudices of our own undiscerning childphor, and the imagery is understood to be or- hood. It may also be granted, that it is the namental. The style of the Scriptures of duty of every parent to inform the youth, the Old Testament is not, it is true, plain in that when his faculties shall have so unfolded opposition to figurative; nor simple in op- themselves, as to enable him to examine for position to florid; but it is plain and simple himself those principles which the parent is in the best sense, as opposed to false princi- now instilling, it will be his duty so to examples and false taste; it raises no wrong idea; ine them. it gives an exact impression of the thing it means to convey; and its very tropes and figures, though bold, are never unnatural or affected: when it embellishes it does not mislead; even when it exaggerates, it does not misrepresent; if it be hyperbolical, it is so either in compliance with the genius of oriental language, or in compliance with con But after making these concessions, I would most seriously insist that there are certain leading and fundamental truths. that there are certain sentiments on the side of Christianity, as well as of virtue and benevolence, in favour of which every child ought to be prepossessed; and may it not be also added, that to expect to keep the mind void of all prepossession, even upon any sub-they are ignorant not only of the science, ject, appears to be altogether a vain and im- but the language of Christianity? practicable attempt; an attempt, the very suggestion of which argues much ignorance of human nature. But at worst, whatever be the event of a pious education to the child, though in general we are encouraged from the tenor of Let it be observed here, that we are not Scripture and the course of experience to combating the infidel; that we are not pro- hope that the event will be favourable, and ducing evidences and arguments in favour of that when he is old he will not depart from the truth of Christianity, or trying to win it.' Is it nothing for the parent to have acover the assent of the reader to that which quitted himself of this prime duty? Is it nohe disputes, but that we are taking it for thing to him that he has obeyed the plain granted, not only that Christianity is true, command of training his child in the way but that we are addressing those who believe he should go? And will not the parent who it to be true: an assumption which has been so acquits himself, with bettter reason and made throughout this work. Assuming, more lively hope, supplicate the Father of therefore, that there are religious principles mercies for the reclaiming of a prodigal, which are true, and which ought to be com- who has wandered out of that right path in municated in the most effectual manner, the which he has set him forward, than for the next question which arises seems to be, at conversion of a neglected creature, to whose what age and in what manner these ought to feet the Gospel bad never been offered as a be inculcated; that it ought to be at an ear-light? And how different will be the dying ly period we have the command of Christ; reflections even of that parent whose earnest who encouragingly said, in answer to those endeavours have been unhappily defeated by who would have repelled their approach, ⚫ Suffer little children to come unto me.' the subsequent and voluntary perversion of his child, from his who will reasonably aggravate his pangs, by transferring the sins of his neglected child to the number of his own transgressions. And to such well-intentioned but ill-judging parents as really wish their children to be hereafter pious, but erroneously withhold instruction till the more advanced period prescribed by the great master of splendid paradoxes* shall arrive: who can assure them, that while they are withholding the good seed, the great and ever vigilant enemy, who assiduously seizes hold on every opportunity which we slight, and cultivates every advantage which we neglect, may not be stocking the fallow ground with tares? Nay, who in this fluctuating scene of things can be assured, even if this were not certainly to be the case, that to them the promised period ever shall arrive at all? Who shall ascertain to them that their now neglected child shall certainly live to receive the delayed instructions? Who can assure them that they themselves will live to communicate it? But here conceding, for the sake of argument, what yet cannot be conceded, that some good reasons may be brought in favour of delay; allowing that such impressions as are communicated early may not be very deep; allowing them even to become totally effaced by the subsequent corruptions of the heart and of the world; still I would illustrate the importance of early infusing religious knowledge, by an allusion drawn from the power of early habit in human learning. Put the case, for instance of a person who was betimes initiated in the rudiments of classical studies. Suppose him after quitting school to have fallen, either by a course of idleness or of vulgar pursuits, into a total neglect of study. Should this person at any future period happen to be called to some profession, which should oblige him, as we say, to rub up his Greek and Latin; his memory still retaining the unobliterated though faint traces of his early pursuits. he will be able to recover his neglected learning with less difficulty than he could now begin to learn; for he is not again obliged to set out with studying the simple elements; they come back on being pursued; they are found on being searched for; the decayed images assume shape, and strength, and colour; he has in his mind first principles to which to recur; the rules of grammar which he has allowed himself to violate, he has not however forgotten; he will recall neglected ideas, he will resume slighted habits far more easily than he could now begin to acquire thing, nay, let philosophers say what they But independent of knowledge, it is somenew ones. I appeal to clergymen who are will, it is much to give youth prepossessions called to attend the dying beds of such as in favour of religion, to secure their prejudihave been bred in gross and stupid ignorance ces on its side before you turn them adrift inof religion, for the justness of this compari- to the world; a world in which, before they son. Do they not find that these unhappy can be completely armed with arguments people have no ideas in common with them? and reasons, they will be assailed by numthat they therefore possess no intelligible me- bers whose prepossessions and prejudices, far dium by which to make themselves under- more than their arguments and reasons, atstood? that the persons so whom they are tach them to the other side. Why should not addressing themselves have no first principles to which they can be referred? that It is almost needless to observe that parents who are indifferent about religion, much more those who treat it with scorn, are not likely to be anxious on this subject; it is therefore the attention of religious parents which is here chiefly called upon: and the more so, as there seems, on this point, an unaccountable negligence in many of these, whether it arises from indolence, false principles, or whatever other motive. * Rousseau. |