good deal from an ignorance of the true nature of religion; people avoid it, on the principe expressed by the vulgar phrase of the danger of playing with edge-tools. They conceive of it as something which involves controversy, and dispute, and mischief; something of an inflammatory nature, which is to stir up ill humours; as of a sort of party business, which sets friends at variance. So much is this notion adopted, that I have seen announced two works of considerable merit, in which it was stipulated as an attraction, that religion, as being likely to excite anger and party distinctions, should be carefully excluded. Such is the worldly idea of the spirit of that religion, whose direct object it was, to bring "peace and good will to men!" Women too little live or converse up to their understandings and however we have deprecated affectation or pedantry, let it be remembered, that both in reading and conversing, the understanding gains more by stretching, than stooping. If by exerting itself it may not attain to all it desires, yet it will be sure to gain something. The mind, by always applying itself to objects below its level, contracts and shrinks itself to the size, and lowers itself to the level, of the object about which it is conversant : while the mind which is active expands and raises itself, grows larger by exercise, abler by diffusion, and richer by communication. But the taste of general society is not favourable to im provement. The seriousness with which the most frivolous subjects are agitated, and the levity with which the most scrious are despatched, bear a pretty exact proportion to each other. Society too is a sort of magic lantern; the scene is perpetually shifting. In this incessant change, the evanescent fashion of the present minute, which, while in many it leads to the cultivation of real knowledge, has also sometimes led even the gay and idle to the affectation of mixing a sprinkling of science with the mass of dissipation. The ambition of appearing to be well informed breaks out even in those triflers who will not spare time from their pleasurable pursuits sufficient for acquiring that knowledge, of which, however, the reputation is so desirable. A little smattering of philosophy often dignifies the pursuits of the day, without rescuing them from the vanities of the night. A course of lectures (that admirable assistant for enlightening the understanding) is not seldom resorted to as a means to substitute the appearance of knowledge for the fatigue of application; but where this valuable help is attended merely like any other public exhibition, and is not furthered by correspondent reading at home, it often serves to set off reality of igno rance with the affectation of skill. But instead of produ cing in conversation a few reigning scientific terms, with a familiarity and readiness, which Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile, would it not be more modest even for those who are better informed, to avoid the common use of technical terms whenever the idea can be as well conveyed without them? For it argues no real ability to know the names of tools; the ability lies in knowing their use and while it is in the thing, and not in the term, that real knowledge consists, the charge of pedantry is attached to the use of the term, which would not attach to the knowledge of the science. In the faculty of speaking well, ladies have such a happy promptitude of turning their slender advantages to ac count, that there are many who, though they have never been taught a rule of syntax, yet, by a quick facility in profiting from the best books and the best company, hardly ever violate one; and who often exhibit an elegant and perspicuous arrangement of style, without having studi ed 1 with the growth of the piece, so as to have become a part of the stuff. They did not, like men, acquire what they know while the texture was forming. Perhaps no better preventive could be devised for this literary vanity, than early instruction; that woman would be less likely to be vain of her knowledge who did not remember the time when she was ignorant. Knowledge that is burnt in, if I may so speak, is seldom obtrusive, rarely impertinent. Their reading also has probably consisted much in abridgments from larger works, as was observed in a former chapter; this makes areadier talker, but a shallower thinker, than the perusal of books of more bulk. By these scanty sketches their critical spirit has been excited, while their critical powers have not been formed. For in those crippled mutilations they have seen nothing of that just proportion of parts, that skilful arrangement of the plan, and that artful distribution of the subject, which while they prove the master hand of the writer, serve also to form the taste of the reader, far more than a disjointed skeleton, or a beautiful feature or two can do. The instruction of women is also too much drawn from the scanty and penurious sources of short writings of the essay kind: this, when it comprises the best part of a person's reading, makes a smatterer and spoils a schoJar; for though it supplies current talk, yet it does not make a full mind; it does not furnish a store-house of materials to stock the understanding, neither does it accustom the mind to any trains of reflection: for the subjects, besides being each succinctly, and on account of this brevity, superficially treated, are distinct and disconnected: they rise out of no concatenation of ideas, nor any dependent series of deduction. Yet on this pleasant but desultory reading, the mind which has not been train ed to severer exercise, loves to repose itself in a sort of creditable indolence, instead of stretching its powers in the wholesome labour of consequent investigation.* The writer cannot be supposed desirous of depreciating the value of those many beautiful periodical essays which adorn our language. But, perhaps, it might be better to regale the mind with them singly, at different times, than to read at the same sitting, a multitude of short pieces on dissimilar and unconnected topics, by way of getting through The book. I am not discouraging study at a late period of life, or even slender knowledge: information is good, at whatever period and in whatever degree it be acquired. But in such cases it should be attended with peculiar humility and the new possessor should bear in mind, that what is fresh to her has been long known to others; and she should therefore be aware of advancing as novel that which is common, and obtruding as rare that which every body possesses. Some ladies are eager to exhibit proofs of their reading, though at the expense of their judgment, and will introduce in conversation quotations quite irrevelant to the matter in hand because they happen at the instant to recur to their recollection, or were, perhaps, found in the book they have just been reading. Unap propriate quotations or strained analogy may shew reading, but they do not shew taste. That just and happy allusion which knows by a word how to awaken a cor. responding image, or to excite in the hearer the idea which fills the mind of the speaker, shews less pedantry and more taste that bare citations; and a mind embued with elegant knowledge will inevitably betray the opulence of its resources, even on topics which do not relate to science or literature. Well informed persons will easily be discovered to have read the best books, though they are not always detailing catalogues of authors. Though honey owes its exquisite taste to the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, yet the skill of the little artificer appears in this, that the delicious stores are so admirably worked up, as not to taste individually of any of those sweets of the very essence of which it is compounded. But true judgment will detect the infusion which true modesty will not display; and even common subjects passing through a cultivated understanding borrow a flavour of its richness. A power of apt selection is more valuable than any power of general retention; and an apposite remark, which shoots straight to the point, demands higher powers of mind than an hundred simple acts of memory for the business of the memory is only to store up materials which the understanding is to mix and work up with its native faculties, and which the judgment is to bring out and apply. But young women who ave more vivacity than sense, and more vanity than viva-. city, often risk the charge of absurdity to escape that of ignorance, and will even compare two authors who are totally unlike, rather than miss the occasion to shew that they have read both. Among the arts to spoil conversation, some ladies possess that of suddenly diverting it from the channel in which it was beneficiaily flowing, because some word used by the person who was speaking has accidentally struck out a new train of thinking in their own minds, and not because the general idea expressed has struck out a corresponding idea, which sort of collision is indeed the way of eliciting the true fire. Young ladies, whose sprightli ness has not been disciplined by a correct education, consider how things may be prettily said, rather than how they may be prudently or seasonably spoken; and hazard being thought wrong, or rash, or vain, for the chance of being reckoned pleasant. The flowers of rhetoric captivate them more than the justest deductions of reason; and to repel an argument they arm themselves with a metaphor. Those also who do not aim so high as eloquence, are often surprised that you refuse to accept of a prejudice instead of a reason; they are apt to take up with a probability in place of a demonstration, and cheaply put you off with an assertion when you are requiring a proof. The same mode of education renders them also impatient of opposition; and if they happen to possess beauty, and to be vain of it, they may be tempted to consider that as an additional proof of their being always in the right. In this case, they will not ask you to submit your judgment to the force of their argument, so much as to the authority of their charms. : The same fault in the mind, strengthened by the same cause, (a neglected education,) leads lively women often to pronounce on a question without examining it on any given point they seldomer doubt than mes; not because they are more clear-sighted, but because they have not been accustomed to look into a subject long enough to discover its depths and its intricacies; and not discerning its difficulties, they conclude that it has none. contradiction to say, that they seem at once to be quicksighted and short-sighted? What they see at all, they commonly see at once; a little difficulty discourages Is it a |