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of forming just opinions on many matters. include a natural incapacity for many studies, and as natural a dislike for many more. Many kinds of learning, and many actual necessary pursuits and practices, it is deemed improper for a refined woman to know. How, then, can a female author become a teacher of man?

Literature would miss many pleasant associations if the names of the best female writers were expunged from a list of classic authors, and the world would lose many delightful works the novel of sentiment and the novel of manners, letter-writers, moral tales for children, books of travels, gossipping memoirs-Mrs. Inchbald, Madame D'Arblay, Miss Edgeworth, Lady M. W. Montague, Miss Martineau, and Miss Sedgwick, with a host besides. Women have sprightliness, cleverness, smartness, though but little wit. There is a body and substance in true wit, with a reflectiveness rarely found apart from a masculine intellect. In all English comedy, we recollect but two female writers of sterling value-Mrs. Centlivre and Mrs. Cowley, and their plays are formed on the Spanish model, and made up of incident and intrigue, much more than of fine repartees or brilliant dialogue. We know of no one writer of the other sex, that has a high character for humor-no Rabelais, no Sterne, no Swift, no Goldsmith, no Dickens, no Irving. The female character does not admit of it.

Women cannot write history. It requires too great solidity, and too minute research for their quick intellects. They write, instead, delightful memoirs. Who, but an antiquary or historical commentator, would not rather read Lucy Hutchinson's Life of her Husband, than any of the professed histories of the Commonwealth-and exchange Lady Fanshawe for the other royalist biographers?

Neither are women to turn politicians or orators. We hope never to hear of a female Burke; she would be an overbearing termagant. A spice of a talent for scolding, is the highest form of eloquence we can conscientiously allow the ladies.

Women feel more than they think, and (sometimes) say more than they do. They are consequently better adapted to describe sentiments, than to speculate on causes and effects. They are more at home in writing letters, than tracts on political economy.

The proper faculties in women to cultivate most assiduously are, the taste and the religious sentiment; the first, as the leading trait of the intellectual; and the last, as the governing power of the moral constitution. Give a woman a pure taste and high principles, and she is safe from the arts of the wiliest libertine. Let her have all other gifts but these, and she is comparatively defenceless. Taste purifies the heart as well as the head, and religion strengthens both. The strongest propensities to pleasure are not so often the means of disgrace and ruin as the carelessness of ignorant virtue, and an unenlightened moral sense. This makes all the difference in the world, between the daughter of a poor countryman, and the child of an educated gentleman. Both have the same desires, but how differently directed and controlled. Yet we find nineteen lapses from virtue in the one case, where we find one in the other.

Believing that what does not interest, does not benefit the mind, we would avoid all pedantic lectures to women, on all subjects to which they discover any aversion. Study should be made a pleasure, and reading pure recreation. In a general sense, we would say the best works

for female readers are those that tend to form the highest domestic character. Works of the highest imagination, as being above that condition, and scientific authors, who address a different class of faculties, are both unsuitable. An admirable wife may not relish the sublimity of Milton or Hamlet; and a charming companion be ignorant of the existence of such a science as Algebra. A superficial acquaintance with the elements of the physical sciences is worse than total unacquaintance with them.

ture.

Religion should be taught as a sentiment, not as an abstract principle, or in doctrinal positions, a sentiment of love and grateful obedience; morality, impressed as the practical exercise of self-denial and active benevolence. In courses of reading, too much is laid down of a dry naGirls are disgusted with tedious accounts of battles and negotiations, dates and names. The moral should be educed best fitted for the female heart, and from the romantic periods, and the reigns of female sovereigns, or epochs when women held a very prominent place in the state, or in public regard. We would have women affectionate wives, obedient daughters, agreeable companions, skilful economists, judicious friends; but we must confess it does not fall within our scheme to make them legislators or lawyers, diplomatists or politicians. We therefore think nine tenths of all history is absolutely useless for all women. Too many really good biographies of great and good men and women can hardly be read, and will be read to much greater advantage than histories, as they leave a definite and individual impression. The reading good books of travels is, next to going over the ground in person, the best method of studying geography.

Grammar and rhetoric* (after a clear statement of the elementary chief rules) are best learnt in the perusal of classic authors, the essayists, &c.; and, in the same way, the theory of taste and the arts. The most important of accomplishments is not systematically treated in any system-conversation. But a father and mother, of education, can teach this better than any professor. Expensive

schools turn out half-trained pupils. Eight years at home, well employed, and two at a good but not fashionable school, are better than ten years spent in the most popular female seminary, conducted in the ordinary style.

* The benefit flowing from these studies is chiefly of a negative character.

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THE EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS.

WE design the present article rather as a sketch of literary statistics, a table of instances, to illustrate the general principle we aim to establish, than as anything like a complete survey or accurate digest of the subject which it would require a volume to contain. We consider the fact as having a historical basis, as founded in the history of letters, that true genius comes to maturity much sooner than is generally supposed. In a word, we have merely collected a number of witnesses to confirm the maxim stated by Steele, though in a rather restricted form. It occurs in a paper of the Lover, number twenty-two: "I am apt to think that before thirty, a man's natural and acquired parts are at that strength, with a little experience, to enable him (if he can be enabled) to acquit himself well in any business or conversation he shall be admitted to."

The vulgar error is to rate the growth of the individual intellect of the original with the ordinary progress of "the common mind;" to measure the giant by the common standard of human stature. This is evidently absurd. Yet no error is so common as to attempt to depress cleverness by sneers at the youthful age of the aspirant, like the taunts of Walpole directed against Pitt, and like those of

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