SIMPLE PLEASURES. OCCUPATION OF WOMEN. 93

SIMPLE PLEASURES, SMALL.

Ir by a simple pleasure is meant one, the cause of which can be easily analysed, or which does not last long, or which in itself is very faint; then simple pleasures seem to be very nearly synonymous with small pleasures; and if the simplicity were to be a little increased, the pleasure would vanish altogether.—[E. R. 1810.]

RESPECT PAID TO EDUCATED WOMEN.

AMONG men of sense and liberal politeness, a woman who has successfully cultivated her mind, without diminishing the gentleness and propriety of her manners, is always sure to meet with a respect and attention bordering upon enthusiasm.-[E. R. 1810.]

SOLITARINESS OF WOMEN.

LET any man reflect upon the solitary situation in which women are placed, the ill treatment to which they are sometimes exposed, and which they must endure in silence, and without the power of complaining,—and he must feel convinced that the happiness of a woman will be materially increased in proportion as education has given to her the habit and the means of drawing her resources from herself. [E. R. 1810.]

OCCUPATION OF WOMEN.

NOTHING, certainly, is so ornamental and delightful in women as the benevolent affections; but time cannot be filled up, and life employed, with high and impassioned virtues. We know women are to be compassionate; but

94

DEGRADATION OF UNEDUCATED WOMEN.

they cannot be compassionate from eight o'clock in the morning till twelve at night :-and what are they to do in the interval?—[E. R. 1810.]

DEGRADATION OF UNEDUCATED WOMEN.

If you neglect to educate the mind of a woman, by the speculative difficulties which occur in literature, it can never be educated at all: if you do not effectually rouse it by education, it must remain for ever languid. Uneducated men may escape intellectual degradation ; uneducated women cannot.—[E. R. 1810.]

THE DECAY OF WOMAN'S LIFE.

MEN rise in character often as they increase in years;

they are venerable from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they can impart; but women (such is their unfortunate style of education) hazard every thing upon one cast of the die ;- when youth is gone, all is gone. Every human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for decayed accomplishments;

no man mourns over the fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill. They are flowers destined to perish; but the decay of great talents is always the subject of solemn pity; and, even when their last memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with pious affection. [E. R. 1810.]

ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS are merely means for displaying the grace and vivacity of youth, which every woman gives

ACCOMPLISHMENTS-MENTAL CULTURE.

95

up, as she gives up the dress and the manners of eighteen she has no wish to retain them; or, if she has, she is driven out of them by diameter and derision. The error is, to make such things the grand and universal object, to insist upon it that every woman is to sing, and draw, and dance, with nature or against nature, to bind her apprentice to some accomplishment, and if she cannot succeed in oil or water colours, to prefer gilding, varnishing, burnishing, box-making, to real and solid improvement in taste, knowledge, and understanding. - [E. R. 1810.]

THE RESOURCES OF LIFE.

THE object is, to give to children resources that will endure as long as life endures-habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy,- occupations that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and therefore death less terrible.[E. R. 1810.]

MENTAL CULTURE,

A WOMAN of accomplishments may entertain those who have the pleasure of knowing her for half an hour with great brilliancy; but a mind full of ideas, and with that elastic spring which the love of knowledge only can convey, is a perpetual source of exhilaration and amusement to all that come within its reach ;- not collecting its force into single and insulated achievements, like the efforts made in the fine arts-but diffusing, equally over the whole of existence, a calm pleasure better loved as it is longer felt — and suitable to every variety and every period of life.-[E. R. 1810.]

96 CHARM OF EDUCATION.— GENTLENESS IN EDUCATION.

CHARM OF EDUCATION.

EDUCATION gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, vigour, fancy, words, images, and illustrations; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of trifling without being undignified and absurd.-[E. R. 1810.]

COUNTER ACTION.

THE true way to attack vice, is by setting up something else against it.—[E. R. 1810.]

NATURAL LOVE OF GOOD.

TRUST to the natural love of good where there is no temptation to be bad-it operates nowhere more forcibly than in education.[E. R. 1810.]

A NATION'S BEST GIFT.

THE most beautiful possession which a country can have is a noble and rich man, who loves virtue and knowledge; who without being feeble or fanatical is pious and who without being factious is firm and independent;— who, in his political life, is an equitable mediator between king and people; and in his civil life, a firm promoter of all which can shed a lustre upon his country, or promote the peace and order of the world.[E. R. 1810.]

GENTLENESS IN EDUCATION.

THOSE young people will turn out to be the best men, who have been guarded most effectually, in their child

HEAD BOYS.-SCHOOL AND HOME.

97

hood, from every species of useless vexation: and experienced, in the greatest degree, the blessings of a wise and rational indulgence. — [E. R. 1810.]

HEAD BOYS.

THE head of a public school is generally a very conceited young man, utterly ignorant of his own dimensions, and losing all that habit of conciliation towards others, and that anxiety for self-improvement, which result from the natural modesty of youth. Nor is this conceit very easily and speedily gotten rid of;-we have seen (if we mistake not) public-school importance lasting through the half of after-life, strutting in lawn, swelling in ermine, and displaying itself, both ridiculously and offensively, in the haunts and business of bearded men.-[E. R. 1810.]

NATURAL GROWTH AND DECAY.

IN a forest, or public school for oaks and elms, the trees are left to themselves; the strong plants live, and the weak ones die: the towering oak that remains is admired; the saplings that perish around it are cast into the flames and forgotten. [E. R. 1810.]

SCHOOL AND HOME.

THAT education seems to us to be the best which mingles a domestic with a school life, and which gives to a youth the advantage which is to be derived from the learning of a master, and the emulation which results from the society of other boys, together with the affectionate vigilance which he must experience in the house of his parents.-[E. R. 1810.]

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