- An
active mind embraces the whole circle of its duties, and finds time
enough for all. It is not, I assert, a bold attempt to emulate
masculine virtues; it is not the enchantment of literary pursuits,
or the steady investigation of scientific subjects, that leads women
astray from duty. No, it is indolence and vanity- the love of pleasure
and the love of sway, that will reign paramount in an empty mind. I
say empty emphatically, because the education which women now
receive scarcely deserves the name. For the little knowledge that they
are led to acquire, during the important years of youth, is merely
relative to accomplishments; and accomplishments without a bottom, for
unless the understanding be cultivated, superficial and monotonous
is every grace. Like the charms of a made up face, they only strike
the senses in a crowd; but at home, wanting mind, they want variety.
The consequence is obvious; in gay scenes of dissipation we meet the
artificial mind and face, for those who fly from solitude dread,
next to solitude, the domestic circle; not having it in their power to
amuse or interest, they feel their own insignificance, or find nothing
to amuse or interest themselves.
Besides, what can be more indelicate than a girl's coming out in the
fashionable world? Which, in other words, is to bring to market a
marriageable miss, whose person is taken from one public place to
another, richly caparisoned. Yet, mixing in the giddy. circle under
restraint, these butterflies long to flutter at large, for the first
affection of their souls is their own persons, to which their
attention has been called with the most sedulous care whilst they were
preparing for the period that decides their fate for life.
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