, aspiring, universal, triumphant, glorious woman, even at the age of a school-boy, encounters the whole range of arts, attacks the whole circle of sciences!"

"A mighty maze, and quite without a plan," replied Sir John, laughing. "But the truth is, the misfortune does not so much consist in their learning every thing, as in their knowing nothing; I mean nothing well. When gold is beaten out so wide, the lamina must needs be very thin. And you may observe, the more valuable attainments, though they are not to be left out of the modish plan, are kept in the background; and are to be picked up out of the odd remnants of that time, the sum of which is devoted to frivolous accomplishments. All this gay confusion of acquirements, these holiday splendors, this superfluity of enterprise, enumerated in the first part of her catalogue, is the real business of education, the latter part is incidental, and if taught is not learned.

"As to the lectures so boastfully mentioned, they may doubtless be made very useful subsidiaries to instruction. They most happily illustrate book-knowledge; but if the pupil's instructions in private do not precede, and keep pace with these useful public exhibitions, her knowledge will be only presumptuous ignorance. She may learn to talk of oxygen and hydrogen, and deflagration, and trituration but she will know nothing of the science except the terms. It is not knowing the name of his tools that makes an artist; and I should be afraid of the vanity which such superficial information would communicate to a mind not previously prepared, nor exercised at home in corresponding studies. But as Miss Rattle honestly confessed, as soon as she comes out, all these things will die away of themselves, and dancing and music will be almost all which will survive of her multifarious pursuits."

"I look upon the great predominance of music in female education," said Mr. Stanley, "to be the source of more mischief than is suspected; not from any evil in the thing itself, but from its being such a gulf of time, as really to leave little room for solid acquisitions. I love music, and, were it only cultivated as an amusement, should commend it. But the monstrous proportion, or rather disproportion of life which it swallows up, even in many religious families—and this is the chief subject of my regret—has converted an innocent diversion into a positive sin. I question if many gay men devote more hours in a day to idle purposes, than the daughters