t one not know from his highness the
philosopher, about what age her ladyship, his daughter, may be?

_I._--I suppose she is eight.

_He._--Eight! Then four years ago she ought to have had her fingers
on the keys.

_I._--But perhaps I have no fancy for including in the scheme of
her education a study that takes so much time and is good for so
little.

_He._--And what will you teach her, if you please?

_I._--To reason justly, if I can; a thing so uncommon among men,
and more uncommon still among women.

_He._--Oh, let her reason as ill as she chooses, if she is only
pretty, amusing, and coquettish.

_I._--As nature has been unkind enough to give her a delicate
organisation with a very sensitive soul, and to expose her to the
same troubles in life as if she had a strong organisation and a
heart of bronze, I will teach her, if I can, to bear them
courageously.

_He._--Let her weep and give herself airs, and have nerves all on
edge like the rest, if only she is pretty, amusing, and coquettish.
What, is she to learn no dancing nor deportment?

_I._--Yes, just enough to make a curtsey, to have a good carriage,
to enter a room gracefully, and to know how to walk.

_He._--No singing?

_I._--Just enough to pronounce her words well.

_He._--No music?

_I._--If there were a good teacher of harmony, I would gladly
entrust her to him two hours a day for two or three years, not any
more.

_He._--And instead of the essential things that you are going to
suppress?...

_I._--I place grammar, fables, history, geography, a little
drawing, and a great deal of morality.

_He._--How easy it would be for me to prove to you the uselessness
of all such knowledge in a world like ours? Uselessness, do I say?
Perhaps even the danger! But I will for the moment ask you a single
question, will she not require one or two masters?

_I._--No doubt.

_He._--And you hope that these masters will know the grammar, the
fables, the history, the geography, the morality, in which they
will give her lessons? Moonshine, my dear mentor, sheer moonshine!
If they knew these things well enough to teach them to other
people, they never would teach them?

_I._--And why?

_He._--Because they would have spent all their lives in