evil which can arise from this or any
other source, is that which the opinions and ideas of a frivolous woman
must entail upon those unhappy beings of whom she superintends the
education.

"Turpe est difficiles habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum,"

is a text on which, even in this great and free country, many comments may
be found.

The pursuit of eminence in trifles, the common sign of a bad heart, is an
infallible proof of a feeble understanding. A man may dishonour his birth,
ruin his estate, lose his reputation, and destroy his health, for the sake
of being the first jockey or the favourite courtier of his day. And how
should it be otherwise, when from the lips whence other lessons should
have proceeded, selfishness has been inculcated as a duty, a desire for
vain distinctions and the love of pelf encouraged as virtues, and a
splendid equipage, or it may be some bodily advantage, pointed out as the
highest object of human ambition? To set the just value on every
enjoyment, to choose noble and becoming objects of pursuit, are the first
lessons a child should learn; and if he does not learn their rudiments on
his mother's knees, he will hardly acquire the knowledge of them
elsewhere. The least disparagement of virtue, the slightest admiration for
trifling and merely extrinsic objects, may produce an indelible effect on
the tender mind of youth; and the mother who has taught her son to bow
down to success, to pay homage to wealth and station, which virtue and
genius should alone appropriate, is the person to whom the meanness of the
crouching sycophant, the treachery of the trading politician, the
brutality of the selfish tyrant, and the avarice of the sordid miser, in
after life must be attributed.

This argument is closed by some very judicious remarks on the degree in
which the perusal of works of imagination is beneficial.

"It is not easy to explain to a person whose mind is trifling,
the consequences of the over-indulgence in passive impressions
produced by light reading, or to make them understand the
different effect produced by the highest order of works of
imagination, and the trivial compositions which inundate the
press, with no merit but some commonplace moral. Both are classed
together as works of amusement; but the first enrich the mind
with great and beautiful ideas, and, provided they be not
indulged in to an extravagant excess, refine the fe