ally covers those secret bad dispositions, which, if
they displayed themselves, might be rectified. The hypocrisy of
assuming virtues which are not inherent in the heart, prevents the
growth and disclosure of those real ones, which it is the great end of
education to cultivate.

BUT if the natural indications of the temper are to be suppressed and
stifled, where are the diagnostics, by which the state of the mind is to
be known? The wise Author of all things, who did nothing in vain,
doubtless intended them as symptoms, by which to judge of the diseases
of the heart; and it is impossible diseases should be cured before
they are known. If the stream be so cut off as to prevent communication,
or so choked up as to defeat discovery, how shall we ever reach the
source, out of which are the issues of life?

THIS cunning, which, of all the different dispositions girls discover,
is most to be dreaded, is increased by nothing so much as by fear. If
those about them express violent and unreasonable anger at every trivial
offence, it will always promote this temper, and will very frequently
create it, where there was a natural tendency to frankness. The
indiscreet transports of rage, which many betray on every slight
occasion, and the little distinction they make between venial errors and
premeditated crimes, naturally dispose a child to conceal, what she does
not however care to suppress. Anger in one will not remedy the faults of
another; for how can an instrument of sin cure sin? If a girl is kept in
a state of perpetual and slavish terror, she will perhaps have artifice
enough to conceal those propensities which she knows are wrong, or those
actions which she thinks are most obnoxious to punishment. But,
nevertheless, she will not cease to indulge those propensities, and to
commit those actions, when she can do it with impunity.

GOOD _dispositions_, of themselves, will go but a very little way,
unless they are confirmed into good _principles_. And this cannot be
effected but by a careful course of religious instruction, and a
patient and laborious cultivation of the moral temper.

BUT, notwithstanding girls should not be treated with unkindness, nor
the first openings of the passions blighted by cold severity; yet I am
of opinion, that young females should be accustomed very early in life
to a certain degree of restraint. The natural cast of character, and the
moral distinctions between the sexes, should not be disregarde