t she
has.

I AM at a loss to know why a young female is instructed to exhibit, in
the most advantageous point of view, her skill in music, her singing,
dancing, taste in dress, and her acquaintance with the most fashionable
games and amusements, while her piety is to be anxiously concealed, and
her knowledge affectedly disavowed, lest the former should draw on her
the appellation of an enthusiast, or the latter that of a pedant.

IN regard to knowledge, why should she for ever affect to be on her
guard, lest she should be found guilty of a small portion of it? She
need be the less solicitous about it, as it seldom proves to be so very
considerable as to excite astonishment or admiration: for, after all the
acquisitions which her talents and her studies have enabled her to make,
she will, generally speaking, be found to have less of what is called
_learning_, than a common school-boy.

IT would be to the last degree presumptuous and absurd, for a young
woman to pretend to give the _ton_ to the company; to interrupt the
pleasure of others, and her own opportunity of improvement, by talking
when she ought to listen; or to introduce subjects out of the common
road, in order to shew her own wit, or expose the want of it in others:
but were the sex to be totally silent when any topic of literature
happens to be discussed in their presence, conversation would lose
much of its vivacity, and society would be robbed of one of its most
interesting charms.

HOW easily and effectually may a well-bred woman promote the most useful
and elegant conversation, almost without speaking a word! for the modes
of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence. The
silence of listless ignorance, and the silence of sparkling
intelligence, are perhaps as separately marked, and as distinctly
expressed, as the same feelings could have been by the most
unequivocal language. A woman, in a company where she has the least
influence, may promote any subject by a profound and invariable
attention, which shews that she is pleased with it, and by an
illuminated countenance, which proves she understands it. This obliging
attention is the most flattering encouragement in the world to men of
sense and letters, to continue any topic of instruction or entertainment
they happen to be engaged in: it owed its introduction perhaps to
accident, the best introduction in the world for a subject of ingenuity,
which, though it could not have been for