y. Honours and dignities are transient, beauty and
riches frail and fugacious, to a proverb. Would not the truly wise,
therefore, wish to have some one possession, which they might call
their own in the severest exigencies? But this wish can only be
accomplished by acquiring and maintaining that calm and absolute
self-possession, which, as the world had no hand in giving, so it
cannot, by the most malicious exertion of its power, take away.

THOUGHTS
ON THE
CULTIVATION
OF THE
HEART AND TEMPER
IN THE
EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS.

I HAVE not the foolish presumption to imagine, that I can offer any
thing new on a subject, which has been so successfully treated by many
learned and able writers. I would only, with all possible deference,
beg leave to hazard a few short remarks on that part of the subject of
education, which I would call the _education of the heart_. I am well
aware, that this part also has not been less skilfully and forcibly
discussed than the rest, though I cannot, at the same time, help
remarking, that it does not appear to have been so much adopted into
common practice.

IT appears then, that notwithstanding the great and real improvements,
which have been made in the affair of female education, and
notwithstanding the more enlarged and generous views of it, which
prevail in the present day, that there is still a very material defect,
which it is not, in general, enough the object of attention to remove.
This defect seems to consist in this, that too little regard is paid to
the dispositions of the _mind_, that the indications of the _temper_ are
not properly cherished, nor the affections of the _heart_ sufficiently
regulated.

IN the first education of girls, as far as the customs which fashion
establishes are right, they should undoubtedly be followed. Let the
exterior be made a considerable object of attention, but let it not be
the principal, let it not be the only one.--Let the graces be
industriously cultivated, but let them not be cultivated at the expence
of the virtues.--Let the arms, the head, the whole person be carefully
polished, but let not the heart be the only portion of the human
anatomy, which shall be totally overlooked.

THE neglect of this cultivation seems to proceed as much from a bad
taste, as from a false principle. The generality of people form their
judgment of education by slight and sudden appearances, which is
certainly a wrong way of determining. Music, dancin