hat they have not been able to master; for she had an admirable facility
for learning languages, and read with great ease both in Italian and
French. She had begun to apply herself to Latin; and having such a
critical knowledge of her own tongue, and such a foundation from the two
others, would soon have made herself an adept in it.

But, notwithstanding all her acquirements, she was an excellent ECONOMIST
and HOUSEWIFE. And those qualifications, you must take notice, she was
particularly fond of inculcating upon all her reading and writing
companions of the sex: for it was a maxim with her, 'That a woman who
neglects the useful and the elegant, which distinguish her own sex, for
the sake of obtaining the learning which is supposed more peculiar to the
other, incurs more contempt by what she foregoes, than she gains credit
by what she acquires.'

'All that a woman can learn,' she used to say, [expatiating on this
maxim,] 'above the useful knowledge proper to her sex, let her learn.
This will show that she is a good housewife of her time, and that she has
not a narrow or confined genius. But then let her not give up for these
those more necessary, and, therefore, not meaner, employments, which will
qualify her to be a good mistress of a family, a good wife, and a good
mother; for what can be more disgraceful to a woman than either, through
negligence of dress, to be found a learned slattern; or, through
ignorance of household-management, to be known to be a stranger to
domestic economy?'

She would have it indeed, sometimes, from the frequent ill use learned
women make of that respectable acquirement, that it was no great matter
whether the sex aimed at any thing but excelling in the knowledge of the
beauties and graces of their mother-tongue; and once she said, that this
was field enough for a woman; and an ampler was but endangering her
family usefulness. But I, who think our sex inferior in nothing to the
other, but in want of opportunities, of which the narrow-minded mortals
industriously seek to deprive us, lest we should surpass them as much in
what they chiefly value themselves upon, as we do in all the graces of a
fine imagination, could never agree with her in that. And yet I was
entirely of her opinion, that those women, who were solicitous to obtain
that knowledge of learning which they supposed would add to their
significance in sensible company, and in their attainment of it imagined
themselves above