and
one that is greatly increased by the mode of education and manner of
thinking; for the main and indispensable virtue of that amiable sex
excepted, (for which Englishwomen are highly distinguished,) perhaps
no women in the world are brought up in a more frivolous unmeaning
manner. The French women, with all their vivacity and giddy airs,
have more accomplishment; {184} and, as they speak their mind
pretty plainly, they have, on many occasions, testified surprise to find
English ladies, who had studied music for years, who could scarcely
play a tune, and who, after devoting years to the needle, were
incapable of embroidering a pin-cushion.

Novels, a species of light, insipid, and dangerous reading, are the bane
of English female education. They teach a sort of false romantic
sentiment, and withdraw the mind from attention to the duties of

---
{184} The emigrants have taught to ladies of rank, fashions; and to
those of an inferior class, arts and industry. The English women did
not know half what they could do, till the French came amongst them,
about twelve years ago.
-=-

[end of page #227]

life, at a time when it should be taught to learn their high importance.
In female education the government should interfere; for the education
of the mother will always have an influence on the education of the
son, as her conduct in life must have on that of her husband.

As one general observation, relative to the education given at most
public schools, it may be observed, that, whilst much time is taken up
in teaching things that can never probably be of great utility, that
species of knowledge that does not belong to any particular class, but
which is of the utmost importance, is left to chance and to accident.
While a boy is tormented with learning a dead language he is left to
glean, as in a barren field, for all those rules of conduct on which the
prosperity and happiness of his future life depends. {185}

A public education is, in many respects, better than a private one for
boys, but, in some things, it is inferior: consequently those who can
afford it, and wish to give their sons the most complete education, try
to unite the advantages of both, by sending them to a public school,
under the care of a private tutor. It is not in the power of the middling
classes to do this; but modes should be adopted to give the boys, either
by books or public lectures, those instructions, relative to moral
conduct, to prude