not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may
imagine; and they who without consideration follow the mere instinct of
pity, often by their imprudent generosity create evils more pernicious to
society than any which they partially remedy. "Warm Charity, the general
friend," may become the general enemy, unless she consults her head as
well as her heart. Whilst she pleases herself with the idea that she
daily feeds hundreds of the poor, she is perhaps preparing want and
famine for thousands. Whilst she delights herself with the anticipation
of gratitude for her bounties, she is often exciting only unreasonable
expectations, inducing habits of dependence and submission to slavery.

Those who wish to do good should attend to experience, from whom they may
receive lessons upon the largest scale that time and numbers can afford.

Madame de Fleury was aware that neither a benevolent disposition nor a
large fortune were sufficient to enable her to be of real service,
without the constant exercise of her judgment. She had, therefore,
listened with deference to the conversation of well-informed men upon
those subjects on which ladies have not always the means or the wish to
acquire extensive and accurate knowledge. Though a Parisian belle, she
had read with attention some of those books which are generally thought
too dry or too deep for her sex. Consequently, her benevolence was
neither wild in theory nor precipitate nor ostentatious in practice.

Touched with compassion for a little girl whose arm had been accidentally
broken, and shocked by the discovery of the confinement and the dangers
to which numbers of children in Paris were doomed, she did not make a
parade of her sensibility. She did not talk of her feelings in fine
sentences to a circle of opulent admirers, nor did she project for the
relief of the little sufferers some magnificent establishment which she
could not execute or superintend. She was contented with attempting only
what she had reasonable hopes of accomplishing.

The gift of education she believed to be more advantageous than the gift
of money to the poor, as it ensures the means both of future subsistence
and happiness. But the application even of this incontrovertible
principle requires caution and judgment. To crowd numbers of children
into a place called a school, to abandon them to the management of any
person called a schoolmaster or a schoolmistress, is not sufficient t