mind or person to hinder, and much
in your circumstances to attract, the highest offers, it seemed your
business to learn how to live in the world, as it is hers to know how to
be easy out of it. It is the common error of builders and parents to
follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so), without
considering that nothing is beautiful that is displaced. Hence we see so
many edifices raised that the raisers can never inhabit, being too large
for their fortunes. Vistas are laid open over barren heaths, and
apartments contrived for a coolness very agreeable in Italy, but killing
in the north of Britain: thus every woman endeavours to breed her
daughter a fine lady, qualifying her for a station in which she will
never appear, and at the same time incapacitating her for that
retirement to which she is destined. Learning, if she has a real taste
for it, will not only make her contented, but happy in it. No
entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She
will not want new fashions, nor regret the loss of expensive diversions,
or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author in her
closet. To render this amusement extensive, she should be permitted to
learn the languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so many
years in mere learning of words: this is no objection to a girl, whose
time is not so precious: she cannot advance herself in any profession,
and has therefore more hours to spare; and as you say her memory is
good, she will be very agreeably employed this way. There are two
cautions to be given on this subject: first, not to think herself
learned when she could read Latin, or even Greek. Languages are more
properly to be called vehicles of learning than learning itself, as may
be observed in many schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in
grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge
consists in knowing things, not words. I would wish her no further a
linguist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are
often corrupted, and always injured, by translations. Two hours'
application every morning will bring this about much sooner than you can
imagine, and she will have leisure enough besides to run over the
English poetry, which is a more important part of a woman's education
than it is generally supposed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a
fine copy of verses, which she would have laughed at if she had known it
had been sto