ut that it is less trouble to
lower his own standard to hers, than to exhaust himself in the vain
attempt to raise hers to his own."

"A fine high-sounding _tirade_, Charles, spoken _con amore_," said Sir
John. "I really believe, though, that one reason why women are so
frivolous is, that the things they are taught are not solid enough to
fix the attention, exercise the intellect, and fortify the
understanding. They learn little that inures to reasoning, or compels to
patient meditation."

"I consider the difficulties of a solid education," said Mr. Stanley,
"as a sort of preliminary course, intended perhaps by Providence as a
gradual preparative for the subsequent difficulties of life; as a
prelude to the acquisition of that solidity and firmness of character
which actual trials are hereafter to confirm. Though I would not make
instruction unnecessarily harsh and rugged, yet I would not wish to
increase its facilities to such a degree as to weaken that robustness of
mind which it should be its object to promote, in order to render mental
discipline subservient to moral."

"How have you managed with your other girls, Stanley?" said Sir John,
"for though you vindicate general knowledge, you profess not to wish for
general learning in the sex."

"Far from it," replied Mr. Stanley. "I am a gardener you know, and
accustomed to study the genius of the soil before I plant. Most of my
daughters, like the daughters of other men, have some one talent, or at
least propensity; for parents are too apt to mistake inclination for
genius. This propensity I endeavor to find out and to cultivate. But if
I find the natural bias very strong, and not very safe, I then labor to
counteract, instead of encouraging the tendency, and try to give it a
fresh direction. Lucilla having a strong bent to whatever relates to
intellectual taste, I have read over with her the most unexceptionable
parts of a few of the best Roman classics. She began at nine years old,
for I have remarked that it is not learning much, but learning late,
which makes pedants.

"Ph[oe]be, who has a superabundance of vivacity, I have in some measure
tamed, by making her not only a complete mistress of arithmetic, but by
giving her a tincture of mathematics. Nothing puts such a bridle on the
fancy as demonstration. A habit of computing steadies the mind, and
subdues the soarings of imagination. It sobers the vagaries of trope and
figure, substitutes truth for metaphor, a