ts, which I considered
with equal pleasure and admiration. If women are in general feeble both
in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education; _we_
encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity which we falsely call
delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of
reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in
vanity and sensuality. In most of the countries which I had visited,
they are taught nothing of a higher nature than a few modulations of the
voice, or useless postures of the body; their time is consumed in sloth
or trifles, and trifles become the only pursuit capable of interesting
them. _We_ seem to forget that it is upon the qualities of the female
sex that our own domestic comforts and the education of our children
must depend. And what are the comforts or the education which a race of
beings, corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the
duties of life, are fitted to bestow? To touch a musical instrument with
useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces to the eyes
of indolent and debauched young men, to dissipate their husbands'
patrimony in riotous and unnecessary expenses--these are the only arts
cultivated by women in most of the polished nations I had seen; and the
consequences are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such
polluted sources--private misery and public servitude.

"'But Selene's education was regulated by different views, and conducted
upon severer principles--if that can be called _severity_ which opens
the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and most effectually
arms it against the inevitable evils of life. With the rising sun she
left her bed, and accompanied me to the garden or the vineyard. Her
little hands were employed in shortening the luxurious shoots of
fruitful trees that supplied our table with wholesome and delicious
fruits, or in supporting the branches of such as sunk beneath their
load. Sometimes she collected water from a clear and constant rill that
rolled along the valley, and recruited the force of plants that were
exhausted by the sun. With what delight did I view her innocent
cheerfulness and assiduity! With what pleasure did she receive the
praises which I gave to her skill and industry; or hear the lessons of
wisdom and the examples of virtuous women, which I used to read to her
at evening, out of the writings of celebrated philosophers which I had
c