der the hackneyed
name of accomplishments, does one particle of intellectuality creep?
Would not many of their ablest professors and most diligent
practitioners stare, with unfeigned wonder, at the supposition, that the
five hours per diem devoted to the piano and the easel had any other
object than to accomplish the fingers? The idea of their influencing the
head would be ridiculous! of their improving the heart, preposterous!
Yet if both head and heart do not combine in these pursuits, how can the
cultivators justify to themselves the devotion of time and labour to
their acquisition: time and labour, in many cases, abstracted from the
performance of present, or preparation for future duties,--this is
especially applicable to the middle classes of society.

Let us now turn to the issues of this education! The accomplishments
acquired at such cost must be displayed. To whom? the possessor has no
delight in them,--her immediate relatives, perhaps, no taste for
them;--to strangers, therefore. It is not necessary to make many
strictures on this subject; the rage for universal exhibition has been
written and talked down: in fact, there are great hopes for the world
in this particular; it has descended so low in the scale of society,
that we trust it will soon be exploded altogether. The fashion,
therefore, need not be here treated of, but the spirit which it has
engendered, and which will survive its parent. This, as influencing the
female character--especially the maternal--bears greatly upon the point
in view;--to live for the applause of the foolish _many_, instead of the
approbation of the well-judging _few_; to rule duty, conscience, morals,
by a low worldly standard; to view worldly admiration as the aim, and
worldly aggrandizement as the end of life; these are a few,--a very few,
indications of this spirit, and these have infected every rank, from the
highest to the middle and lower classes of society. To every thing
gentle or refined, to every thing lofty or dignified in the female
character, this spirit is utterly opposed. Refinement would teach to
shun the vulgar applause which almost insults its object,--dignity would
shrink from displaying before heartless crowds those emotions of the
soul, without which all art is vulgar,--and how can women, who have
neither refinement nor dignity, retail that influence which, rightly
used, is to be so great an engine in the regeneration of society? How
can the vain and selfish