e reaches.
There is a wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial
knowledge--between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt at
compassing. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows,
however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only
tease him.

And indeed, if there were to be any difference between a girl's
education and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be
earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious
subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but
less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and
seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit;
and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter
not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that
her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package
of the circulating library, wet with the last and lightest spray of the
fountain of folly.

76. Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to that sore
temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness of a novel that we
should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest
romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting
literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false
history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But the best
romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement it renders the
ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst
for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called
upon to act.

77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern literature
is particularly rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, these books
have serious use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy
and chemistry; studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I
attach little weight to this function: they are hardly ever read with
earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it. The utmost they
usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity of a kind reader, or the
bitterness of a malicious one; for each will gather, from the novel,
food for her own disposition. Those who are naturally proud and
envious will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity; those who are
naturally gentle, to pity it; those who are naturally shallow, to laugh
at it. So also, there might be a serviceable power in novels to bring
b