education there must be a century past it was for housewifery; now it is too much for accomplishments. The object now is to make women artists; to give them an excellence in drawing, music, painting, and dancing; of which, persons who make these pursuits the occupation of their lives, and derive from them their subsistence, need not be ashamed. Now one great evil of all this is, that it does not last. If the whole of life, as somebody says, were an Olympic game, if we could go on feasting and dancing to the end, this might do; but this is merely a provision for the little interval between coming into life, and settling in it; while it leaves a long and dreary expanse behind, devoid both of dignity and cheerfulness. This system of female education aims only at embellishing a few years of life, which are themselves so full of grace and happiness, that they hardly want it; and then leaves the rest of existence a miserable prey to idle insignificance. No woman of understanding and reflection can possibly conceive she is doing justice to her children by such kind of education. The object is, to give to children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupations

that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and therefore death less terrible. But the greatest error is, the making these things the grand and universal object. To insist upon it that every woman is to sing, and draw, and dancewith nature or against nature-to bind her apprentice to some accomplishment, and if she cannot succeed in oil or water colours, to prefer gilding, varnishing, burnishing, box-making, or shoe-making, (now rapidly going out of fashion) to real and solid improvement in taste, knowledge, and understanding."-" One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Women too often hazard every thing upon one cast of the die; when youth is gone, all is gone; no human creature gives his admiration for nothing either the eye must be charmed, or the understanding gratified: a woman must talk wisely or look well: every human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the wisdom of age." -----" The pursuit of knowledge is the most innocent and interesting occupation which can be given to the female sex: nor can there be a bet

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ter method of checking a spirit of dissipation, than by diffusing a taste for literature.". "We conceive the labour and fatigue of accomplishments to be quite equal to the labour and fatigue of knowledge; and that it takes quite as many years to be charming, as it does to be

learned."

That I may the better appropriate these excellent observations, I shall beg leave to remark, that since nature indisputably appears to have been as bountiful of understanding to the one sex as to the other, there cannot well be a greater anomaly in the order and arrangement of civil society, than that while every endeavour is making to advance, improve, perfect, and find occupation for the talents of men, the intellectual improvement of women should be considered to be a matter of such subordinate importance, as to be, in a great variety of instances, not merely grossly neglected, but absolutely and systematically obstructed: as, however, great improvements have undoubtedly taken place in the education of females, and especially in the cultivation of their understandings, of late years, we do not despair of their soon attaining, pretty generally, their proper rank in society.

OLD MAIDS.

I BELIEVE every body will admit that the words placed at the head of this section, constitute a proper English title, not granted by letters patent, much less entailed on any heirs, but descriptive of a certain class of persons, more or less entitled to honor and respect, or, (I grieve to say,) obloquy and reproach, as members of society.—I shall beg leave first to object to the term OLD; they cannot be old without having been young; and therefore it is an expletive quite unnecessary; they are persons unmarried at a certain age, and we have no right to say more of them; it is quite impertinent to invent an epithet that may convey wrong ideas. Old women of all descriptions must once have been young; but some happen not to have been wedded to husbands in their passage through life. Has this been their fault? perhaps quite the contrary. Perhaps they may have had the choice of many husbands, and their present isolated unconnected state may be entirely owing

to themselves. And if so, it may also be, that their refusal of husbands, in their younger days, ought to redound greatly to their credit at a more advanced period. Let us suppose all old maids young. The chances are that when young some may have been handsome without fortune, some very rich but not handsome, some may have been plain but wise, some pretty but exceedingly foolish. In every case offers may have been made so unsuitable, that their very rejection of such offers, ought to be recorded in golden letters, in testimony of their superior judgment, discretion, or understanding. A person of fortune, even if she were handsome, might very justly suspect, that her money had too great a share in the attraction, and on this ground alone, if she were to demur, who could. blame her? on the contrary, if she were beautiful without fortune, who could blame a woman for declining matrimony, where the attractions might afterwards be found to have been merely external, personal, transitory, and vain ?—If in her younger days she were plain but wise, she may have very reasonably refused all offers, so few are found to marry for the sake of the mind only; if she were pretty but foolish, perhaps