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 exhibitor of paltry acquirements ever mature into the mother of the Gracchi, the tutelary guardian of the rising virtues of the commonwealth?  It is in vain to hope it.

Before making any strictures on intellectual education, it is necessary to enter into a short explanation; for it is not denied that rightly-cultivated mental power is a great good.  The kind of cultivation which is here decried is open to the same objections as the last mentioned.  It is the cultivation of power, with a view, not to the happiness of the individual, but to her fame; not to her usefulness, but to her brilliancy.  We have only to look round society, and see that intellect has its vanity as well as beauty or accomplishments, and that its effects are more mischievous.  It has a hardening, deadening kind of influence; the more so, that the so-called mental cultivation frequently consists only of a pedantic heaping up of information, valuable indeed in itself, but wanting the principle of combination to make it useful.  Stones and bricks are valuable things, very valuable; but they are not beautiful or useful till the hand of the architect has given them a form, and the cement of the bricklayer has knit them together.  It is a fine expression of Miss Edgeworth, in speaking of the mind of one of her heroines, “that the stream of literature had passed over it was apparent only from its fertility.”  Intellectual cultivation was too long considered as education, properly so called.  The mischief which this error has produced, is exactly in proportion to the increase of power thereby communicated to wrong principles.

What, then, is the true object of female education?  The best answer to this question is, a statement of future duties; for it must never be forgotten, that if education be not a training for future duties, it is nothing.  The ordinary lot of woman is to marry.  Has any thing in these educations prepared her to make a wise choice in marriage?  To be a mother!  Have the duties of maternity,—­the nature of moral influence,—­been pointed out to