A

VIEW

OF THE

PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT

PREVALENT AMONG

WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE.

CHAP. XIII.

The practical ufe of female knowledge, with a sketch of the female character, and a comparative view of the fexes.

THE chief end to be propofed in culti vating the understandings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often like the learning of men, to be reproduced in fome literary compofition, nor ever in any learned profeffion; but it is to come out in conduct. A lady ftudies, not that she may qualify herself to become

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an orator or a pleader; not that she may learn to debate, but to act.redShe is to read the best books, not so much to enable her to talk of them, as to bring the improvement which they furnish, to the rectification of her principles, and the formation of her habits. The great ufes of ftudy are to enable her to regulate her own mind, and to be useful to others.

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To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a predominance of thofe more fober ftudies, which, not having display for their object, may make her wife without vanity, happy without witneffes, and content without panegy, rifts; the exercife of which will not bring celebrity, but improve usefulnefs. She fhould purfue every kind of fudy which will teach her to elicit truth which will lead her to be intent upon realities; will give precision to her ideas will make an exact mind; every ftudy which, inftead of timulating her fenfibility, will chaflife.it which will give her definite notions will

bring the imagination under dominion; will lead her to think, to compare, to combine, to methodife; which will confer fuch a power of difcrimination, that her judgment fhall learn to reject what is dazzling, if it be not folid; and to prefer, not what is ftriking, or bright, or new, but what is juft. That kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home confumpa tion than foreign exportation, is peculiarly adapted to women.

It is because the fuperficial nature of their education furnishes them with a falfe and low ftandard of intellectual excellence, that women have fometimes become ridi culous by the unfounded pretenfions of literary vanity for it is not the really learned, but the fmatterers, who have generally brought their fex into difcredit, by an abfurd affectation, which has fet them on defpifing the duties of ordinary life. There have not indeed been wanting (but the character is not now common) precieufes ridicules, who, affuming a fuperiority

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riority to the fober cares which ought to occupy their fex, have claimed a lofty and fupercilious exemption from the dull and plodding drudgeries

Of this dim fpeck called earth!

who have affected to eftablifh an unnatural feparation between talents and usefulness, inftead of bearing in mind that talents are the great appointed inftruments of usefulnefs; who have acted as if knowledge were to confer on woman a kind of fantastic fovereignty, which fhould exonerate her from female duties; whereas it is only meant the more eminently to qualify her for the performance of them. For a woman of real fenfe will never forget, that while the greater part of her proper duties are fuch as the most moderately gifted may fulfil with credit, (fince Provi dence never makes that to be very difficult, which is generally neceffary,) yet the moft highly endowed are equally bound to fulfil them; and the humbleft of these offices,

offices, performed on Chriftian principles, are wholesome for the minds even of the most enlightened, and tend to the casting down of those high imaginations which women of genius are too much tempted to indulge,

For instance; ladies whofe natural vanity has been aggravated by a falfe education, may look down on œconomy as a vulgar attainment, unworthy of the attention of an highly cultivated intellect; but this is the false estimate of a fhallow mind. Economy, fuch as a woman of fortune is called on to practise, is not merely the petty detail of small daily expences, the fhabby curtailments and ftinted parfimony of a little mind, operat, ing on little concerns; but it is the exer cife of a found judgment exerted in the comprehenfive outline of order, of arrangement, of diftribution; of regulations by which alone well-governed focieties, great and fmall, fubfift. She who has the best regulated mind will, other things

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