THOUGHTS

ON THE

Education of Females.

CHAP. I.

ADDISON says,

"Female virtues are of a domestic turn:" I cannot omit a sentence in the celebrated funeral oration of Pericles, which he made in honour of those brave Athenians who were slain in a fight against the Lacedemonians. After having addressed himself to the several ranks and orders of his countrymen, and shewn them how they should behave themselves in the

public cause, he turns to the female part of his audience: "And as for you," said he, "I shall advise you in very few words: aspire only to those virtues that are peculiar to your sex, and think it your greatest commendation not to be talked of one way or another."

Conversing with a friend on the subject of female intellect, she said to me, "When I was a girl, two brothers about my own age and I used to hold frequent disputes whether men were not superior to women, or whether women had not equal abilities with men had we compared our respective occupations, our disputes would have been: at an end: we should immediately have perceived that they were widely different, and that of course so ought to be, and so must be, our talents and dispositions: though we were the sole companions of one another, our amusements were separate: they liked to run races, to play at games of severe exercise, to go adventures, as they

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called it, that is to say, to wander about for miles, whatever might be the roads or the weather. I was fond of dressing dolls, of rearing silk-worms, of watching the progress of the fruits and flowers in the garden: they, however, took some interest in my amusements, and so did I in theirs; they would help me to feed my silk-worms, andassisted me in the care of my little garden; I was pleased to see them win the race or the game from their companions, and to hear them relate the dangers they had escaped, in jumping over a wide ditch, or travelling through a miry way. There was a difference too in our more serious occu→ pations: they delighted to read of battles, of the rise and fall of nations, of hazardous. enterprises undertaken by men of bold spirits, and wished to signalize themselves in the same manner. Seated by my mother's side, I liked to employ my needle, or to read histories, portraying the calmness and the virtues of domestic life, varying these

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occupations, with attending to domestic duties of the active kind."

Let it not be supposed that I wish to under-rate female abilities, or to discourage the improvement of female intellect; I never believed that a person would act a more virtuous, or a more becoming part in life, from being either born a fool, or bred up in ignorance of every thing but trivial accomplishments, or the labour of the hands: no, let females occupy that station in life which God and Nature have assigned them., I remember what I have said, and what the whole of human life testifies; that to them is committed the formation of the human mind at its most important period, in infancy. The age we live in is, and has been distinguished by females no less honored for their talents than beloved for their virtues; but brilliant talents are the lot of few, virtue is within the reach of all: if ignorance be the parent of vice, wisdom, on