A VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT PREVALENT AMONG WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE. CHAP. XIII. The practical uses of female knowledge. Sketch of the female character.-A comparative view of both sexes. THE chief end to be propofed in cultivating 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 herfelf to become VOL. II. B an an orator or a pleader; not that she may learn to debate, but to act. She is to read the best books, not so much to enable her to talk of them, as to bring the improvement fhe derives from them 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. To woman therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a predominance of thofe more fober ftudies, which, not having difplay for their object, may, make her wife without vanity, happy without witneffes, and content without panegyrifts; the exercife of which will not bring 'celebrity, but improve usefulness. She fhould purfue every kind of ftudy which will teach her to elicit truth; which will lead her to be intent upon realities; will give precifion to her ideas; will make an * exact mind; every study which, instead of fimulating her fenfibility, will chastise if; which will give her definite notions; will bring the imagination under dominion; will lead her to think, to compare, to combine, to methodise: 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 striking, or bright, or new, but what is juft. Every kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home confumption than foreign exportation, is peculiarly adapted to women. It is because the fuperficial mode of their education furnishes them with a false and low standard of intellectual excellence, that women have fometimes become ridi culous by the unfounded pretentions 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) precieuses B 2 |