A Preparation needed for Domestic Life.

537

been trained to believe herself responsible to God for his gifts, has still before her the fields of self-improvement and social usefulness.

It is of the utmost importance that the single woman, before entering upon the task of helping and instructing the poor, should herself know the great causes that operate upon social and national prosperity. Public schools will do little good till the mothers of the lower classes are better fitted for their position; and it is by single women of the upper classes, that they may be best instructed, and made to feel the responsibilities of their station. The task of combating the prejudices of the ignorant, and the other evils and sufferings of humanity, is no easy one. It requires long and careful preparation. It is the want of this preparation which often renders useless, worse than useless, well meant charity. If, at the introduction of the new Poor-Law, the poor instead of finding ignorant sympathy, or listening to party ravings, had met with those who were able wisely to explain to them all the bearings of the system adopted, how much violence and discontent would have been subdued! Yet how few women, even among such as make charity and intercourse with the poor their chief employment, have made it their business to investigate a measure so important to them and to all classes! Women, viewing the subject of pauperism in a proper light, might stand as interpreters between legislators and the lower classes. Those women who have their time at their disposal, are also to blame for the ignorance of the poor concerning all useful discoveries. While all else is advancing, the poor remain stationary, eating the food, and pursuing the habits of their forefathers, from mere ignorance of the discovery of cheaper and better food, or more cleanly and healthful modes of living.

It seems to be a general opinion, that a woman's uneducated feelings and instincts will fit her for domestic life. In truth, they will do little more than endow her with a mere animal love for her husband and children. They will not teach her how to act in the critical difficulties with which life is fraught, and on the surmounting of which depends the happiness or misery of herself and her family. It is true that we may any day see instances of giddy flirts transformed by the magic touch of feeling, into gentle, and submissive, and home-loving wives; but such are not always fit companions and advisers for their husbands, nor guides and examples to their children. Is it to be wondered at that a man should sicken of the society of one who is not able to comprehend the meaning, or even the importance of the subjects that engage him, or that he should turn from a constant recital of domestic cares, to seek a larger and more genial sympathy abroad? A thoroughly uncultivated woman, if

affectionate, may be a pleasant toy, or a good domestic drudge; she may be a sharer of her husband's more insignificant joys and cares, but she will never be his most valued companion, nor his most loved and trusted friend.

The maternal instinct alone will be found equally insufficient to form a mother. It will secure to the children a certain amount of physical care, and perhaps some slight foundation of a moral education; it will also ensure them the example of constant love and self-forgetfulness-but this is all. She who surrounds her children's earliest years with prejudices, ignorance, moral weakness and false associations, falls far short of her duty. She wastes the sacred bonds of love and reverence that make youthful impressions indelible, and teaches her children errors which they will either consume their lives in combating, or, as is more often the case, yield to, and teach again. Vainly will legislators and economists convince men of truths, till the moral influence of their mothers teach them to wish and strive to act upon these truths. No association, however well conceived and conducted, has ever yet produced individual virtue: this must be done by individual influence, and this individual influence should be exercised by the mother, who not only guides the earliest and most impressible years, but is by the side of her children in sickness and depression, and can alone seize those times for giving counsel, when counsel is most readily received.

Some women complain of the narrowness of their earthly sphere; but such have not well considered the noble task imposed by God on the mother. Narrow indeed is the sphere of her, who, when her nursery duties are ended, considers her task well performed; or observes apathetically, that her own children are beyond her control; who sees unconcerned the growth of vices that will wring her heart hereafter; and consigns her boy, unprepared, to the temptations of a public school, forgetting that by thus ridding herself of the responsibility of guiding him at home, she becomes responsible for all that may befall him abroad. Large indeed is the sphere of her influence, who from infancy watches every opening germ, develops every natural virtue, draws out latent powers and energies, counteracts the worldly training of public schools, and prepares her children with caution and precept to go forth into the world. More is done for national virtue and prosperity by such women, than by the best of kings and legislators.

Some of the concluding remarks of the excellent chapter by which the foregoing observations have been suggested, we present to our readers in their original garb :

"Such is the task-requiring knowledge, understanding, acute perceptions, and moral power-that young women rush from the

Sidney Smith's Essay.

539

giddy round of frivolous pleasures, fearlessly to undertake! Such are the responsibilities, to prepare for which the young mother who is as proud of her baby now as she was of her first ball-dress but a short time before, has perhaps never devoted one hour of serious study,— not one hour of such mental labour as the least important of a man's professions would force him to undergo, in preparation for its duties! While this is so common, it is little wonder if the influence of women is feeble, and their position undervalued. The early entrance of women into society, if necessarily dangerous, appears an unavoidable evil. Nor while beauty is so short-lived, and its first bloom so dazzling, will early marriages cease, however prudence may sigh over, and society suffer by them; but these considerations only make that training the more necessary, which may in some measure strengthen the inexperienced, enable them to resist the evil influences of society, and render them capable at least, of feeling and understanding the importance of duties and responsibilities which may too soon devolve upon them. They make it the more necessary that the short period allowed to prepare for those duties should not be wasted in frivolous idleness, that the young should be early taught to consider their position in its wide and varied bearings, and to feel that their true dignity and worth as God's creatures must depend on the use they make of his gifts; on the measure of self-improvement they labour to obtain ; on the degree of their usefulness to others in the sphere in which they are placed."

Let us second these grave and well-considered remarks, which never can become too commonplace for repetition, until they are become the practice of society, by an extract from an Essay by Sidney Smith upon the education of women.

"Why the disproportion in knowledge between the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural talents is so small; or why the understanding of women should be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of higher and better things, we profess ourselves not able to understand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best cured by making that knowledge more general; and the economy devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and inconvenience which proceed from neglecting it. For the care of children, nature has made a direct and powerful provision; and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural consequence of that desire to please, which is productive of the greatest part of civilisation and refinement, and which rests upon a foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in education as we have proposed. If you educate women to attend to difficult and important subjects, you are multiplying beyond measure the chances of human improvement, by preparing and medicating those early impressions which always come from the mother; and which, in a great majority of instances, are quite decisive of

character and genius. Nor is it only in the business of education that women should influence the destiny of men. If women knew more, men must learn more; for ignorance would then be shameful; and it would become the fashion to be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and amusement of the world; it increases the pleasure of society by multiplying the topics on which the two sexes can take a common interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding, as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The education of woman favours public morals; it provides for every season of life, as well as for the brightest and the best, and leaves a woman, when she is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything, and neglected by all; but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge, diffusing the elegant pleasure of polite literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men."

In accordance with our design we have in the preceding Article spoken of little more than the position and duties of the gentler sex; let the most impressive place, the concluding paragraph, convey a hint, in the shape of one or two random quotations, concerning the duties of man towards woman, and let him remember that in this, as well as in all other regards, the fulfilment of duty is the best policy.

"Les hommes, par leur conduite envers les femmes, travaillent à leur donner tous les défauts qu'ils leur reprochent."

"The very impossibility of defining woman's social rights, and of legalizing them, makes it most necessary that all men should entertain just principles in this matter."

"Never will the relationship of man and woman exhibit more than a weak likeness of the excellent loveliness which heaven meant it to have, until purity of heart and life shall be regarded by society as no less essential in man than it is in woman.”

Sir Charles Lyell's Travels in North America. 541

ART. IX.-1. Travels in North America, with Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, 1841-42. By CHARLES LYELL, Esq., F.R.S., Author of the Principles of Geology. In 2 vols. Pp. 578. London, 1845. 2. A Second Visit to the United States (in the years 1845-46) of North America. By Sir CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S., President of the Geological Society of London, Author of the Principles of Geology, and Travels in North America. In 2 vols. Second Edition, revised and corrected. Pp. 754. London, 1850.

3. Principles of Geology; or the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants considered, as illustrative of Geology. Eighth Edition. With Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. 8vo. 1851. 4. Manual of Elementary Geology; or the Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, as illustrated by Geological Monuments. Third Edition. With Woodcuts and Plates. 8vo. 1851.

AMERICA, with her young institutions, her undeveloped powers, and her stripling genius but partially revealed, must ever be to Englishmen an object of the deepest interest, a subject for their profoundest study, and a beacon of the safest kind to warn and to guide them in their domestic as well as in their colonial legislation. Over that vast region which stretches from the Atlantic shores to the broad waters of the Pacific, she wields her democratic sceptre, and while it bears, at one of its extremities, the glittering icicles of the North, it dips the other in the tepid waters of the tropics. Under its beneficent and catholic sway the outcasts of European civilisation have obtained food and shelter, the political exile a refuge from oppression, and the persecuted Christian a sanctuary and a home. From the pressure of hunger, and despotism, and intolerance, every region of the old world has sent its contingent to the land of freedom, and races of every colour, of every tongue, and of every faith, diversify the living mass which has escaped from the wrongs, or thrown off the yoke of their masters. But amid all this diversity of blood and of feeling, the Anglo-Saxon race holds and directs the reins; and the vernacular language of England, associated with the achievements of wisdom and of war, is everywhere the instrument of civilisation, and the herald of civil and religious liberty. Inheriting from English blood that spirit of enterprise and power of expansion which has borne our liberties and our faith into every quarter of the globe, America will soon replace with her gifted sons the savage population which