But the sage counsel, BE SHORT, applies not to visitants alone. It might be made of like precious use to authors and public speakers, who too often lack one valuable kind of knowledge, namely, "that of discerning when to have done."

"Tediousness," as a writer of eminent abilities observes, "is the fault that most generally displeases: since it is a fault that is felt by all, and by all equally. You may offend your reader or hearer in one respect, and please him in another; but if you tire him out with your tediousness, you give him unmingled disgust."

A book can do but little good if it be but little read: a destiny that befals almost every book that is found to be unnecessarily prolix and bulky. This was the error of a former age. The massy folios of the last century but one, folios written by men of great talents and astonishing learning, have lain as lumber, and been confined to the shelves of the curious, for no other reason than because every thread has been spun out to the greatest possible length. Whereas had the highly respectable authors learned to be short, or given heed to the art of compressing their thoughts, they never would have wanted for readers.

Writers, sometimes, eke out their subject far beyond what need requires, from a mistaken ambition of making a great book. But readers of the present age generally lean to the sentiment in the old Greek proverb, "A great book is a great evil." It frightens them: they will scarcely open it, and much less set themselves to the task of reading it throughout.

Thus, in this respect, it is with books as with money. As small change, in quick and constant circulation, does more good than ingots of gold and silver hoarded up, so a small book that has a great many readers, is, if truly a good one, of much more benefit than a volume of enormous bulk, which, for that single reason, is scarcely read at all. Nay, I will even venture to affirm, that the Bible itself would be much less read, and read with much less delight, were it one and indivisible. But the Bible, though bound together in one volume, is not a single book, but a collection of sixty-eight different books, all penned with brevity as well as with inimitable sim

plicity; and arresting the attention, alike by the weight of their matter and their engagingness of manner.

Speak, young man, if there be need of thee, but be short-is a monitory saying of the son of Sirach, which, together with the two following short sayings of that eminent sage-Learn before thou speak-We may speak much and yet come short-compose, all three, a very good recipe for young men to carry about, and make use of as occasions may require.

Speeches in the hall of legislation, pleas at the bar, and even sermons, when they are of immoderate length, seldom fail to be tiresome. So that public speakers consult their own credit as little as they do the feelings of their hearers, when they are more solicitous to say much, than that every thing they do say should be to the purpose.

Whether in visits, in public speaking, or in common conversation, all can discern and reprobate the fault of tediousness as respects others; and yet very few are fully aware of it as respects themselves. Their own company is, forsooth, so delightful, that their visits can never tire; they themselves speak so well that nobody can wish them to have done; they talk so charmingly that their own loquaciousness always gives entertainment rather than disgust.

Thus it is that some men, otherwise of good sense, unconsciously give pain by their prolixity, though in regard to the prolixity of any body but themselves, their taste is delicate even to squeamishness.

CHAP. LXXIX.

Of regarding Accomplishments as the principal part of Female Education.

AMONG all the wants of humanity, few are more deplorable than the want of discrimination between things of great and things of little importance. The absence either of the existence or of the exercise of the faculty of such discrimination, occasions a considerable part of

the errors of life. For, not to speak of the fatal error of preferring things temporaneous and transitory to what is infinitely momentous-often, very often, in merely our worldly concerns, we sacrifice the greater to the less. It would not be difficult to exemplify this sentiment in a variety of instances; but I will confine myself to one alone-Female Education.

We live in an age wherein few, if any, whose opinions are worth notice, will deny the necessity of educating, and of well educating, the female part of our species. Passing over, therefore, this point upon which there is so general an agreement, I will mention, and but barely mention, the primary qualities of a good female education.

The great benefit of education, and what should ever be its ultimate design, consists in its tendency to prepare the pupils to act the parts allotted them with propriety, both as immortal and as mortal beings; and, in this view, education has an equal bearing upon both the sexes.

Female education, conducted upon rational principles, regards the parts that females are ordinarily destined to act upon the theatre of social life. Female children, in common with those of the other sex, are moral and accountable beings, destined to an immortal existence, and should therefore be assiduously taught, "the moral and religious knowledge of right and wrong,' or their duty to God, to themselves, and to their fellow creatures. As social beings, their understandings must be cultivated. As moral beings, their hearts should receive moral and pious culture. They may meet with unforeseen temptations and snares, and should be taught self-government, modesty, and delicacy of thought, of speech, and of action. They may meet with hard and distressing trials, and should be early taught the value of a meek and humble spirit, which, in some women under adversity, has shone with a lustre surpassing that of the diamond. Moreover, they may be destined, howeyer worthy or estimable, to lead a single and solitary life; and they should be so educated that, having resources in their own minds, they will be able, not only to endure, but to enjoy, their hours of retirement and solitude, and to make themselves respectable and agreeable, by the good sense of their conversation, and the benevolence of

their dispositions. Again, they may be wives; and it is the part of education to qualify and prepare them to be good wives-conversable-mild and affectionatediscreet-hospitable, and yet frugal-looking well to the ways of their households. Finally, they may be mothers; and it is the part of education, to qualify them, as mothers, to educate their children. In this one particular, women have a most important part to act. Women, as mothers, do in a great measure form the characters of future women and of future men; since the formation of character, for the first seven or eight years of life, depends chiefly on them. If they are well informed, discreet, and of goodly morals, their children are made, partly by their instruction and partly by imitation, to assimilate to these qualities. But if they are vain and frivolous, their little ones soon catch the contagion of their vanity and frivolity.

The foregoing particulars embrace most of the primary qualities or indispensable rudiments of a good female education. And yet, quite often is it remarked of females, that they have had an excellent education, merely because they have been taught the female accomplishments. Very little attention was ever paid to the culture of their understandings, of their minds, of their hearts, of their tempers. But, with much pains, and at considerable expense, they have got a smatter, of what are called the fine arts, such as Embroidery, Drawing, Music, and so on. They have learned the discipline of the fingers, and of the feet; and for this reason alone, their education is held in admiration. As if mere accomplishments, which usually become obsolete soon after marriage, were sufficient to prepare women to be excellent wives, excellent mothers, and excellent house-keepers; as if a merely accomplished woman were fitted either to act her part respectably in society, or to take comfort in the solitude of retirement, or under the decays of age; or as if the modesty and the refined manners of women spring from accomplishments, rather than from their being well taught in moral and religious duty. So far from all this, a married woman of mere accomplishments, and whose chief ambition is, to make a figure in the eye of the public-seldom fails of rendering her husband unhappy, and herself too.

In the school of Fashion, female accomplishments have long had the ascendant. Nor is it to my purpose to decry or despise them. Let those have them, if they please, whose rank in life requires it, and whose ample fortunes can well afford the expense. Yet, even by them, be it remembered, that they are but of trifling account in comparison of the solid and useful parts of education. If accomplishments be added to these, they may serve for adorning the whole: but hapless will be the husband and the children of the woman, and quite as hapless the woman herself, who rests her character and conduct in life upon accomplishments alone.

*

As to families of the common sort, possessed neither of high rank nor of considerable fortunes, the plain, useful education, is the best for their daughters. This is all that can, ordinarily, do them any good; and more than this may do them much harm. A very ancient and a very respectable writer-whom we ought to read much oftener than we do-hath told us of a knowledge that puffeth up. And perhaps there is no kind of knowledge more puffing, than the one I have now been mentioning. A female, of scanty information and weak intellects, so values herself for the circumstance of her being initiated in the practice of some of the fine arts, that she loses by it the use of her hands. She will vouchsafe indeed to employ her pretty fingers, now and then, in fancy-work for amusement; but in nothing that is really useful; in nothing that earns bread; in nothing that can turn to any valuable account. Perhaps she is in impoverished circumstances: perhaps her condition is such as imperiously calls for the useful labor of her hands. It makes no difference. She is not of the laboring class, but far above it. She, do the common work of womankind; she, who had gone through all the grades of fashionable education! The idea is too monstrous.

Thus, instead of being made by their education, the more capable of helping themselves in this world of "thorns and thistles," of labor, toil, and hardship; there are some, and perhaps not a few, whose very education renders them but the more helpless.

I will conclude with an interesting piece of history,

* St. Paul.