Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/33

 tain acquisitions indeed—dipping into the Greek drama, and the like; but receiving a very partial training of the mind, in the best sense; or perhaps only such a training as chance may direct: and that they will return to their homes, wanting in genuine sentiments, and in the refinements of the heart. Girls, well taught at home, may tacitly compel their brothers to feel, if not to confess, when they return from school, that, although they may have gone some way beyond their sisters in mere scholarship, or in mathematical proficiency, they are actually inferior to them in variety of information, in correctness of taste, and in general maturity of understanding; as well as in propriety of conduct, in self-government, in steadiness and elevation of principle, and in force and depth of feeling. With young men of ingenuous tempers, this consciousness of their sisters' superiority, in points which every day they will be more willing to deem important, may be turned to the best account, under a discreet parental guidance, and may become the means of the most beneficial reaction in their moral sentiments.

Parents, therefore, in the education of their daughters at home, will do well to keep in view this double intention of the course they are pursuing; and while bestowing their cares immediately upon these, recollect that they will have an influence to exert hereafter, such as will make itself felt far beyond its immediate circle.

But throughout this work I must assume that family education embraces sons as well as daughters; and indeed it is proper to advertise the reader that, generally, either a sort of intellectual culture, or a rate of proceeding, is described and recommended which, to its full extent, may not be found applicable to the female mind; or even if applicable, perhaps not necessary, or in all cases desirable. In the exercises of the higher faculties especially, hereafter to be described, I must be understood as supposing