Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/263

252 rather—for I fear that Will be more to the purpose—how it is most frequently, and most fatally destroyed.

There is reason to fear, that even home education is defective enough on this point; but if every one who has been educated at a public school, would tell one half of the many arts of subterfuge, trickery, and evasion, which she learned to practise there; and if all who are advanced in life would also trace out the consequences upon their subsequent conduct, of having learned in early life these lessons in the school of deception, I believe an amount of moral culpability, and of offensiveness in the sight of God, would be unfolded, which some of our early instructors would shudder to contemplate. On looking into the dark past, they would then see how, while they were so diligently and patiently—yes, and meritoriously too, teaching us the rules of grammar, arithmetic, and geography; expending their daily strength, and often their midnight thought, in devising and carrying out improved schemes for making us learn more languages, and remember more words; we had been almost equally busy in devising schemes to promote our own interest, to establish ourselves in the favour of our instructors, or to escape their too frequently well-merited displeasure.

And women from their very infancy are apt at all this; because to the timid, and affectionate little girl, it is so sad a thing to fall into disgrace—so pleasant a thing to be approved, and loved. Her young and tender spirit sinks like a broken flower, when she falls under condemnation; but springs up exulting like the lark, when commended by the lips she loves.

What, then, shall we say, when it is this very sensitiveness and tenderness of her nature, which so often, in the first instance, betrays her into ingenious, indirect, and too frequently unlawful means, for warding off blame, or