Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/58

Rh the music-master; yet are they no sooner plunged into active life, as women—I do not say, as ladies—than the readiest and best, nay, sometimes, even the cheapest, method of doing every thing which a woman can do, is expected of them. In all those cases of failure which must necessarily ensue, parents and brothers are equally dissatisfied; while they themselves, disappointed that their accomplishments are no longer valued as they were at school, and perplexed with the new, and apparently humbling, duties which present themselves, sink into a state of profitless despondency; and all this is owing to the simple fact of their not having been prepared, when young, for what is expected of them in after life.

Far be it from me, however, to advocate the old system of stitching, as the best kind of education for the daughters of England, of whom higher and nobler things are required. But why should we not choose the medium between two extremes? and while we reprobate the elaborate needlework of our grandmothers, why should we not be equally solicitous to avoid the evils arising from an entire disuse of the female hand, until the age of womanhood? Neither would I be supposed to advocate that entire absorption of the female mind in a world of worsted work, which is now so frequently the case immediately on leaving school, and which I am inclined to attribute, in a great measure, to a necessary reaction of the mind, after having been occupied during the whole term of scholastic discipline, in what is so foreign to its nature, that the first days—nay, months, and even years, of liberty, are spent in the busy idleness of assorting different shades of Berlin wool.

These, I must allow, are pleasant amusements in their way, and when the head and the heart are weary, may have their refreshment and their use; but even in these occupations, the beaten track of custom is too much followed. The