Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/13

Rh, it leaves them, in nine cases out of ten, without anything more than the mere fancy that they possess acquirements of a higher order.

The desire which many persons feel to give their children a better education than has been bestowed upon themselves is laudable, because it proceeds from sincere affection: but how often is the success equal to the motive which actuates? How often is the manner of attempting at all calculated for attaining the object so earnestly sought? An ambition to promote the welfare of children reconciles parents to part with them at that tender age when they ought to command more constant care than they generally need at a more advanced time of life; and this ambition is so strong that it will even cause little girls to be consigned to the blighting atmosphere of a crowded schoolroom, there to bewail the loss of the warm hearth, or the airy room of their own homes, and all the comforts which depend upon a mother's solicitude. With a view to their being educated, that is to say, fitted for the world, and for the discharge of their respective duties in it, girls are sent to school, and are there condemned to a dull course of lessons, before their minds have sufficient strength to imbibe any kind of learning that requires mental labour, and before their understandings are equal to any greater exertion than that of perceiving the difference between a roasted apple and a sugar-plum.

A knowledge of housekeeping is not difficult to attain. It needs no natural superiority of talent, and no painful application. It is rather a habit than a science, and, like the neatness so characteristic of English women, this knowledge rarely comes to perfection at all, unless it be partly formed in early life, and by means of our very earliest associations. Little girls are always prone to imitate the ways of older persons, particularly in housekeeping matters. They very soon begin to find amusement in learning to make preserves, pastry, and such things. Those children, therefore, who are brought up at home,