Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/22

xiv been taught all that is necessary for girls so young to learn, with regard to the choice of books? With the use of letters, indeed, as the mere components of words, they have been made acquainted. But why have they been taught to read at all, unless there be some profit to be derived from their reading; and how can any profit be looked for from that reading, unless there be the same kind of pains taken to point out the proper objects of study as there have been to teach the little scholars to spell? Surely that advice which is required by all young persons in the pursuit of book-learning, is at least as necessary to those who can do no more than just read their own native language, as it is to those who are brought up in a superior way. The education of youth, among the higher and middle classes, does not terminate, or, at least, it never should, immediately on their leaving school. At that period, a fresh series of anxieties occur to the parent or the guardian, who is quite as sedulous as before, to finish that which has been, in fact, only begun at school. If this be not the case, how is it, that though the son may have been eight or ten years at the best schools, the father, after the schooling is ended, finds it necessary to consult the most discreet and experienced advisers, concerning the right guidance of his child in the course of his future studies? The attention paid to the studies of young ladies, after they come from school, is, to be sure, not precisely the same as that which parents think requisite for their sons. But, while the daughter has generally the advantage of being with her mother, or with some female relative much older than herself; and while the success in life of our sex does not so frequently depend upon literary acquirements, and the proper employment of them; yet under such circumstances, favourable as they are, we all know that there is still much wanting, both in the way of counsel and attractive example, from the parent or guardian, to render the learning which a young girl has acquired at school, of substantial service to her in after years. If the daughters of the rich require to be taught, not merely to read, but, also, what to read, why should not this be the case with the daughters of the poor? in whose fate, it is too often proved, that "a little learning is a dangerous thing," owing to the want of that discretion which is necessary to prevent the little learning becoming worthless, and even mischievous, to its possessor.