[Madame Niederer, who has an establishment for female education at Yverdun, in Switzerland, and who has been highly admired, both as regards her character and her abilities, by English ladies who have visited her seminary, is the author of a work recently published at Berlin, entitled "Hints on Female Education." To enable our readers to judge for themselves of the view which Madame N. takes of the education of her sex, we extract the following passage:-)

It is not sufficient that some individuals of distinguished energy among our sex should emerge to the bright summit of human culture: the whole sex ought to be aroused from their present condition, and stimulated to exert themselves for the attainment of a more elevated state. The powers and faculties with which woman is gifted are peculiar, but not less rich than those which have fallen to the lot of man; and the claims, therefore, which she has upon education, upon influence and a dignified position in society,

are,

although not of the same nature, yet no less important or extensive, than those which the other sex prefers. It is essential to the fulfilment of those duties which devolve upon man, that he should have a correct knowledge of human nature abstractedly, and in its various manifestations in individual character, as well as of the influence exercised upon it by the domestic circle, by education, and by social life; and in the same manner it is indispensable for woman to have a 51 ATHENEUM, VOL. 2, 3d series.

clear apprehension of the nature of the child, generally and individually, and of the demands which it makes, in children of either sex, upon maternal care and guidance. This knowledge should be imparted to all those that constitute civilized society, lest they be incapacitated for the accomplishment of their most essential duties; the neglect of it will infallibly cause our species to retrograde in its own cultivation, however great its progress may be in science, art, and industry.

It is in the hands of the female that God has deposited the primitive power of all education; she is exclusively entrusted with the awakening and first unfolding of the human energies. The tie of closest union which attaches the heart of the child to the mother's love and care, gives to the female an incalculable influence over the destinies of mankind, and an absolute power to decide the bias of the first tendencies for good or evil, for truth or error. To enable the female rightly to exercise that primitive power of education of which she is possessed, it is necessary that we should lead her to a clear perception of the primitive elements of life, of knowledge and of practice, so that her influence upon the first development of the human being may be one of light and not of darkness.

The foundation of all knowledge rests on an intellectaal apprehension of the first elements. If we learn them with clearness, and in the connection which they have among them

selves and with the primitive powers of our mind, our knowledge will be well grounded; every progress will lead to a farther development of our own powers, and to a deeper insight into the nature of things. However narrow the compass of our knowledge may be, its foundation will be deep and lasting; and it will impart to the mind such a tendency to progressive development, that no experience and no exertion in future life can ever be lost for the enlargement of the sphere of knowledge.

The superficiality of knowledge arises, not only from the absolute want of foundation, but also from a merely mechanical apprehension of the elements. If they be inculcated without regard to the bearings which they have upon each other and upon our intellect, our knowledge must be superficial; and every farther progress can only lead to mental confusion, and to a greater alienation from the nature of things. However extensive the system of knowledge so acquired may seem, it will only be the more flat and superficial; and every additional experience, every new exertion, can only increase the mechanism of knowledge, adding death unto death.

These observations may tend to explain the strange phenomena of young persons leaving school, splendidly furnished with knowledge and acquirements of every kind, by which they earn great applause, and raise mighty expectations; but, so far from answering the latter, remain stationary, and shut up against every further development; so that, by degrees, they sink down to mediocrity, or even below its level whilst, on the contrary, others who, at the termination of the years of tuition, make a modest appearance, and excite neither admiration nor any great anticipations, yet rise from development to development, and from progress to progress, and accomplish the task of their life in a manner both satisfactory to others and creditable to themselves.

To produce this latter effect, ought to be invariably the object of female

education. Not the extent of knowledge, but its solid character,—not mechanical accumulation in the memory, whilst the mind is stupified and paralyzed, and every tendency to development crushed, but intellectual acquirement, which enlivens and exercises all the powers of the mind, and produces a desire for improvement that will last to the end of life,—such are the characteristics of the mental endowments with which a daughter should be dismissed from the parental roof, or from the house of education. If her mind be so fitted out, she will not fail to accomplish the task of her life; as mother and instructress, she will be a shining light for the first education of man. If, on the contrary, she be defective in this, her failure is inevitable; she can produce nothing but confusion and darkness in education, and in the whole sphere of domestic life.

To open to children the path of true intellectual culture, by a wellgrounded and intelligible elementary instruction, is easy and delightful to those that understand it; and so it is likewise to lead them from such a pure and solid basis to the higher degrees of knowledge and wisdom: but, to lead the more advanced youth back from superficial and mechanical knowledge to spontaneous mental exertion, to attention, reflection, and perseverance, is a hard and ungrateful task. It is hard, because it requires a great expense of time and labor enduringly to awaken, strengthen, and enliven the mind, when it has been stunned and enervated by lifeless instruction. It is ungrateful, because, in a world where appearance is the object generally in request, and the general test by which things are judged, it is impossible to aim at the reality and to reach it, without incurring constant misjudgment, however great and important results may have been obtained. Nevertheless, he who has the welfare of youth and of mankind at heart, who works not for temporary or temporal purposes, but for the real wants of his age, and for an eternal

The multitude reject the way of development, because, although secure, it is slower they claim the more rapid results of a system of rote. To know something of everything, and to be able to talk of everything, is, with the great mass, the object of female education; hence it is that superficiality, presumption, flatness, and vanity, prevail on all sides; that knowledge and acquirements wear off by practice, and are, in young mothers, like salt which has lost its savor, and is of no use in domestic life or in education.

But it will not remain so forever. The day of a better knowledge is dawning upon our sex; its high vocation for the cause of human culture begins to be felt and understood; its

those narrow limits, and are extending to subjects of universal improvement. Our age has seen noble-minded princesses, taught in the school of life, devoting themselves with faithfulness and dignity to the work of education, and showing, by their example, to the rest of their sex, what they ought to do for it. And how many others, though inferior in rank, yet no less noble-minded, go out, in the power of faith, to give instruction in the schools of the poor, to bring refreshment into the cottage of the needy, consolation to the couch of the sick, and deliverance, in a heavenly sense, into the prison where the criminal is chained to his guilt by iron fetters. They are as many purifiers of the public feeling, diffusing in society the spirit of humanity, and building education upon a lasting foundation. Their exertions will not be without fruit.

WEARIED with roaming woods and leas, He came on trembling wings from far, And calmly sank that western breeze

In glimmering cave of gem-like spar. His pinions, wove of light and dew,

Lay like the veil a queen has worn, On greenest moss where gently grew Flowers that had never seen the morn.

His breathing filled the cell with air,

A whispering charm, a tranquil joy"; And a lone spring sang softly there,

And kissed and cooled the dreaming boy.

His brow was like the clearest cloud
That e'er made soft a star of June;
And thither swarmed a silent crowd
Of thoughts, like elves around the moon.
He dreamed of that far western wood

When first he woke amid the dawn,
Ere man had broke the solitude,

Or sprites had all from earth withdrawn.

And then he dreamed how forth he sprang,
A warrior child, on rushing wings,
While with his speed the forest rang,
As to the winter's shouts it rings.
Again he felt his onward sweep,

As in that first triumphant pride;
Again he coursed, in vision deep,

The rolling sea, the grey, the wide.

He dreamed that early fisher's boat
Was sinking at his blast again;
And wailing round him seem'd to float,
Breathed from the dim engulphing main.
But now there came a thousand dreams
Of all the gay, the sweet, the wild,
Whate'er delight with heavenly gleams
Had fed the West's enchanted child.

He thought on all he e'er had stolen,

Of scents, and smiles, and murmured

pleasures,

Despoiling flowers with gladness swollen,
And rifling nature's subtlest treasures.

Last in his slumbering fancy showed
The fairest vision of them all,
The loveliest maid that e'er abode

A woodland Nymph, in leafy hall. Her hair like sunshine round her hung,

Her brow was smooth as pearly shell, Her eyes with laughing life were young, Her whisper chimed like festal bell.

The sleeper woke; 'twas now the hour When he was wont to seek the isle, Where in her green and lonely bower She wove her web and sang the while.

The dreamer, like a shining mist,

Rose from the moss, and swam in air, And, deftly poised as him might list,

Danced for a moment glittering there.