only anxious to pass on to another continental dialect. And yet, if the labour lavished on verbal criticism has sometimes been regarded as unprofitable, how much more so is that which tends to convert the mind into nothing but a dictionary!

In the same way, time is not unfrequently misspent in mere reading. The getting through a certain number of volumes is thought to be a meritorious exertion, and is looked back upon with complacency; though perhaps this painstaking labour has been without benefit, and has done nothing towards enriching or strengthening the mind. Some read without recollecting; many more without thinking; and many again without applying what they read to any moral or practical purpose. For, after all, literature is a mere step to knowledge; and the error often lies in our identifying one with the other. Literature may, perhaps, make us vain; knowledge must render us humble.

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We are all apt to imagine that what costs us trouble must be of value: yet there is much need of discretion, both in the choice and manner of our acquirements. In both, utility should always be a question,-not the mere sordid utility

which has a reference only to secular profit, and, which, even with regard to science, is by no means the exclusive, or primary object; — but utility as it affects the mind. History, for instance, with all its accompanying branches, is in this view a suitable and most improving study. But then history, to be useful, must be digested. We may sleep through Rollin and Hume, and be really little wiser than if we had read only the newspaper.

Not unfrequently, too, are we wrong in our estimate of acquirements. We value them by their rarity; and are apt to neglect what is essential because it is easy, for the sake of what is difficult because it is uncommon.

A young woman, for example, will attempt Dante, who cannot construe Metastasio; and, what is far worse, will puzzle herself with German inflections, before she is familiar with Lindley Murray. We have heard of a lady, who, when at a loss how to spell a word, put a dash under the questionable letters; that, if wrong, it might pass for a joke. Modern education ought to prevent the necessity of such expedients: but even when women are adepts

in orthography, they are not always so in syntax and punctuation: though they may affect to be linguists, it by no means follows that they are good English scholars.

It is very important, not only that the mind should be well informed, but that there should be a taste for knowledge; which should be appreciated for its own sake, not merely as a distinction. The superiority of really cultivated women is, in every thing, very apparent. They have been accustomed to think, and to discriminate; and their opinion is not a mere momentary impulse. Their sphere, too, is enlarged, they are not so much actuated by selfish feelings, or so liable to receive partial, and consequently erroneous, impressions. They view every subject more calmly, and decide more dispassionately; and are generally more correct in their own sentiments, and more liberal to those of others.

It is mediocrity that is intolerant and opinionative. A woman who, without reflection, takes up the views of others, is peculiarly accessible to party spirit; and this is one reason why women, in general, are more zealous partisans

than the other sex: their minds are more contracted, their knowledge more confined, and their prejudices stronger. We can quite understand the strictures of Addison on the female sectarists of his day; for, though we have no patches now to mark our distinctions, the spirit of party is equally exclusive.

As a corrective to this, as well as a preservative from error, knowledge is very useful, and in this view, perhaps, almost as much so to women as to men; especially now, in these days of progress, when every class should be prepared for its advance; and when even the female mind should be strengthened for the increase of light. What an easy dupe to empiricism or design is a half-educated woman! With sufficient acquirement to be vain, and sufficient sensibility to be soon imposed on, she may be easily seduced from principles which she has received only on the authority of others, and which she is therefore ill prepared to defend. It was want of knowledge, of which the priest of Rome availed himself, when he assailed the female devotee with all the appliances of his superstition; and prevailed on

her to forsake real duties for the quietism and asceticism of the convent. It is want of knowledge, of which the modern heretic equally makes use, when he too "leads captive silly women," and finds none so accessible to his influence as the weak, the sensitive, and the unenlightened. It is on this account that knowledge is so valuable an accompaniment to religion; for piety may be misguided, though it cannot be excessive: and the female mind, constitutionally less stable than that of man, needs especially the ballast of sound information and good sense. It is apt to pursue opinions to extremes, and to allow too much to its favourite bias; and on this account an accurate acquaintance with truth of every kind is the more essential. And besides the individual benefit which accrues from such knowledge, no character commands more respect than that of the religious and cultivated woman; while it is to the credit of the sex that letters and religion have often been associated. We dwell with pleasure on the piety of Lady Jane Grey, if that of Elizabeth be questionable. And we may surely