tures are shut up all the morning, demurely practifing the pas grave, and tranfacting the ferious bufinefs of acquiring a new step for the evening, with more coft of time and pains than it would have taken them to acquire twenty new ideas.

Thus they lofe the amusements which naturally belong to their fmil ing period, and unnaturally anticipate those pleasures (fuch as they are) which would come in, too much of course, on their introduction into fashionable life. The true pleasures of childhood are cheap and natural; for every object teems with delight to eyes and hearts new to the enjoy ment of life: nay, the hearts of healthy children abound with a general difpofition to mirth and joyfulness, even without a specific object to ex cite it; like our firft parent, in the world's firft fpring, when all was new, and fresh, and gay about him:

They live and move,

And feel that they are happier than they know.

Only furnish them with a few fimple and harmless materials, and a little, but not too much leifure, and they will manufacture their own pleasures with more fkill, and fuccefs, and fa tisfaction, than they will receive from all that your money can purchase. Their bodily recreations fhould be fuch as will promote their health, quicken their activity, enliven their fpirits, whet their ingenuity, and qualify them for their mental work, But, if you begin thus early to create wants, to invent gratifications, to multiply defires, to waken dormant fenfibilities, to ftir up hidden fires, you are ftudioufly laying up for your children a ftore of premature caprice, and irritability and discontent.

While childhood preferves its native fimplicity, every little change is interefting, every gratification is a luxury; a ride or a walk will be a delightful amufement to a child in her natural ftate; but it will be dull

and tastelefs to a fophifticated little creature, nurfed in thefe forced, and coftly, and vapid pleasures. Alas! that we fhould throw away this first grand opportunity of working into a practical habit, the moral of this important truth, that the chief source of human difcontent is to be looked for, not in our real, but in our factitious wants; not in the demands of nature, but in the artificial cravings of defire!

When one fees the growing zeal to crowd the midnight ball with these pretty fairies, one would be almost tempted to fancy it was a kind of pious emulation among the mothers to cure their infants of a fondness for vain and foolith pleasures, by tiring them out by this premature familia-. rity with them; and that they were actuated by fomething of the same principle, which led the Spartans to introduce their fons to fcenes of riot, that they might conceive an early disguft at vice: or poffibly, that they imitated thofe Scythian mothers who ufed to plunge their new-born infants into the flood, thinking 'none to be worth faving who could not ftand this early ftruggle for their lives: the greater part indeed, as it might have been expected, perished; but the parents took comfort, that if many were loft, the few who escaped would be the ftronger for having been thus expofed.

To behold lilliputian coquettes projecting dreffes, studying colours, afforting ribbands and feathers, their little hearts beating with hopes about partners, and fears about rivals; and to fee their fresh checks pale after the midnight fupper, their aching heads and unbraced nerves difqualifying the little languid beings for the next day's talk, and to hear the grave apology," that it is owing to the wine, the crowd, the heated room of the last night's ball;" all this, I fay, would really be as ludicrous, as if the mifchief of the thing did not take off

from

from the merriment of it, as any of the ridiculous and prepofterous difproportions in the diverting travels of captain Lemuel Gulliver.

Under a just impreffion of the evils which we are fuftaining from the principles and the practices of modern France, we are apt to lose fight of thofe deep and lafting mischiefs which fo long, fo regularly, and so fyftema tically, we have been importing from the fame country, though in another form and under another government. In one refpect, indeed, the firft were the more formidable, because we embraced the ruin without fufpecting it; while we defeat the malignity of the latter, by detecting the turpitude, and defending ourselves against it. This is not the place to defcant on that levity of manners, that contempt of the fabbath, that familiarity with loofe principles, and those relaxed notions of conjugal fidelity, which have often been tranfplanted into this country by women of fashion as a too common effect of a long refidence in that but it is peculiarly fuitable to my fubject, to advert to another domeftic mifchief derived from the fame foreign extraction: I mean, the risks that have been run, and the facrifices which have been made, in order to furnish our young ladies with the means of acquiring the French language in the greateft poffible purity. Perfection in this accomplishment has been fo long established as the fupreme object, fo long confidered as the predominant excellence, to which all other excellencies must bow down, that it would be hopeless to attack a law which fashion has immutably decreed, and which has received the stamp of long prescription. We must therefore be contented with expreffing a wifh, that this indifpenfable perfection could have been attained at the expence of facrifices lefs im portant.

:

It is with the greater regret I animadvert on this and fome other pre

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vailing practices, as they are errors into which the wife and respectable have, through want of confideration, or rather through want of firmness to refift the tyranny of fashion, fometimes fallen. It has not been unusual, when mothers of rank and reputation have been asked how they ventured to intruft their daughters to foreigners, of whofe principles they knew nothing, except that they were Roman catholics, to anfwer, That they had taken care to be secure on that subject, for that it had been stipulated that the question of religion should never be agitated between the teacher and the pupil.' This, it must be confeffed, is a most desperate remedy; it is like ftarving to death to avoid being poifoned. And one cannet help trembling for the event of that education, from which religion as far as the governefs is concerned, is thus formally and fyftematically excluded. Surely, it would not be exacting too much, to fuggest, at least, that an attention no lefs fcrupulous fhould be exerted to infure the character of our children's inftructor for piety and knowledge, than is thought neceffary to afcertain that he has nothing pa tois in her dialect,

I would rate a correct pronunciation and an elegant phrafeology at their juft price, and I would not rate them low; but I would not offer up principle as a victim to founds and accents. And the matter is now made more eafy; for whatever difgrace it might once have brought on an Englifh lady, to have had. it suspected from her accent that she had the miffortune, not to be born in a neighbouring country; fome recent events may ferve to reconcile her to the fufpicion of having been bred in her own a country, to which, (with all its faults, which are many!) the whole world is looking up with envy and admiration, as the feat of true glory and of comparative happiness : a country, in which the exile, driven

out by the crimes of his own, finds a home! a country, to obtain the protection of which it was claim enough to be unfortunate; and no impediment to have been the subject of her direft foe! a country, which in this respect, humbly imitating the father of compaffion, when it offered mercy to a fuppliant enemy, never conditioned for merit, nor infifted on the virtues of the miferable as a preliminary to its own bounty.

On the Use of Definitions-Accuracy in Language.

Perfons having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words before they know the ideas for which they ftand, ufually continue to do fo all their lives, never taking the pains to fettle in their minds the determined ideas which belong to them. This want of a precise fignification in their words, when they come to reafon, especially in moral matters, is the cause of very obfcure and uncertain notions. They ufe thefe undetermined words confidently, without much troubling their heads about a certain fixed mean. ing, whereby, befide the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, that as in such discourse they are feldom in the right, fo they are as feldom to be convinced that they are in the wrong, it being just the fame to go about to draw thofe perfons out of their miftakes, who have no fettled notions, as to difpoffefs a vagrant of his habitation who has no fettled abode. The chief end of language being to be understood, words ferve not for that end when they do not excite in the hearer the fame idea which they ftand for in the mind of the speaker.'

I have chofen to shelter myfelf under the broad fanction of the great author here quoted (Locke) with a view to apply this rule in philology to a moral purpose; for it applies to the veracity of converfation as much as to its correctnefs; and as ftrongly

recommends unequivocal and fimple truth, as accurate and juft expreffion. Scarcely any one perhaps has an adequate conception, how much clear and correct expreffions favour the elucidation of truth; and the fide of truth is obviously on the fide of morals; it is in fact one and the fame caufe: and it is of course the same cause with that of religion also.

It is therefore no worthlefs part of education to ftudy the precife mean. ing of words, and the appropriate fignification of language. To this end, I know no better method than to acknow no better-method cultom young perfons very early to define common words and things; for, as definition feems to lie at the root of correctness, to be accustomed to define English words in English, would improve the understanding more than barely to know what those words are called in French or Italian. Or rather one use of learning other languages is, becaufe definition is often involved in etymology; that is, fince many English words take their derivation from foreign languages, they cannot be fo accurately underftood without fome knowledge ofthofe languages: but precifion of any kind too feldom finds its way into the education of women.

It is perhaps going out of my province to obferve, that it might be well if young men alfo, before they entered on the world, were to be furnished with correct definitions of certain words, the use of which is rather ambiguous. For inftance; they should be provided with a good definition of the word honour in the fashionable fenfe, fhewing what vices it includes and what virtues it does not include: the term good company, which even the courtly Petronius of our days has defined, as fometimes including not a few immoral and disreputable charac ters: religion, which in the various fenfes affigned it by the world, fometimes means fuperftition, fometimes fanaticifm, and fometimes a mere dif

pofition

pofition to attend on any kind of form of worship: the word goodness, which is made to mean every thing that is not notoriously bad; and fometimes even that too, if what is notorioufly bad be accompanied by good humour, pleafing manners, and a little almsgiving. By thefe means they would go forth armed against many of the falfe opinions, which thro' the abuse or ambiguous meaning of words pafs fo current in the world.

But to return to the youthful part of that fex which is the more immediate object of this little work. With correct definition they fhould alfo be taught to ftudy the fhades of words, and this not merely with a view to accuracy of expreffion, but to moral truth.

It may be thought ridiculous to affert, that morals have any connection with the purity of language, or that the precifion of truth may be violated through defect of critical exactnefs in the three degrees of comparison: yet how frequently do we hear from the dealers in fuperlatives, ofmoft admirable, fuperexcellent, and quite perfect' people, who, to plain perfons, not bred in the school of exaggeration, would appear mere common characters, not rifing above the level of mediocrity! By this negligence in the juft application of words, we shall be as much misled by thefe trope and gure ladies, when they degrade as when they panegyrize; for to a plain and fober judgment, a tradefman may not be the moft good for-nothing fellow that ever exifted,' merely becaufe it was impoffible for him to

execute in an hour an order which required a week: a lady may not be the most hideous fright the world ever faw,' though the make of her gown may have been obfolete for a month: nor may one's young friend's father be a monster of cruelty, though he may be a quiet gentleman who does not choofe to live at watering places, but likes to have his

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daughter ftay at home with him in the country.

But of all the parts of speech the interjection is the moft abundantly in ufe with the hyperbolical fair ones. Would it could be added that thefe emphatical expletives (if I may make ufe of a contradictory term) were not fometimes tinctured with prophanenefs! Though I am perfuaded that idle habit is more at the bottom of this deep offence than intended impiety, yet there is scarcely any error of youthful talk which wants feverer caftigation. And a habit of exclamation should be rejected by polished people as vulgar, even if it were not abhorred as profane.

The converfation of young females is alfo in danger of being overloaded with epithets. As in the warm fea. fon of youth hardly any thing is seen in the true point of vifion, fo hardly any thing is named in naked fimplicity; and the very fenfibility of the feelings is partly a cause of the extravagance of the expreffion. But here, as in other points, the facred writers, particularly of the New Teftament, prefent us with the pureft models: and its natural and unlaboured ftyle of expreffion is perhaps not the meaneft evidence of the truth of the Gofpel. There is throughout the whole narratives, no overcharged character, no elaborate defeription, nothing fludioufly emphatical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped out. There is little panegyric, and lefs invective: none but on great, and awful, and juftifiable occafions. The authors record their own faults with the fame honeity as if they were the faults of other men, and the faults of other men with as little amplification as if they were their own. There is perhaps no book in which adjec tives are fo fparingly used. A modeft ftatement of the fact, with no colouring and little comment, is the example held out to us for correcting the exuberances of paffion and of language,