There will now be no means of
instruction for females, nor any refuge for those who are without friends
or relations: thousands of orphans must be thrown unprotected on the
world, and guardians, or single men, left with the care of children, have
no way to dispose of them properly. I do not contend that the education
of a convent is the best possible: yet are there many advantages
attending it; and I believe it will readily be granted, that an education
not quite perfect is better than no education at all. It would not be
very difficult to prove, that the systems of education, both in England
and France, are extremely defective; and if the characters of women are
generally better formed in one than the other, it is not owing to the
superiority of boarding-schools over convents, but to the difference of
our national manners, which tend to produce qualities not necessary, or
not valued, in France.
The most distinguished female excellencies in England are an attachment
to domestic life, an attention to its oeconomies, and a cultivated
understanding. Here, any thing like house-wifery is not expected but
from the lower classes, and reading or information is confined chiefly to
professed wits. Yet the qualities so much esteemed in England are not
the effect of education: few domestic accomplishments, and little useful
knowledge, are acquired at a boarding-school; but finally the national
character asserts its empire, and the female who has gone through a
course of frivolities from six to sixteen, who has been taught that the
first "human principle" should be to give an elegant tournure to her
person, after a few years' dissipation, becomes a good wife and mother,
and a rational companion.
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