embraces the routine of
housewifery and the management of the ordinary concerns of domestic
life.

The second department of her duties, as it is the most important, so it
must be regarded and exalted in an enlightened system of female
education. It is as the centre of social influence; the genial power of
domestic life; the soul of refinement; the clear, shining orb, beneath
whose beams the germs of thought, feeling, and habit in the young
immortal are to vegetate and grow to maturity; the ennobling companion
of man, his light in darkness, his joy in sorrow, uniting her practical
judgment with his speculative wisdom, her enthusiastic affection with
his colder nature, her delicacy of taste and sentiment with his
boldness, and so producing a happy mean, a whole character; natural,
beautiful and strong; it is as filling these high offices that woman is
to be regarded and treated in the attempt to educate her. The
description of her sphere of life at once suggests the character of her
training. Whatever in science, literature and art is best adapted to
prepare her to fill this high position with greatest credit, and spread
farthest around it her appropriate influence, belongs of right to her
education. Her intellect is to be thoroughly disciplined, her judgment
matured, her taste refined, her power of connected and just thought
developed, and a love for knowledge imparted, so that she may possess
the ability and the desire for future progress.

Who will say that this refiner of the world, this minister of the
holiest and happiest influences to man, shall be condemned to the
scantiest store of intellectual preparation for an entertainment so
large and noble? Is it true that a happy ignorance is the best
qualification for a woman's life; that in seeking to exalt the fathers
and sons, we are to begin by the degradation of mothers and daughters?
Is there anything in that life incompatible with the noblest education,
or which such an education will not ennoble and adorn? We are not
seeking in all this to make our daughters profound historians, poets,
philosophers, linguists, authors. Success of this high character in
these pursuits, is usually the result of an ardent devotion for years to
some one of them, for which it is rarely a female has the requisite
opportunities. But should they choose occasionally some particular walk
of literature, and by the power of genius vivify and adorn it; should
there be found here and there o