h the thing that is actually
done. But if it be urged, that all women cannot expect to marry men of
sense and feeling; and if we are told, that nevertheless they must
look to "an advantageous establishment," we must conclude, that men of
rank and fortune are meant by that comprehensive phrase. Another set
of arguments must be used to those who speculate on their daughters
accomplishments in this line. They have, perhaps, seen some instances
of what they call success; they have seen some young women of their
acquaintance, whose accomplishments have attracted men of fortune
superior to their own; consequently, maternal tenderness is awakened,
and many mothers are sanguine in their expectations of the effect of
their daughters education. But they forget that every body now makes
the same reflections, that parents are, and have been for some years,
speculating in the same line; consequently, the market is likely to be
overstocked, and, of course, the value of the commodities must fall.
Every young lady (and every young woman is now a young lady) has some
pretensions to accomplishments. She draws a little; or she plays a
little, or she speaks French a little. Even the blue-board boarding
schools, ridiculed by Miss Allscript in the Heiress, profess to
perfect young ladies in some or all of these necessary parts of
education. Stop at any good inn on the London roads, and you will
probably find that the landlady's daughter can show you some of her
own framed drawings, can play a tune upon her spinnet, or support a
dialogue in French of a reasonable length, in the customary questions
and answers. Now it is the practice in high life to undervalue, and
avoid as much as possible, every thing which descends to the inferiour
classes of society. The dress of to-day is unfashionable to-morrow,
because every body wears it. The dress is not preferred because it is
pretty or useful, but because it is the distinction of well bred
people. In the same manner accomplishments have lost much of that
value which they acquired from opinion, since they have become common.
They are now so common, that they cannot be considered as the
distinguishing characteristics of even a gentlewoman's education. The
higher classes in life, and those individuals who aim at distinction,
now establish another species of monopoly, and secure to themselves a
certain set of expensive masters in music, drawing, dancing, &c. and
they endeavour to believe, and to make oth