you read The Young Lady's Book? You have had plenty of time to do
so, for it was published in 1829. It was described by the two anonymous
Gentlewomen who compiled it as 'A Manual for Elegant Recreations,
Exercises, and Pursuits.' You wonder they had nothing better to think
of? You suspect them of having been triflers? They were not, believe
me. They were careful to explain, at the outset, that the Virtues of
Character were what a young lady should most assiduously cultivate.
They, in their day, labouring under the shadow of the eighteenth
century, had somehow in themselves that high moral fervour which marks
the opening of the twentieth century, and is said to have come in with
Mr. George Bernard Shaw. But, unlike us, they were not concerned wholly
with the inward and spiritual side of life. They cared for the material
surface, too. They were learned in the frills and furbelows of things.
They gave, indeed, a whole chapter to 'Embroidery.' Another they gave
to 'Archery,' another to 'The Aviary,' another to 'The Escrutoire.'
Young ladies do not now keep birds, nor shoot with bow and arrow; but
they do still, in some measure, write letters; and so, for sake of
historical comparison, let me give you a glance at 'The Escrutoire.' It
is not light reading.

'For careless scrawls ye boast of no pretence;
Fair Russell wrote, as well as spoke, with sense.'

Thus is the chapter headed, with a delightful little wood engraving of
'Fair Russell,' looking pre-eminently sensible, at her desk, to prepare
the reader for the imminent welter of rules for 'decorous composition.'
Not that pedantry is approved. 'Ease and simplicity, an even flow of
unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious sentiments'
is the ideal to be striven for. 'A metaphor may be used with advantage'
by any young lady, but only 'if it occur naturally.' And 'allusions are
elegant,' but only 'when introduced with ease, and when they are well
understood by those to whom they are addressed.' 'An antithesis renders
a passage piquant'; but the dire results of a too-frequent indulgence
in it are relentlessly set forth. Pages and pages are devoted to a
minute survey of the pit-falls of punctuation. But when the young lady
of that period had skirted all these, and had observed all the manifold
rules of caligraphy that were here laid down for her, she was not, even
then, out of the wood. Very special stress was laid on 'the use of the
seal.' Bitter scorn was