er thinks of
presiding both in the King's Bench, and in the Court of Chancery. The
science of healing is not only divided into its three distinct branches,
but in the profession of surgery only, how many are the subdivisions!
One professor undertakes the eye, another the ear, and a third the
teeth. But woman, ambitious, aspiring, universal, triumphant, glorious
woman, even at the age of a school-boy, encounters the whole range of
arts, attacks the whole circle of sciences!"

"A mighty maze, and _quite_ without a plan," replied Sir John, laughing.
"But the truth is, the misfortune does not so much consist in their
learning every thing, as in their knowing nothing; I mean nothing well.
When gold is beaten out so wide, the lamina must needs be very thin. And
you may observe, the more valuable attainments, though they are not to
be left out of the modish plan, are kept in the background; and are to
be picked up out of the odd remnants of that time, the sum of which is
devoted to frivolous accomplishments. All this gay confusion of
acquirements, these holiday splendors, this superfluity of enterprise,
enumerated in the first part of her catalogue, is the _real business_ of
education, the latter part is incidental, and if taught is not learned.

"As to the lectures so boastfully mentioned, they may doubtless be made
very useful subsidiaries to instruction. They most happily illustrate
book-knowledge; but if the pupil's instructions in private do not
precede, and keep pace with these useful public exhibitions, her
knowledge will be only presumptuous ignorance. She may learn to talk of
oxygen and hydrogen, and deflagration, and trituration but she will know
nothing of the science except the terms. It is not knowing the name of
his tools that makes an artist; and I should be afraid of the vanity
which such superficial information would communicate to a mind not
previously prepared, nor exercised at home in corresponding studies. But
as Miss Rattle honestly confessed, as soon as she _comes out_, all these
things will die away of themselves, and dancing and music will be almost
all which will survive of her multifarious pursuits."

"I look upon the great predominance of music in female education," said
Mr. Stanley, "to be the source of more mischief than is suspected; not
from any evil in the thing itself, but from its being such a gulf of
time, as really to leave little room for solid acquisitions. I love
music, and, were it on