nfusion existing in the world. It is the
substitution of the part for a whole. The time when young women enter
upon life, is the one point to which all plans of education tend, and at
which they all terminate: and to prepare them for that point is the
object of their training. Is it not cruel to lay up for them a store of
future wretchedness, by an education which has no period in view but
one; a very short one, and the most unimportant and irresponsible of the
whole of life? Who that had the power of choice would choose to buy the
admiration of the world for a few short years with the happiness of a
whole life? the temporary power to dazzle and to charm, with the growing
sense of duties undertaken only to be neglected, and responsibilities
the existence of which is discovered perhaps simultaneously with that of
an utter inability to meet them? Even if the mischief stopped here, it
would be sufficiently great; but the craving appetite for applause once
roused, is not so easily lulled again. The moral energies, pampered by
unwholesome nourishment,--like the body when disordered by luxurious
dainties,--refuse to perform their healthy functions, and thus is
occasioned a perpetual strife and warfare of internal principles; the
selfish principle still seeking the accustomed gratification, the
conjugal and maternal prompting to the performance of duty. But duty is
a cold word; and people, in order to find pleasure in duty, must have
been trained to consider their duties as pleasures. This is a truth at
which no one arrives by inspiration! And in this moral struggle, which,
like all other struggles, produces lassitude and distaste of all things,
the happiness of the individual is lost, her usefulness destroyed, her
influence most pernicious. For nothing has so injurious an effect on
temper and manners, and consequently on moral influence, as the want of
that internal quiet which can only arise from the accordance of duty
with inclination. Another most pernicious effect is, the deadening
within the heart of the feeling of love, which is the root of all
influence; for it is an extraordinary fact, that vanity acts as a sort
of refrigerator on all men--on the possessor of it, and on the observer.

Now, if conscientiousness and unselfishness be the two main supports of
women's beneficial influence, how can any education be good which has
not the cultivation of these qualities for its first and principal
object? The grand objects, th