“Things merely ornamental are soon disregarded, and disregard can scarcely be borne when there is no internal support.”
Another marked feature of the pamphlet is the extremely puritanical tendency of its sentiments. It was written at the period when Mary was sending sermon-like letters to George Blood, and breathes the same spirit of stern adherence to religious principles, though not to special dogma.
But perhaps the most noteworthy passage which occurs in the treatise is one on love, and in which, strangely enough, she establishes a belief which she was destined some years later to confirm by her actions. When the circumstances of her union with Godwin are remembered, her words seem prophetic.
“It is too universal a maxim with novelists,” she says, “that love is felt but once; though it appears to me that the heart which is capable of receiving an impression at all, and can distinguish, will turn to a new object when the first is found unworthy. I am convinced it is practicable, when a respect for goodness has the first place in the mind, and notions of perfection are not affixed to constancy.”
Though not very wonderful in itself, the “Education of Daughters” is, in its choice of subject and the standards it upholds, a worthy prelude to the riper work by which it was before very long followed.
The next work Mary published was a volume called “Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations calculated to regulate the Affections and form the Mind to Truth and Goodness.” This was written while her experience as school-mistress and governess was still fresh in her memory. As she explains in her Preface, her object was to make up in some measure for the defective education or moral training which, as a rule, children in those days received from their parents.
“Good habits,” she writes, “are infinitely preferable to the precepts of reason; but as this task requires more judgment than generally falls to the lot of parents, substitutes must be sought for, and medicines given, when regimen would have answered the purpose much better.
“... To wish that parents would, themselves, mould the ductile passions is a chimerical wish, as the present generation have their own passions to combat with, and fastidious pleasures to pursue, neglecting those nature points out. We must then pour premature knowledge into the succeeding one; and, teaching virtue, explain the nature of vice.”
In addressing a youthful audience, Mary was as deeply inspired by her love of goodness per se, and her detestation of conventional conceptions of virtue, as she was afterwards in appealing to older readers. She represents, in her book, two little girls, aged respectively twelve and fourteen, who have been sadly neglected during their early years, but who, fortunately, have at this period fallen under the care of a Mrs. Mason, who at once undertakes to form their character and train their intellect. This good lady, in whose name Mary sermonizes, seizes upon every event of the day to teach her charges a moral lesson. The defects she attacks are those most common to childhood. Cruelty to animals, peevishness, lying, greediness, indolence, procrastination, are in turn censured, and their opposite virtues praised. Some of the definitions of the qualities commended are excellent. For example, Mrs. Mason says to the two children:—
“Do you know the meaning of the word goodness? I see you are unwilling to answer. I will tell you. It is, first, to avoid hurting anything; and then to contrive to give as much pleasure as you can.”