Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours,
And on their gossamer intellect sternly showers
Science, with all its horrid accessaries.
Now, seriously, the only things, I think,
In which young ladies should instructed be,
Are—stocking-mending, love, and cookery!—
Accomplishments that very soon will sink,
Since Fluxions now, and Sanscrit conversation,
Always form part of female education!’
“Something good in the way of inculcation may be educed from this rather biting sonnet. If woman so far forgets her ‘mission,’ as it is common to term it now-a-days, as to choose those accomplishments whose only recommendation is that they are ‘the vogue,’ in preference to acquisitions which will fit her to be a better wife and mother, she becomes a fair subject for the shafts of the satirical censor.”