I was charmed at these concessions from Sir John, and exclaimed with a transport which I could not restrain: "In our friends, even in our common acquaintance, do we not delight to associate with those whose pursuits have been similar to our own, and who have read the same books? How dull do we find it, when civility compels us to pass even a day with an illiterate man? Shall we not then delight in the kindred acquirements of a dearer friend? Shall we not rejoice in a companion who has drawn, though less copiously, perhaps, from the same rich sources with ourselves; who can relish the beauty we quote, and trace the allusion at which we hint? I do not mean that learning is absolutely necessary, but a man of taste who has an ignorant wife, can not, in her company, think his own thoughts, nor speak his own language; his thoughts he will suppress; his language he will debase, the one from hopelessness, the other from compassion. He must be continually lowering and diluting his meaning, in order to make himself intelligible. This he will do for the woman he loves, but in doing it he will not be happy. She, who can not be entertained by his conversation, will not be convinced by his reasoning; and at length he will find out that it is less trouble to lower his own standard to hers, than to exhaust himself in the vain attempt to raise hers to his own."
"A fine high-sounding tirade, Charles, spoken con amore," said Sir John. "I really believe, though, that one reason why women are so frivolous is, that the things they are taught are not solid enough to fix the attention, exercise the intellect, and fortify the understanding. They learn little that inures to reasoning, or compels to patient meditation."
"I consider the difficulties of a solid education," said Mr. Stanley, "as a sort of preliminary course, intended perhaps by Providence as a gradual preparative for the subsequent difficulties of life; as a prelude to the acquisition of that solidity and firmness of character which actual trials are hereafter to confirm. Though I would not make instruction unnecessarily harsh and rugged, yet I would not wish to increase its facilities to such a degree as to weaken that robustness of mind which it should be its object to promote, in order to render mental discipline subservient to moral."
"How have you managed with your other girls, Stanley?" said Sir John, "for though you vindicate general knowledge, you profess not to wish for general learning in the sex."
"Far from it," replied Mr. Stanley. "I am a gardener you know, and accustomed to study the genius of the soil before I plant. Most of my daughters, like the daughters of other men, have some one talent, or at least propensity; for parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius. This propensity I endeavor to find out and to cultivate. But if I find the natural bias very strong, and not very safe, I then labor to counteract, instead of encouraging the tendency, and try to give it a fresh direction. Lucilla having a strong bent to whatever relates to intellectual taste, I have read over with her the most unexceptionable parts of a few of the best Roman classics. She began at nine years old, for I have remarked that it is not learning much, but learning late, which makes pedants.
"Ph[oe]be, who has a superabundance of vivacity, I have in some measure tamed, by making her not only a complete mistress of arithmetic, but by giving her a tincture of mathematics. Nothing puts such a bridle on the fancy as demonstration. A habit of computing steadies the mind, and subdues the soarings of imagination. It sobers the vagaries of trope and figure, substitutes truth for metaphor, and exactness for amplification. This girl, who if she had been fed on poetry and works of imagination, might have become a Miss Sparkes, now rather gives herself the airs of a calculator and of a grave computist. Though as in the case of the cat in the fable, who was metamorphosed into a lady, nature will breath out as soon as the scratching of a mouse is heard; and all Ph[oe]be's philosophy can scarcely keep her in order, if any work of fancy comes in her way.
"To soften the horrors of her fate, however, I allowed her to read a few of the best things in her favorite class. When I read to her the more delicate parts of Gulliver's Travels, with which she was enchanted, she affected to be angry at the voyage to Laputa, because it ridicules philosophical science. And in Brobdignag, she said, the proportions were not correct. I must, however, explain to you, that the use which I made of these dry studies with Ph[oe]be, was precisely the same which the ingenious Mr. Cheshire makes of his steel machines for defective shapes, to straiten a crooked tendency or strengthen a weak one. Having employed these means to set her mind upright, and to cure a wrong bias; as that skillful gentleman discards his apparatus as soon as the patient becomes strait, so have I discontinued these pursuits, for I never meant to make a mathematical lady. Jane has a fine ear and a pretty voice, and will sing and play well enough for any girl who is not to make music her profession. One or two of the others sing agreeably.
"The little one, who brought the last nosegay, has a strong turn for natural history, and we all of us generally botanize a little of an evening, which gives a fresh interest to our walks. She will soon draw plants and flowers pretty accurately. Louisa also has some taste in designing, and takes tolerable sketches from nature. These we encourage because they are solitary pleasures, and want no witnesses. They all are too eager to impart somewhat of what they know to your little favorite Celia, who is in danger of picking up a little of every thing, the sure way to excel in nothing.
"Thus each girl is furnished with some one source of independent amusement. But what would become of them, or rather what would become of their mother and me, if every one of them was a scholar, a mathematician, a singer, a performer, a botanist, a painter? Did we attempt to force all these acquirements and a dozen more on every girl; all her time would be occupied about things which will be of no value to her in eternity. I need not tell you that we are carefully communicating to every one of them that general knowledge which should be common to all gentlewomen.
"In unrolling the vast volume of ancient and modern history, I ground on it some of my most useful instructions, and point out how the truth of Scripture is illustrated by the crimes and corruptions which history records, and how the same pride, covetousness, ambition, turbulence, and deceit, which bring misery on empires, destroy the peace of families. To history, geography and chronology are such, indispensable appendages, that it would be superfluous to insist on their usefulness. As to astronomy, while 'the heavens declare the glory of God,' it seems a kind of impiety, not to give young people some insight into it." "I hope," said Sir John, "that you do not exclude the modern languages from your plan." "As to the French," replied Mr. Stanley, "with that thorough inconsistency which is common to man, the demand for it seems to have risen in exact proportion as it ought to have sunk.[4] I would not, however, rob my children of a language in which, though there are more books to be avoided, there are more that deserve to be read, than in all the foreign languages put together."