The Female Mind has hitherto been considered as a sort of fancy bazaar, in which all kinds of light articles are to be stowed away without regard to order or utility. If we could unlock the stores of female knowledge, such, at least, as the modern boarding-school supplies—we should find an extraordinary conglomeration of miscellaneous goods, bads, and indifferents, which though somehow or other reduced under one head, and that not always a strong one, are brought into a state of "disorder" which is, by us, at least, any thing but "admired." If we might be permitted the privilege of examining phrenologically the interior of a young lady's head, we should find not only what—but how completely—modern education has done for it. We will take any average boarding-school Miss, and instead of turning her organs into finger-organs, by merely passing our hands over the exterior bumps, we take the liberty of breaking her head at once, and looking directly into it.
We find Constructiveness in a state of entanglement with the quantity of crotchet and other fancy work in which it is completely bound up, for want of some more useful matter for the employment of this valuable quality; and on looking to the organ of Imitation, we see it exercised on a parcel of the most ridiculous airs and affectations, to say nothing of more dangerous qualities, set before it for the purpose of calling into practice its powers of copying. As to Number, its whole capacity seems to be concentrated on number one: and Comparison is clogged up with entire wardrobes, as if the only use of comparison to the female mind was to be its application to the respective bonnets, dresses, and articles of millinery worn by friends, enemies, or acquaintances. Causality shows us an instance of something like an appropriate application of the organ; for it is intended to be one of inquiry, and it is exercised certainly in a questionable manner, for it is constantly directed, by the modern system of female education, to the asking, How it is an "establishment" is to be gained? or, Why it is that one person has succeeded in getting a husband before another? Eventuality is devoted to the cognizance of no more important events than Births, Deaths, and Marriages; while Form, Size, and Color are exercised respectively on the noses, mustaches, and eyes of the other sex, the organ of Weight being brought to bear on the estimating of bankers' balances. Order goes wholesale to the dressmaker's; Ideality knows nothing of any ideal but a beau; and Time and Tune are clogged with all sorts of airs, calling into operation Destructiveness, as far as the keys of an instrument are concerned, and Secretiveness as far as any meaning is conveyed by the means of so much labor.
Having brought ourselves to the sad conclusion that the examination of a fashionably-educated female head reveals nothing but faculties mis-employed, and valuable material wasted on what is not material at all, we can not but express a wish that Ladies' Preparatory Schools could be established, in which the pupils might be fitted for the useful, as well as the ornamental parts of life, and where the fact of there being a kitchen as well as a drawing-room to every house would not be altogether lost sight of. If the world could be got through in a Polka, to the accompaniment of a cornet-à-piston, the boarding-schools of the present day would be well enough; but as there is a sort of every-day walk to be gone through, we should greatly appreciate any system of female education that should fit women to get through the world with us, instead of merely getting through our money.
In the first place, we would put into execution the great design of our artist, who has shown us a Preparatory School in which cookery should be studied as an art, and in which the dressing of a dinner would be learned as a matter of course—or of one, two, or three courses of lectures. There should be a regular series of instruction, from the shelling of a pea by the smallest class, to the achievement of the most exquisite Mayonnaise by the more advanced scholars. The young ladies would be taught not only how to make their entreé into a drawing-room, but how to prepare an entreé worthy of the dinner-table. We would have cookery inculcated in its most elementary form, and although we should shrink from any thing like harshness, we should not hesitate to put the beginners through a vigorous course of basting for the first year or so.
The rules of arithmetic could easily be adapted to the culinary art, and such propositions as
3 Eggs make one Omelette.
2 Omelettes make one Breakfast.
3 Breakfasts à la fourchette make one Dinner,
and other calculations of a similar kind, would make the young female student familiar with her tables not only in their ordinary sense, but with what her tables ought to furnish samples of. We would suggest, also, periodical examinations in the higher branches of cookery, and translations of English food into French dishes. The rendering of a small slice of beef into a filet piqué aux légumes printaniers, would form an exercise quite as difficult, and certainly as useful, as any other conversion of English into French; and the proper garniture of a leg of mutton would be as great a trial to the taste as if it were employed on merely millinery trimmings.
We should be glad to see the establishment of a culinary college for young ladies, and though we would not exactly recommend the cramming system to the fairer sex, we think that beef and mutton would furnish quite as valuable food for their minds, as a great deal of that that is now put into them.