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DAUGHTERS.

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CHAPTER XI.

DAUGHTERS.

Their Education-Abuses-Accomplishments-The Mistress of a Home-Reformation needed-Who must Promote it-Influence of Daughters at HomeFriendships-Intercourse of Brothers and Sisters-Lord Byron-ExamplesMary Wollstonecroft-Madame de Stael-Mira S

In some respects the training of our daughters ranks among the least creditable portions of our social system. If wisdom consists in the adaptation of right means to a right end, we cannot always trace such wisdom in that training. Christian principle, engrafted upon prevailing customs, may do much to remedy existing evils, but that many do exist is painfully certain.

If we saw the custodier of some precious gem engrossed with the casket which contained it, but heedless of the costly contents, could we admire his watchfulness or wisdom?

If we saw the owner of some princely palace enraptured with its stuccoes or its gilding, but blind to all its symmetry or grandeur, could either his skill or his taste be praised?

If we saw a person, mature in years, engrossed with the toys of children, when some weighty matters were soliciting his thoughts, could we approve of his preference, and call his folly prudent?

Yet all these find a parallel in the treatment of many of the daughters of this land regarding education. In past

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years at least, and in many places still, the glare of external appearance has taken precedence of the training which moulds the heart and soul. Indeed the soul is not seldom sacrificed to the body. The immortal and the spiritual are overlaid by the conventional, and the frivolity of girlhood has only been perpetuated by the lessons and the discipline which should have fitted it for moulding the minds of the future. The real business of life is often utterly omitted in the training which pretends to fit our daughters for it; hence the urgent need of the caution given, among many others, by a judicious father to his daughter on the eve of marriage" From the hour you marry," he says, "you assume the character of a matron: be not a childish, girlish wife the vows of God are upon you: sustain their gravity and prudence in all things." But, true as that is, too rarely are wise or scriptural means employed to train such future

matrons.

Accomplishments are not to be undervalued, when they are worthy of the name. Let them be carried as far as is consistent with the attention which is due to still higher interests; but, for the sake of all Home happiness, let not such things overlay those qualifications which the real duties of life demand. He who looks at this subject with the eye of a Christian cannot fail to notice, that interests the most precious are often sacrificed in the training of daughters. Before they can be of use, when they occupy the places which God may assign them in the future, they must unlearn much of what once engrossed their whole soul. The frivolous, the merely showy, have largely overlaid the useful; but hear a woman on what is peculiarly a woman's topic.

Speaking of the education of girls, one has boldly said :—

REFORMATIONS NEEDED.

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"Have any means, direct or indirect, prepared her for her duties as the mistress of a Home? No; but she is a linguist, a pianist, graceful, and admired! But what is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such education is mistaking means for ends a common error, and the source of half the moral confusion existing in the world: it is the substitution of a part for the 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. cruel thus 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 life-the period between leaving school and marriage? Who that has 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?"

But is it not

Yet such is the training of many a daughter, too often for lifelong uselessness, perhaps lifelong discomfort. And with such training, it must seem a marvel that hon.es are not the abodes of wretchedness more frequently than they are. There are, no doubt, many things to counteract these evils. The hard schooling of necessity-encountering the stern realities of life, or the all-surpassing power of affection, may help to surmount many a trial, or supplement many a shortcoming. But parents who love their daughters should wisely consider the evils now named. Can they be reformed? Then let them be so by the influence of Maternal Associations, or any other appliance to which the Word of God and the love of Christian mothers may direct. But are we chained down by some iron necessity? Nothing less can exculpate us for con

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A DAUGHTER'S FIRST DUTY.

tinuing the systems of training which have too widely and too long prevailed. A single generation of Christian mothers, thoroughly, wisely, and resolutely alive to the right education of their daughters, would mitigate such abuses. That revolution must begin with mothers—with such mothers as dare to be singular that their daughters may be happy-so singular as to prefer the solid to the showy, or the useful to the encumbering. "Let the period for training parents themselves arrive, especially of female education to qualify for maternal duty-and a family millennium would begin."

But now, turning to the daughters themselves, one of their first duties at Home is to make their mother happy-to shun all that would pain or even perplex her, and the heart of that daughter is neither gentle nor generous who can ever forget what she owes to a mother's love. "Always seeking the pleasure of others, always careless of her own," is one of the finest encomiums ever pronounced upon a daughter. True: at that period of life when dreams are realities, and realities seem dreams, this may be forgotten. Mothers may find only labour and sorrow where they had a right to expect repose; but the daughter who would make her home and her mother happy, should learn betimes that, next to duty to God our Saviour, comes duty to her who is always the first to rejoice in our joy, and to weep when we weep. Of all the proofs of heartlessness which youth can give, the strongest is indifference to a mother's happiness or sorrow.

We need expect none of these things, however, unless the truth as it is in Jesus reign in the heart. Natural affection is lovely; but one strong natural feeling may extinguish another; and hence the love of folly may overlay the love of a mother even in a daughter's soul. It is the love of Christ

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constraining—that love which the Spirit of God produces, that must rectify or rule all, and without that the young heart is a ship without either pilot, helm, or sail.

We should not neglect to mention here the necessity of attending to household economy in all its departments. There are wise sayings afloat which shew how far such things are needed to make home happy, and the confusion, the discomfort, in some cases the poverty, or perhaps the bankruptcy of Home, can be traced to the want of such humble household acquirements. The frivolous girl who could heartlessly occasion tears to her mother will probably prove as heartless a wife, and will perhaps see into the depths of her folly only when her own misguided children retaliate upon her, with interest, the misery occasioned to her parent. At all events, the daughter who neglects the useful and the practical for the merely glaring in education, is preparing to be a burden or a plague.

Friendship is another subject which should be considered with care in regard to daughters. It is often tender and beautiful among them. Their ductile nature, and their kindly, genial feelings render their attachments warm, and it is one of the pleasures of life to mark the ardour with which one young soul often clings to another. Yet there is peril even here. Who has not seen the effects of too ardent friendships with ill-sorted natures? Petulance or vanity has thus been fostered when it should have been repressed, and the root of the evil has been some flippant but admired friend. There are few who can review their youthful days, with a believer's eyes, without noticing or deploring such results of early friendship.

Or farther: the intercourse of brothers and sisters forms

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