"As to the lectures so boastfully mentioned, they may doubtless be made very useful subsidiaries to instruction. They most happily illustrate book-knowledge; but if the pupil's instructions in private do not precede, and keep pace with these useful public exhibitions, her knowledge will be only presumptuous ignorance. She may learn to talk of oxygen and hydrogen, and deflagration, and trituration but she will know nothing of the science except the terms. It is not knowing the name of his tools that makes an artist; and I should be afraid of the vanity which such superficial information would communicate to a mind not previously prepared, nor exercised at home in corresponding studies. But as Miss Rattle honestly confessed, as soon as she _comes out_, all these things will die away of themselves, and dancing and music will be almost all which will survive of her multifarious pursuits." "I look upon the great predominance of music in female education," said Mr. Stanley, "to be the source of more mischief than is suspected; not from any evil in the thing itself, but from its being such a gulf of time, as really to leave little room for solid acquisitions. I love music, and, were it only cultivated as an amusement, should commend it. But the monstrous proportion, or rather disproportion of life which it swallows up, even in many religious families--and this is the chief subject of my regret--has converted an innocent diversion into a positive sin. I question if many gay men devote more hours in a day to idle purposes, than the daughters of many pious parents spend in this amusement. All these hours the mind lies fallow, improvement is at a stand, if even it does not retrograde. Nor is it the shreds and scraps of time, stolen in the intervals of better things, that are so devoted; but it is the morning, the prime, the profitable, the active hours, when the mind is vigorous, the spirits light, the intellect awake and fresh, and the whole being wound up by the refreshment of sleep, and animated by the return of light and life, for nobler services." "If," said Sir John, "music were cultivated to embellish retirement, to be practiced where pleasures are scarce, and good performers are not to be had, it would quite alter the case. But the truth is, these highly taught ladies are not only living in public where they constantly hear the most exquisite professors, but they have them also at their own houses. Now one of these two things must happen. Either the performance of the lady will be so inferior as not to be worth hearing on the comparison, or so good that she will fancy herself the rival, instead of the admirer of the performer, whom she had better pay and praise than fruitlessly emulate." "This anxious struggle to reach the unattainable excellence of the professor," said Mr. Stanley, "often brings to my mind the contest for victory between the ambitious nightingale and the angry lutanist in the beautiful Prolusion of Strada."