"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." [Footnote 4: See an ingenious little treatise entitled Latium Redivivum, or the modern use of the Latin language, and the prevalence of the French.] "If you prohibit Italian," said Sir John, laughing, "I will serve you as Cowper advised the boys and girls to serve Johnson for depreciating Henry and Emma; I will join the musical and poetical ladies in tearing you to pieces, as the Thracian damsels did Orpheus, and send your head with his "Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore."