Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a LadyChapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Religion
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Lady
Chapone, Mrs. (Hester)
Women -- Education; Young women -- Conduct of life
And now, my dear, I think it is time to finish this long correspondence,
which, though in some parts it may have been tedious to you, will not, I
hope, be found entirely useless in any. I have laid before you all that
my maturest reflections could enable me to suggest, for the direction of
your conduct through life. My love for you, my dearest child, extends
its views beyond this frail and transitory existence; it considers you
as a candidate for immortality--as entering the lists for the prize of
your high calling--as contending for a crown of unfading glory. It sees,
with anxious solicitude, the dangers that surround you, and the
everlasting shame that must follow, if you do not exert all your
strength in the conflict. Religion therefore has been the basis of my
plan--the principle to which every other pursuit is ultimately referred.
Here then I have endeavoured to guide your researches; and to assist you
in forming just notions on a subject of such infinite importance, I have
shown you the necessity of regulating your heart and temper, according
to the genuine spirit of that religion which I have so earnestly
recommended as the great rule of your life. To the same principle I
would refer your attention to domestic duties; and, even that refinement
and elegance of manners, and all those graces and accomplishments, which
will set your virtues in the fairest light, and will engage the
affection and respect of all who converse with you. Endeared to society
by these amiable qualities, your influence in it will be more extensive,
and your capacity of being useful proportionably enlarged. The studies,
which I have recommended to you, must be likewise subservient to the
same views; the pursuit of knowledge, when it is guided and controlled
by the principles I have established, will conduce to many valuable
ends: the habit of industry it will give you, the nobler kind of
friendships for which it will qualify you, and its tendency to promote a
candid and liberal way of thinking, are obvious advantages. I might add,
that a mind well informed in the various pursuits which interest
mankind, and the influence of such pursuits on their happiness, will
embrace with a clearer choice, and will more steadily adhere to, those
principles of Virtue and Religion, which the judgment must ever approve,
in proportion as it becomes enlightened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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