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
persons obliged to bear with your humours; whilst a compliant,
reasonable, and contented disposition, would render you happy in
yourself, and beloved by all your companions; particularly by those, who
live constantly with you; and, of what consequence this is to your
happiness, a moment's reflection will convince you. Family friendships
are the friendships made for us, if I may so speak, by God himself. With
the kindest intentions, he has knit the bands of family love, by
indispensable duties; and wretched are they who have burst them asunder
by violence and ill-will, or worn them out by constant little
disobligations, and by the want of that attention to please, which the
presence of a stranger always inspires, but which is so often shamefully
neglected towards those, whom it is most our duty and interest to
please. May you, my dear, be wise enough to see that every faculty of
entertainment, every engaging qualification, which you possess, is
exerted to the best advantage for those, whose love is of most
importance to you--for those who live under the same roof, and with whom
you are connected for life, either by the ties of blood, or by the still
more sacred obligations of a voluntary engagement.
To make you the delight and darling of your family, something more is
required than barely to be exempt from ill-temper and troublesome
humours. The sincere and genuine smiles of complacency and love must
adorn your countenance. That ready compliance, that alertness to assist
and oblige, which demonstrates true affection, must animate your
behaviour, and endear your most common action. Politeness must accompany
your greatest familiarities, and restrain you from every thing that is
really offensive, or which can give a moment's unnecessary pain.
Conversation, which is so apt to grow dull and insipid in families, nay,
in some to be almost wholly laid aside, must be cultivated with the
frankness and openness of friendship, and by the mutual communication of
whatever may conduce to the improvement or innocent entertainment of
each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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