Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3Various
Religion
Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3
Various
Christian life -- Periodicals
Who will say that this refiner of the world, this minister of the
holiest and happiest influences to man, shall be condemned to the
scantiest store of intellectual preparation for an entertainment so
large and noble? Is it true that a happy ignorance is the best
qualification for a woman's life; that in seeking to exalt the fathers
and sons, we are to begin by the degradation of mothers and daughters?
Is there anything in that life incompatible with the noblest education,
or which such an education will not ennoble and adorn? We are not
seeking in all this to make our daughters profound historians, poets,
philosophers, linguists, authors. Success of this high character in
these pursuits, is usually the result of an ardent devotion for years to
some one of them, for which it is rarely a female has the requisite
opportunities. But should they choose occasionally some particular walk
of literature, and by the power of genius vivify and adorn it; should
there be found here and there one with an intense enthusiasm for some
high pursuit, combined with that patient toil which, associated with a
vigorous intellect, is the well-spring of so many glorious streams of
science, should not such a result of this enlarged education be hailed
as the sign of its excellence, and rejoiced in as the proof of its
power? The Mores, the Hemanses, the De Staels, and others among the
immortal dead and the living, who compose that bright galaxy of female
wit shining ever refulgent--have they added nothing to human life, and
given no quick, upward impulse of the world? Besides, that system of
education which, in occasional instances, uniting with a material of
peculiar excellence, is sufficient to enkindle an orb whose light,
passing far beyond the circle of home, shall shine upon a great assembly
of minds, will only be powerful, in the multitude of cases, to impart
that intellectual discipline, that refinement of thought, that power of
expression, that sympathy with taste for knowledge, which will best
prepare her for her position, and enable her in after life to carry
forward her own improvement and that of her associated household.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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