One angle of the _tribuna_ is entirely dedicated to the education of women. Twenty young ladies are admitted, and there are funds for their perpetual maintenance, as that of the two hundred scholars. In the selection of these young gentlewomen, she always gives the preference to those who labour under any imperfection of body--endeavouring, by increasing their resources _within themselves_, to compensate for their _outward defects_. When it is found that any of these ladies have a taste for any manual or mental art, they cultivate it, and assist them in the pleasantest means, and by various little attentions confirm these inclinations with all the spirit of pursuit requisite to preserve minds (in general) from that state of languidness and inactivity, whereby life is rendered irksome to those who have never found it unfortunate. In this establishment she entirely runs counter to that of Madame de Maintenon's at Saint Cyr; where the young women, who should have been instructed in rural labours, and economy in the duties of a family, in the employments of _Solomon's virtuous women_, by their education, were only fit to be addressed by men who were rich enough to require in a wife nothing _but virtue_. This is also the foible of too many parents, who all expect their daughters are to fill exalted stations in life, and by educating them with that view, disqualify them for their after lot. As divines say that some people take more pains to be damned than it would cost them to be saved, so many people employ more thought, memory, and application, to be fools, than would serve to make them wise and useful members of society. The ancients esteemed it an honor to understand the making of every thing necessary for life one's self, without any dependence on others; and it is that which Homer most commonly calls _wisdom_ and _knowledge_. He describes old Eumæus making his own shoes, and says, he had built some fine stalls for the cattle he bred. Ulysses himself built his own house, and set up his bed with great art, the structure of which served to make him known to Penelope again. When he left Calypso, it was he alone that built and rigged the ship.--From all which we see the spirit of these ancient times.