A system of male education, such as I have attempted to describe, must of course require a peculiar system for females; but as female education is every where much more matter of fact than of philosophy, it would be improper to go into any investigation or argument about it. In speaking of such a subject, I might err: by remaining silent, I cannot. CHAPTER X. MANNERS AND RELIGION OF THE ATHENS. “This present world six days they seek, They seek the next for one day: They run their scores up all the week, And sponge them out on Sunday.” BEFORE you can at all characterize the manners of the Athenians, you must have known them long and intimately, and even then it is difficult to be correct. In most things they are so extremely changeful, if not contradictory, that in half the time you would take to describe them in one aspect, they pass into another; and they do so without any cause which you can discover. At one time you would think them all openness and heart, but in a moment they start away, and look exceedingly cold, stiff, and repulsive. They are a hospitable people, certainly, or rather perhaps it is more correct to say that they are entertainment-giving people; but even in the most ostentatious and prolonged of their hospitalities, you always have the impression that they are acting a part--that there is more show than substance in their courtesies. You feel that you are received with more parade than welcome; and if the sederunt be continued, you find that there is more hilarity than heart. They give you your dinner, and they shun neither the quantity nor the praise of their liquor, but they are not so much disposed to give you your share of the conversation, of which themselves and their city form, not the unvarying, but the inexhaustible subject; and, taking for granted that, in consequence of its primary importance and celebrity, you, if you know any thing, cannot fail to be acquainted with it even to the minutest particular, they rattle away without ever giving you the least preparation, and if you shew, or even hint ignorance of the shufflings of their politics, the cases before their courts, or the tattle of their coteries, the utmost contempt is expressed at you, and the most summary vengeance taken for your daring to be ignorant of that which alone is worth knowing. From the peculiar kind and manner of education which I have noticed, the young men of the Athens are more impertinent and self-sufficient than those of any other place that I have seen. They know not much, and the little that they do know is far from being accurate; but they state their opinions with a forwardness, and support even their ignorance and their errors with a pertinacity at which you are quite astonished. Perhaps it is this precocity in assertion which renders the Athenians so querulous and dogmatical after they grow up.