‘Let them make it disgraceful for men to be ignorant, and ignorance will vanish, and that part of their empire founded upon mental improvement will be strengthened and exalted by time, will be untouched by age, will be immortal in its youth. ‘Even in the common relations of society how much must be referred to the conduct of the female mind. The mother gives, or ought to give, most of the early impressions to the child, and his future habits may depend in some measure upon her influence. It may in some measure depend upon her whether he become an honour or a disgrace to his country. Her power of enforcing instruction is the most effectual, as flowing from love. We know that without feeling the human being is mere clay, the dust of the earth without the living soul. Whatever is to be permanently infixed on the understanding must be associated with hope, or with joy, or with passion. How much more efficacious must instruction be when communicated by an object beloved and venerated, and in infancy almost adored, and when, instead of being afforded with an effort of pain and of labour, it is carried into the heart by kindness and made delightful by caresses and smiles. ‘It has been supposed by some persons who are little acquainted with the nature of the plan and the general objects of philosophical associations, that there is a tendency in them to lessen the importance of our elder establishments for education, and to diminish the love of ancient literature. But nothing is further from the truth. The maxim of improvers is, “Promote whatever can tend to assist the progress of the human mind,” and letters will always be the greatest, the most powerful engine to this effect; it is one that all can employ, the strong and the weak, in solitude or in the world. That which is beautiful, that which is pathetic, that which is sublime, can never lose its effects. There is one course of passion and feeling in all times and in all countries; we should never cease to consider with admiration and gratitude those models of excellence which have been happily preserved amongst the wrecks of cultivated nations to be our guides in the Middle Ages, to be our shelter in the storm, and our light in the darkness, the beacons to guide us to pure taste, to correct our wanderings, to bring us to nature and truth. Let us regard them with all respect, but let not our veneration for them be exclusive; let us admire them as we admire the works of art of antiquity. The Apollo Belvidere or the Venus de Medicis were designed by their artists to be objects of adoration; let us wonder at them as statues, as models of perfection, but not worship them as deities, nor even make them our only household gods.