The most deceived of any will generally be the parents who are absent, whose natural partiality for their own children so blinds their judgment, as to make them believe in any eulogium bestowed upon them, however extravagant. Little else is ever accomplished by these truly delusive spectacles, unless it be most injuriously to inflate the vanity of the poor pupils. The desire to be puffed in the newspapers, and talked about in public, is substituted for the love of learning for its own sake, and thereby one of the most important objects of education is greatly obstructed. _This is_, or _ought to be_, to excite in all persons under pupilage an ardent desire to gain knowledge, because they love it for itself, and for the power which it confers of promoting human happiness. The reciprocal faults just stated in teachers and parents, co-operate, not to promote in any way, but to destroy the great ends of instruction, so far at least as they can contribute to the work of destruction. Let it not be understood, from the foregoing remarks, that I am opposed to public examinations in all schools whatever; although I certainly wish it to be understood that, as generally managed, they are worse than useless. But I do object to them altogether in schools for females—unless, among our other marvellous advances towards perfectibility, we should take it into our heads to make lawyers, doctors, statesmen, and soldiers of our daughters, instead of modest, unassuming, well-informed, home-loving, and virtuous matrons. _Then, indeed_, it will be necessary to give them that kind of early training, continually aided by public examinations at school, which will inure them to the public gaze, and enable them, in due time, to meet the searching eyes of multitudes with unabashed hardihood of countenance; and entirely divested of such a very needless incumbrance as that retiring, timid, indescribable modesty, heretofore deemed one of the most lovely, fascinating, and precious traits of the female character. I will not go so far as to assert that none can possess this trait who have been accustomed to be publicly examined—for I have the happiness to know many from whose hearts neither this ordeal, nor all the other corrupting influences of the world united, have had power to banish those admirable principles and qualities which constitute at once the most endearing ornaments and highest glory of their sex. But I _will say_, that they are exceptions, forcibly illustrating the truth of the general principle, which is, that modesty, or indeed any other good quality, _must_, in the end, be destroyed by causes continually operating to work its destruction.