If the general principle of adapting the early education of our children to the profession we expect them to follow—to the situations and circumstances in which we think it likely they will be placed—be correct in every case, where _boys_ are concerned; why, in the name of common sense, should it be incorrect in regard to _girls_? Are _they alone_ to be trained for _one thing_, while they are probably destined for _another_? Is it not the height of cruelty, as well as injustice, to give them tastes and expectations which can be gratified only for a few months, perhaps for a year or two, after which they will almost certainly have to spend the remainder of their lives, however long, in nearly utter destitution of the opportunities, if not the means also, to use and to realize these parental gifts? Desperate surely is the folly, or far above all reason is the wisdom of such a plan; if indeed the only legitimate plan of all education be—permanently to promote the real happiness of the individuals educated. Few, I believe, if any, will deny, that the common fault just pointed out—of so illy adapting the education of girls to the situations in which they will probably be placed, deserves all the reprehension which can be bestowed upon it. But those who are most apt to commit it, are often guilty of another, if possible still worse. For the same falsely calculating spirit which neglects to provide for the domestic happiness of the child, so far as that can be secured by the culture of tastes, sentiments, and habits suitable for domestic life, will often exert parental influence and authority, after what _they_ call education is finished, to wed the poor victims of their mismanagement to some husband who is deemed a good match, (to use a slang phrase among matrimonial negotiators,) solely on account of his wealth. After making it almost absolutely necessary to the happiness of the helpless daughter that she should marry a man of polished manners, refined taste and liberal education, she is forcibly united to one entirely destitute of all these accomplishments—to one who will snore an accompaniment to her sweetest music—will gaze, if he looks at all, “with lack-lustre eye,” on her finest paintings; and flee from her elegant dancing to the gambling house and the bottle: to one in fine whose capability of participating with her in the pleasures of reading, or of literary conversation, will probably be but a few grades above that of the most illiterate clown. Such, alas! is too often the reward of a fashionable education; especially in cases where in procuring it, the fortunes of the poor girls have all been expended with confident anticipations that ample compensation would be found in the wealth of their future husbands. It not unfrequently happens that one of the effects of this worldly training is, to make the girls full as great calculators as their parents in regard to matrimonial connexions.