Nor is the effect of such a system likely to be any better upon the other sex: for it is association with females (as early as possible, too, all the better), which softens, humanizes, graces, and adorns the masculine character. The boy who has been denied such association--the incidents to whose education have made him shy, as so many are, even of little girls--is apt to grow up morose and selfish, ill-tempered, and worse mannered. When the impulses of his developing nature finally force him into female society, he goes unprepared, and comes away without profit: his ease degenerates into familiarity, his conversation is, at best, but washy sentimentalism, and the association, until the accumulated rust of youth is worn away, is of very doubtful benefit to both parties. Indeed, parents who thus govern and educate their children, can find no justification for the practice, until they can first so alter the course of Nature, as to establish the law, that each family shall be composed altogether of girls, or shall consist exclusively of boys! But these modern refinements had not obtained currency, at the period of which we are writing; nor was any such nonsense the motive to the introduction of female teachers. But one of the lessons learned by observation of the domestic circle, and particularly of the influence of the mother over her children, was the principle, that a woman can teach males of a certain age quite as well as a man, and _females much better_; and that, since the school-teacher stands, for the time in the place of the parent, a _mistress_ was far more desirable, especially for the girls, than a _master_. Hence, the latter had exercised his vocation in the west, but a few years, before he was followed by the former.