can reade plainly and distinctly, write faire and swiftly, sing cleare and sweetly, play wel and finely, understand and speake the learned languages, and the tongues also which the time most embraseth with some logicall helpe to chop and some rhetoricke to brave.... Or is it likely that her children shalbe eare a whit the worse brought up if she be a Lœlia, an Hortensia or a Cornelia, which were so endued and noted for so doing.... The places wherein they learne be either publike if they go forth to the elementaire schole or private if they be taught at home. The teacher either of their owne sex or of ours.... In teachers their owne sex were fittest in some respectes, but ours frame them best and with good regard to some circumstances will bring them up excellently well.” CHAPTER III. A LADY’S EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Retrogression in the seventeenth century--Tone of women’s education--Mrs. Hutchinson--Lady Ann Halkett--Mrs. Alice Thornton--Mrs. Makins--The Duchess of Newcastle--General estimation of learning--Changes in social life--Some patronesses of learning. After the sixteenth century the lamp of learning flickered a good deal. The air was very unsteady; winds came blowing from all quarters. There was the adverse gale of the Civil War, which was a great peril to progress. And what followed was almost equally disastrous. Neither the austerity of the Puritans nor the licence of the Royalists was favourable to the arts of peace, and when political passions were dividing the country, it was no time for poring over books, and holding commune with philosophers and poets. Religious enthusiasm thrives by opposition, and the purity of principle has often been maintained by persecution. It is otherwise with learning and culture. They need encouragement and tending in order to blossom and bear fruit. From a variety of causes, a period of reaction set in after the vigorous and healthy awakening in the time of the Tudors. The fault of the seventeenth century was its lack of earnestness about intellectual matters. It combined all the faults of all the ages--laxity of morals, indifference to high aims, combined with religious fanaticism and a lack of appreciation of knowledge and learning. The Puritan party were so much engrossed with religious dogmas, that they had little time to spend on purely secular thought, which they considered a frivolous if not a sinful exercise. The Royalists loved pleasure too well to give more than passing attention to serious studies. The period of the Restoration is thus described by a writer in the next century--