4. It is impossible that in those schools such systems should be adopted and enforced as are requisite for properly classing the pupils. Institutions for young gentleman are founded by public authority, and are permanent; they are endowed with funds, and their instructors and overseers are invested with authority to make such laws as they shall deem most salutary. From their permanency, their laws and rules are well known. With their funds they procure libraries, philosophical apparatus, and other advantages, superior to what can elsewhere be found; and to enjoy these, individuals are placed under their discipline, who would not else be subjected to it. Hence the directors of these institutions can enforce, among other regulations, those which enable them to make a perfect classification of their students. They regulate their qualifications for entrance, the kind and order of their studies, and the period of their remaining at the seminary. Female schools present the reverse of this. Wanting permanency, and dependent on individual patronage, had they the wisdom to make salutary regulations, they could neither enforce nor purchase compliance. The pupils are irregular in their times of entering and leaving school; and they are of various and dissimilar acquirements. Each scholar of mature age thinks she has a right to judge for herself respecting what she is to be taught; and the parents of those who are not, consider that they have the same right to judge for them. Under such disadvantages, a school cannot be classed, except in a very imperfect manner.

5. It is for the interest of instructors of boarding schools to teach their pupils showy accomplishments rather than those which are solid and useful. Their object in teaching is generally present profit. In order to realise this, they must contrive to give immediate celebrity to their schools. If they attend chiefly to the cultivation of the mind, their work may not be manifest at the first glance; but let the pupil return home, laden with fashionable toys, and her young companions filled with envy and astonishment, are never satisfied till they are permitted to share the precious instruction. If it is true, with the turn of the fashion, the toys which they are taught to make will become obsolete; and no benefit remain to them of perhaps the only money that will ever be expend. ed on their education; but the object of the instructress may be accomplished notwithstanding, if that is directed to her own, rather than her pupil's advantage.

6. As these Schools are private establishments, their preceptresses are not accountable to any other particular persons. Any woman has a right to open a School in any place: and no one, either from Law or custom, can prevent her. Hence the Public are liable to be imposed upon, both with respect to the character and acquirements of preceptresses. I am far however from asserting that this is always the case. It has been before observed, that in the present state of things the ordinary motives which actu ate the human mind would not induce ladies of the best and most cultivated talents to engage in the business of instructing from choice. But some have done it from necessity, and occasionally an extraordinary female has occupied herself in instructing because she felt that impulse to be active and useful which is the characteristic of a vigorous and noble mind; and because she found few avenues to extensive usefulness open to her sex. But if such has

been the fact, it has not been the consequence of any system from which a similar result can be expected to recur with regularity; and it remains true that the public are liable to imposition both with regard to the character and acquirements of preceptresses.

Instances have lately occurred in which women of bad reputation, at a distance from scenes of their former life, have been entrusted by our unsuspecting citizens with the instruction of their daughters.

But the moral reputation of individuals is more a matter of public notoriety than their literary attainments; hence society are more liable to be deceived with regard to the acquirements of instructresses, than with respect to their characters.

Those women however who deceive society as to the advantages which they give their pupils, are not charged with any ill intention. They teach as they were taught, and believe that the public are benefitted by their labors. Acquiring, in their youth, a high value for their own superficial accomplishments, they regard all others as supernumerary, if not unbecoming. Altho' these considerations exculpate individuals, yet they do not diminish the injury which society receives; for they shew that the worst which is to be expected from such instruction is not that pupils will remain ignorant; but that by adopting the views of their teachers they will have their minds barred against future improvement by acquiring a disrelish, if not a contempt, for useful knowledge.

7. Altho', from a want of public support, preceptresses of boarding schools have not the means of enforcing such a system as would lead to a perfect classification of their pupils; and altho' they are confined in other respects within narrow limits yet because these establishments are not dependent on any public body within these limits, they have a power far more arbitrary and uncontrolled than is allowed the learned and judicious instructors of our male seminaries.

They can, at their option, omit their own duties, and excuse their pupils from theirs.

They can make absurd and ridiculous regulations.

They can make improper and even wicked exactions of their pupils.

Thus the writer has endeavoured to point out the defects of the present mode of Female Education, chiefly in order to shew that the great cause of these defects consists in a state of things in which Legislatures, undervaluing the great importance of women in society, neglect to provide for their education, and suffer it to become the sport of adventurers for fortune, who may be both ignorant and vicious.

Of the principles by which Education should be regulated.

To contemplate the principles which should regulate systems of instruction, and consider how little those principles have been regarded in educating our sex, will show the defects of female education in a still stronger point of light and will also afford a standard by which any plan for its improvement may be mea

sured.

Education should seek to bring its subjects to the perfection of their moral, intellectual, and physical nature; in order that they may be of the greatest possible use to themselves and others, or, to use a different expression, that they may be the means of the greatest possible happiness of which they are capable, both as to what they enjoy and what they communicate.

Those youth have the surest chance of enjoying and communicating happiness who are best qualified both by internal d spositions and external hab ts, to perform with readiness, those duties which their future life will most probably give them occasion to practice.

Studies and employments should therefore be selected, from one or both of the following considerations; either because they are peculiarly fitted to improve the faculties; or because they are such as the pupil will most probably have occasion to practice in future life.

These are principles on which systems of male Education are founded, but female Education has not yet been systematized.— Chance and confusion reign here. Not even is youth considered in our sex, as in the other, a season which should be wholly devoted to improvement. Among families, so rich as to be entirely above labor, the daughters are hurried through the routine of boarding school institution and at an earlier period introduced into the gay world and thenceforth their own object is amusement. Mark the different treatment which the sons of these families receive. While their sisters are gliding through the mazes of the undnight dance they employ the lamp to treasure up for future use the riches of ancient wisdom; or to gather strength or expansion of mind in exploring the wonderful paths of philosophy. When the youth of the two sexes has been spent so differently, is it strange or is it nature in fault, if more mature age has brought such a difference of character that our sex have been considered by the other, as the pampered wayward babies of society who must have some rattle put into our hands to keep us from doing mischief to ourselves and others?

Another difference in the treatment of the sex is made in our country, which though not equally pernicious to society is more pathetically unjust to our sex. How often have we seen a student who returns from his literary pursuits, finds a sister who was his equal in acquirements, while their advantages were equal, of whom he is now ashamed. While his youth was devoted to study, and he was furnished with the means, she without any object of improvement, drudged at home to assist in the support of the fa. ther's family, and perhaps to contribute to her brothers subsistance abroad; and now, a being of a lower order, the rustic innocent wonders and weeps at his neglect. Not only has there been a want of system concerning female education, but much of what has been done has proceeded upon mistaken principles.

One of these is, that, without a regard to the different periods of life, proportionate to their importance the education of females has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty.—Tho' it may be proper to adorn this period of life yet it is incomparably more important to prepare for the serious duties of mature years. Tho' well to decorate the blossoms, it is far better to prepare for the harvest in the vegetable creation, nature seems but to sport, when she

embellishes the flower, while all her serious cares are directed to perfect the fruit.

Another error is, that it has been made the first object in educating our sex to prepare them to please the other. But reason and religion teach that we too are primary existances; that it is for us to nove in the orbit of our duty around the holy centre of perfection, the companions, not the sattelites of men; else instead of shedding around us an influence, that may help to keep them in their proper course, we must accompany them in their wildest deviations.

I would ont be understood to insinuate that we are not, in particular situations, to yield obedience to the other sex. Submission and obedience belong to every being in the universe, except the great master of the whole. Nor is it a degrading peculiarity to our sex to be under human authority. Whenever one class of human beings derive from another the benefits of support and rotection, they must pay its equivalent obedience. Thus while receive these benefits from our parents we are all without disnction of sex, under their author ty; when we receive them from the Government of our country we must obey our rulers; and when our sex take the obligation of marriage, and receive protection and support from the other, it is reasonable that we too should yield obedience. Yet is neither the child or the subject, nor the wife under human authority, but in observance to the divine.

Our highest responsibility is to God and our highest interest is to please Him; therefore to secure this interest, should our education be directed.

Neither would I be understood to mean that our sex should not seek to make themselves agreeable to the other. The error complained of is that the taste of men whatever it might happen to be has been made a standard for the formation of the Female character. In whatever we do it is of the most importance, that the rule by which we work should be perfect. For if otherwise what is it but to err upon principle? A system of education which leads one class of human beings to consider the approbation of another as their bighest object, teaches that the rule of their conduct should be the will of beings imperfect and erring like themselves, rather than the will of God, which is the only standard of perfection.

Having now considered Female education both in theory und practice, and seen that in its present state it is in fact a thing without form and void" the mind is naturally led to enquire after a remedy for the evil it has been contemplating.

Can individuals furnish this remedy? It has heretofore been left to them and we have seen the consequence. If education is a business which might naturally prosper if left to individual exertion, why have Legislatures intermeddled with it at all? If it is not, why do they inake their daughters illegitimate, and bestow all their cares upon their sons.

It is the duty of a Government to do all in its power to promote the present and future prosperity of the nation over which it is placed. This prosperity will depend on the character of its citizens. The characters of these will be formed by their mothers, and it is through the mothers that the Government can

control the characters of its future citizens, to form them such as will ensure their country's prosperity. If this is the case, then it is the duty of our present Legislature to begin now to form the characters of the next generation by controling that of the Females, who are to be their mothers, while it is yet with them a season of improvement.

But should the conclusion be almost admitted that our scx too are the legitimate children of the Legislature; and that it is their duty to afford us a share of their paternal bounty; the phantom of a College learned lady would be ready to rise up and destroy every good resolution, which the admission of this truth would naturally produce in our favor.

To shew that it is not a masculine education that is here recom. mended and to afford a definite view of the manner in which a feinale institution might possess the respectability, permanency and uniformity of operation of those appropriated to males; and yet differ from them, so as to be adapted to that difference of character and duties to which the softer sex should be formed, is the object of the following imperfect

SKETCH OF A FEMALE SEMINARY.

From considering the deficiencies in Boarding Schools much may be learned, with regard to what would be needed, for the prosperity and usefulness of a public seminary for females.

1. There would be needed a building with commodious rooms for lodging and recitation, apartments for the reception of apparatus, and for the accommodation of the domestic department.

2. A library containing books on the various subjects in which the pupils were to receive instruction; musical instruments, some good paintings to form the taste and serve as models for the execution of those who were to be instructed in that art; maps, globes and a small collection of philosophical apparatus.

3. A judicious Board of trust competent and desirous to promote its interests, would in a female, as in a male literary institution be the corner stone of its prosperity.-On this board it would depend to provide,

4th. Su table instruction. This article may be subdivided under four heads.

1. Religious and moral.

2. Literary.

3. Domestic.

4. Ornamental.

1. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL.- -A regular attention to religious daties, would, of course be required of the Pupils by the laws of the Institution. The Trustees would be careful to appoint no instructers who would not teach religion and morality, both by their example and by leading the minds of the Pupils to perceive that these constitute the true end of all Education. It would be desirable that the young ladies should spend a part of their Sabbaths in hearing discourses relative to the peculiar duties of their sex. The evidences of Christianity and moral Philosophy would constitute a part of their studies.

2. LITERARY INSTRUCTION.-To make an exact enumeration of

Y