f THE TRUE IDEA OF FEMALE EDUCATION. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT PITTSFIELD, MASS., THE YOUNG LADIES' INSTITUTE, AT ITS ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, AUGUST 22, 1855. BY JAMES R. SPALDING. |nblbljcb bg rrqmsi. NEW YORK: JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 53 ANN-STREET. 1855. I THE TRUE IDEA OF FEMALE EDUCATION. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT PITTSFIELD, MASS., THE YOUNG LADIES' INSTITUTE, AT ITS ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, AUGUST 22, 1855. JAMES R. SPALDING. |teblis|jtb bg nqtwat. NEW YORK: JOHNF. TROW,PEINTER, 53 ANN-STREET 1855. iAf VftRO COLLfGf LIBRARY BY EXCHANGE i. ri'fcUC LIEMABY) 1942 Stael? Annex A LC ADDRESS. For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse ; could we make her aa the man, Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference : Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; The man be more of woman, she of man ; He gain in sweetness, and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She mental breadth ; nor fail in childward care ; More as the double-natured poet each ; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto noble words. And fo these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be Self-reverent each, and reverencing each, Distinct in individualities, But like each other, e'en as those who love. I trust that all present both comprehend and feel the truth, as well as the beauty, of these words of the first* of living poets. It is my purpose to say something upon the distinctive process of female education a dis- tinctive process arising from a diversity in organization, and in sphere ; and yet I cannot consent to enter into any formal argument, to prove that feminine nature is not identical with masculine nature, or to determine the * Tennyson. 865545 superiority of either the one or the other, in the scale of existence. They are both correlative, each peculiar, and yet each made for the other ; both sharing in com- mon elements of being under different modifications, and each possessing powers, the developing and har- monizing of which are necessary to the realization of the ideal type of the race. My very soul is sickened at the antagonistic spirit so often displayed in upholding what are called the rights of woman. It profanes the sex ; it affronts high Heaven. Man and woman are co-workers here on earth, and co- heirs of immortality. Each gives the other the precedence on the score of high nobility, and each counts it a glory to learn of the other. The emancipation of woman ! Strange words these, for a Christian land. The time, I know, has been, when woman was a delicate toy, a pas- sive instrument, a petted slave ; but that time ended when first her baptism in Christian faith and love began. She whom the wisdom of hoary antiquity deemed too weak to act as witness to a dying man's will, was called upon to give her testimony to the cause of God. From the palace and the cottage, gathered from all ranks, made up of all ages, matrons grave with years, young mothers with clinging infants, virgins tender and pure as the maid-mother of Him they adored, calmly and cheerfully bore the horrid penalties of the faith that was in them. Mangled and gored by wild cattle, torn by savage beasts, mutilated and hacked piecemeal by the executioner, their flesh rent by scourges, their spirit more deeply agonized still by that last refinement of the praetor's cruelty, exposure in the public street to the mocking indignities of the populace thus did this holiest army of martyrs lift up their spotless sacri- fice to God, and then it was that the misprised name of woman was redeemed once and for ever from the dese- cration of the past, and she stood forth before the world an immortal creature, made to serve and glorify God, a spiritual being, with spiritual faculties, for spiritual ends. From that time she has been morally free free in the line, and to the extent, that her own regenerated will required and sanctioned ; free to aspire tlnto the calms and magnanimities, The lofty uses, and the noble ends, The sanctified devotion and full work. To which she is elect for evermore.* Assured then, by Christianity, of her solemn respon- sibilities and high destinies, it is not only the privilege but the duty of woman to secure the just and full de- velopment of her own proper nature, and thus fit her- self most completely for her own appropriate sphere. The process of effecting this is nothing more or less than Female Education. Now, it is very easy, in considering the different phases of nature in man and woman, to say, as Milton did of Adam and Eve For contemplation he and valor formed ; For softness she, and sweet attractive grace, f For it is very easy to see that the reflective faculties generally predominate in man, and the affective in woman, and that energy marks the one, and sensibility the other. This answers well enough in its way for a running distinction, but it will be very apt to deceive us, if we forget the essential unity of the human soul, and take the reigning element as an exclusive possession and power. Woman, to be woman, must reflect as well * Mrs. Barrett. Drama of Exile, f Paradise Lost. Book IV. 6 as feel ; and man, to be man, must feel as well as reflect. Thought and feeling stand reciprocally in need of each other, in the work of developing character. As thought gains new life and animation from the rich feeling, with its quick, tender and profound movements of the soul, deriving therefrom its vital nourishment and sustenance ; even so, the feelings are not unfrequently first awak- ened, and very often strengthened and elevated, by the lofty flight of thought, in its bold and searching inqui- ries. The mind of woman differs from that of man, chiefly in its being more imbued with feeling, and thus more delicately knit together, more harmoniously ad- justed, and more keenly vivified, while man's mind is fitted for a more daring and a more abstract, a wider and a cooler range. It is a common remark, that woman excels in tact. Yet what is tact, but the judg- ment of feeling, controlling outward action.. We hear, too, that the opinions of woman are rather intuitions than logical conclusions. Yet what are her intuitions, but the instantaneous impressions made upon her entire nature, sympathetic as well as sentient. It is this difference in the higher nature of the sexes thought predominating in the one, and feeling in the other and the natural affinity of thought and feeling, their tendency towards a living intercommunion, that gave so much force and truth to the old philosophical idea, that each sex finds in the other the psychological complement of its own being and character, and that it is the attraction between the two which gives the charm to all social intercourse, and their perfect and permanent union, through the assimilating power of love, that makes man and wife ONE something more than a harmony, a completed unity. It would not be- come me, perhaps, to be very absolute on this subject, but I cannot help marking the perfect accordance of this Platonic idea, with that account of the spiritual structure of our humanity, given in the first chapter of Genesis " So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He them," the idea of duality here being en- tirely merged in that of unity. It is a truth too often forgotten, that what is called the subordination of one sex to the other was a result not of their original cre- ation, but of their subsequent fall. It had its rise in the curse pronounced upon the woman, " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." But the fall, though it corrupted the will, and darkened and confused our whole nature, did not destroy any of the primal elements of our being, and the ideal type of the race yet remains. These truths being justly apprehended, the term Education as applied to woman at once assumes its full significance. She is not, any more than man, a thing to be made up for a certain end not to be fitted out simply for marriage, any more than he is to be fitted out simply for a profession. In an old Latin treatise of St. Bernard is the following admirable passage : " There are those who wish to know, for the mere sake of know- ing ; this is a low curiosity. There are those who wish to know that they may be known, and this is a low vanity. There are also those who wish to know, that they may sell their knowledge, so to speak, for money, for honors [had the old saint lived now-a-days, and looked at accomplishments as understood and cultivat- ed in some of our boarding-schools, would he not have added for marriage ?] and this is low venality. But there are those, also, who wish to know, that they may up- build, and this is charity ; and likewise those who wish 8 to know that they may be upbuilt, and this is wisdom. Of those, the last two only do not pervert the real end of knowledge, which is to be good and to do good." Education, then, in both sexes, is a sacred duty, life- long and ever progressive. Its result in both cases is to develope and harmonize the native capacities and qualities : in both sexes producing strength and beauty, nobleness and loveliness ; but, in accordance with the original constitution of their respective natures, the strength and nobleness predominant in the one, the beauty and loveliness in the other ; and in their out- ward efficacy both working by action and by influence, but in the one sex chiefly by action, in the other chiefly by influence. Education is development, discipline, culture; and that education is right for woman, whose devdopm&d unfolds all the stronger faculties of the soul, and which does not yet crowd upon or overshadow the least of her sweet instincts and sunny sympathies whose disci- pline represses evil propensity, and attempers the soul to firmness and consistency, to self-control and self-reli- ance, and yet does no violence to that delicacy which naturally marks her perceptions, and that freshness which naturally pervades her feelings, imparting such peculiar buoyancy and glow to her faith, her hope, and her love ; and whose culture improves her tastes, en- larges her sense of the beautiful, and enriches her ima- gination, and yet does not enervate her sensibilities, or impair in any degree the more serviceable stamina of the soul. The first and last object of all true education, either in man or woman, is the harmonious fullness of being. The law is incumbent upon every one, in every condi- tion and sphere, to become all that he was created 9 capable of being ; to be alive with his whole being, con- sciously, happily alive, and for beneficent results. To prescribe the exact means and exact manner by which this is to be effected, is impossible. All right education proceeds on the principle of cherishing and correcting nature, not of rooting it out and supplying its place with something better. It must allow scope for the exercise of free will, and take account of the varieties of ori- ginal structure. Nature is infinite in her combinations, and woman, no more than man, was made to be shaped into one common mould. A true and healthful train- ing no more destroys variety among men and among women, than a true and healthful growth destroys va- riety among the trees of the forest. There is as much diversity among the good as among the bad, among the flowers as among the weeds. It is true, that there are certain qualities which are indispensable to every good character, as petals are to flowers. But it is not the mere presence, or the mere number, of the petals that gives the charm to the flower. It is their native coloring and their native fragrance. And as these differ, not only in degree but in kind, so character differs in all its finer essences and issues. Nature will take care of this. She will indeed let you, by your wise and patient skill, turn and train even many of the evil roots she has fixed in the very core of our being, so that they shall grow up not into briers, but into roses in the field of our life ; and will lend all her best influences to your work, and manifest herself most distinctly and graciously in the result, if you will deal genially by her, and not thrust her aside, or crush her down. If this were better heeded, we should soon hear less of the complaint, that there is so little in even cultivated society that is truly spontaneous, and so much that is purely artificial. 10 If right education must have regard to differences in individual nature, it must much more have regard to differences in sexual nature. Now, there are three qua- lities which are the natural elements of womanhood they are, MODESTY, TENDERNESS, and GRACE. These are a credit to man, but to woman they are something more than a credit they are an absolute necessity. They are set, by the kind hand of Nature, in her very inmost being, and it is very difficult, in most cases actually im- possible, to pluck them out utterly. When this is done, she is unsexed, and becomes a monster. These three qualities are intimately related to each other, and yet each is distinct in its manifestation and its effect. Mo- desty is woman's natural safeguard that quick and de- licate feeling in the soul, which makes her shrink and withdraw herself from every thing that has danger in it that innate sensibility which warns her to shun the first appearance of every thing which is hurtful, and ever tends to keep her within her own bright and pure womanly sphere. Tenderness is what makes her sus- ceptible to all gentle and generous impulses of soul and sense which gives quickness to her sympathies, soft- ness to her judgments, devotedness to her love, and pity to her disdain ; which ever inclines her to charity rather than to rigor, to mercy rather than to justice. Grace is that native indefinable quality of her soul, which inspires a beautiful propriety in every word and movement that sense of the becoming which uncon- sciously imparts something of symmetry to all that she says and does, suggestive of delicacy, fineness, uncon- straint, instinctive aptitude. These three qualities, or rather instincts modesty, tenderness and grace exist, I say, more or less in the original constitution of every woman. The most simple and complete child of nature 11 Shakespeare ever bodied forth, Miranda, reared by her father alone on an isle secluded from all the world, was merely the bright, consummate, untainted flower of these germs, which nature has placed in every femi- nine soul. Above aught else, then, in every system of female education, these should have their true and perfect growth. If checked, or in any degree perverted, the feminine character inevitably suffers ; it loses in loveli- ness and in influence. And yet how often are they checked or perverted. For modesty, let ball-room dances and ball-room dresses answer; for tenderness, let tabernacle diatribes and tea-table scandal answer ; for grace, pick your way around the stiffnesses, the an- gularities, and the points of some of our literary cote- ries, look at the startings and the jerkings, listen to the fizziugs and the cracklings of the kind of females there, who seem to you never to have been young, and who, you are very sure, will never know how to grow old, and get your answer. An effort is often, perhaps usually, made to repair artificially any detriment done to the vitality and form of these natural qualities, but it is never very success- ful. The counterfeit, by a discerning eye, is detected at once. For the ingenuousness of modesty, we have boldness ; for its coyness, prudery. For the delicacy of tenderness, we have daintiness ; for its warmth, senti- mentality. For the self-poise of grace, we have effort ; for its self-direction, mannerism. Woman, doubtless, should have many acquirements ; but let her beware of reckoning among these acquired modesty, acquired tenderness, and acquired grace. These may be beauti- fied and enriched ; but acquired, when once lost, never. They are the time vital essence of womanhood, giving it 12 all its bloom and perfume, making its mere effluence an irresistible influence, interfusing all the other qua- lities and all the faculties, and blending them together into one perfect, homogeneous, indivisible whole. Being instinctive, they are not actual virtues in themselves, but they are necessary to the beauty and the perfection of virtue. They set the laws of conscience, as it were, to a music, in harmony with every good chord of your being. They make reverence no longer a self-interested fear ; but the glad, confiding, though yet trembling, up- rising of the heart towards the majesty of goodness. They make stern duty genial, so that it shall work upon others not through constraint, but through love, and upon yourselves, not through rigorous self-exaction, but through generous self-sacrifice. The masculine nature, too, has these inherent qualities, but not in such large proportion. It is this predominance in the feminine soul that furnishes some ground, perhaps, for the asser- tion that woman is naturally more religious than man. At all events, I think I may safely say, that she, with her fair, calm spirit, has but to look around, where he, in his native vehemence, has to look up that it is her privilege to say, almost intuitively, of Duty : Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads ; while his well-deliberated words are : Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.* I have now spoken of certain qualities which every woman has by nature, which compose the very essence of her true womanhood, and which it is supremely ne- * Wordsworth. Ode to Duty. 13 cessary for her to cherish in all their perfection. But these, indispensable as they are, do not constitute the stamina of her character as a probationary being, with high responsibilities and hard trials to meet here on the earth. For this we must look to the faculties which she shares with man, her fellow probationer to her intellect, her imagination, her will. These must be ex- / O ' panded, strengthened, disciplined, regulated. She has a conscience, too, and that must be enlightened, and armed with all its rightful power. All these faculties of her being ought to be educated ; yes, if you will, educated up to the very highest degree, but educated in harmony with each other, and, chief of all, educated in harmony with her native attributes. Expand and furnish the intellect, so that she shall understand the actual scope and relations of things, form correct judgments, think deeply and discerningly, and talk intelligently and aptly ; but no such unnatural stimulus should be applied to the intellectual part of her being, as to make that the central seat of her life, draw away and lock up here the subtile currents of her womanly nature, and constitute that peculiar produc- tion which every body has heard of and nobody loves, " a strong-minded female." We hear of the sad power of -abstruse research to steal From man's own nature all the natural man. * The stealth of the natural woman is a thousand times more melancholy. I have said that the imagination must be culti- vated. It is a noble faculty. Bonaparte said that imagination rules the world. The sense of beauty resides there that which colors, exalts, etherializes * Coleridge. Ode to Dejection. 14 that which furnishes faith and hope and love with their inspiring ideal that which lends enthusiasm its celestial wings that which quickens and vivifies the great law of association, brings your own soul into com- munion with the spirit of nature, invests the most com- mon things of life with a poetry, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks ; Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.* Cultivate, then, imagination. Woman needs it no less than man, and it is even more congenial with both her duties and her nature. It will make the happiness already possessed all the more happy, and open a thou- sand new sources of delight unknown before. And yet, if this faculty be not wisely cultivated, if it become over-excited, and acquire a growth disproportionate to that of the reflective and the moral faculties, it produces the most baneful effect upon the whole being. It can- not be allowed to luxuriate, without inducing the con- sequences of all luxury, enervation and enfeeblement, without unfitting for all the sober realities and prac- tical duties of life, and turning life itself into an idle re very. The will, which is less a faculty than, like instinct, a working living principle, must be strengthened and re- gulated, for it is the executive power of the whole being. I mean by it that energy of the soul which gives self- mastery. This in woman, as in man, is indispensable to the formation of positive noble character. Unless above himself lie can Erect himself, ho\v mean a thing is man ! It was said of the whole race. She who has not ac- * Shakspear?. As You Like it Act I. Scene II. 15 quired this power, who is wont to resign herself pas- sively to natural impulse, or agreeable feeling, however good-natured that impulse or feeling may be, has not, any more than ;the bird of the air, the dignity of a mo- ral being. It may be said, that it is not imparted but self-education which gives this power. This, undeniably, to a large extent is true. Yet that outward discipline may perform a very efficient part in this process, no one who bethinks himself of the Spartan system and its re- sults, can doubt. But, however desirable and necessary strength of will may be, when it acquires such strenuous- ness as to find a positive pleasure in unconditional vo- lition, that is to say, when it becomes wilfulness and rules for the mere sake of ruling, it becomes a gross deformity. Its work is not self-control, but self-suffi- ciency a self-sufficiency forbidding all dependence, and repelling all sympathy. There is, then, a necessity that will should be trained with reference to all the sensibi- lities and capabilities of woman's nature. And so too of conscience. Conscience is the voice of moral law, and all law is strict and exacting in its very nature. The conscience cannot be too fully brought out, if brought out in harmony with the other portions of our being, nor can its dictates be too impli- citly obeyed. But, supreme within its own sphere, as it is, it was never meant to maintain constant dictation. It has authority, but it is too royal to be jealous of the loving instincts of the soul. It imposes a law upon a child to obey his parents, but it is well pleased that the child should obey his parents spontaneously, in answer to the promptings of his own loving nature. They wrong conscience greatly, who make her a despot in- stead of a guardian, and can find praise for no act that she herself does not exclusively direct. The very per- 16 fection, too, of all right doing, is doing right not only conscientiously, but lovingly not only obediently, but freely, impulsively, gladly. " If ye love me, keep my commandments." It is the chief glory of woman that, excelling, as she does, in the sympathetic part of her nature, she is so peculiarly capable of this. Any sys- tem of moral education which impairs this, or leaves it out of account, does her a most unnatural wrong. I repeat, then, that all these faculties intellect, ima- gination, will, and conscience must be educated harmo- niously with each other, and above all, harmoniously with the three special elements of feminine nature. If this be done, those elements will only receive additional fullness and lustre. Her modesty will be dignified by her discerning intellect and her self-directing will ; her grace will be glorified by her vivifying imagin- ation ; and her tenderness will be dignified, and glo- rified, and sanctified by her enlightening and hallowing conscience.. And thus, simply by the wise development of her own proper nature, with the promised grace of God, we have a " spirit, yet a woman too " A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, And yet a spirit still, and bright, With something of an angel light* I have spoken of woman's capability. I have some- thing to say of her responsibility. If not outwardly so arduous and imposing as that of man, it is yet intrinsi- cally more sacred and sublime. I will not discuss woman's appropriate sphere. The praters upon this subject dishonor her. She fixes her sphere for herself, or rather her own true nature fixes it for her. She dwells not in the suburbs of man's good pleasure here, * Wordsworth. A Portrait. 17 but in her own high instincts finds her own " true fixed and resting quality." Woman's predominating sensi- bility holds her chiefly to domestic duties, as man's pre- dominating energy holds him chiefly to public duties. I speak of the main bent and the natural province. Of course, man has a share in domestic life, and woman, through society, a share in public life, and through au- thorship, too, if she feels impelled to resort to it, though I have the authority of that most excellent judge of woman, Mrs. Jameson, for saying, that it is most certain that of the women who have ventured into the public path of literature, three fourths have done it because placed in a painful or needy position in respect to domestic life. The responsibility of Woman, then, at home, is her primary responsibility, and I fearlessly say that there is no responsibility on earth like it. I say it, because she has the chief custody and control of that period of human life in which, more than any other, the character is formed not only for this world, but for an unspeak- ably blessed, or an awfully cursed immortality. Re- sponsibility ! Where, now, in the arena of public life, from centre to circumference, is there such responsibi- lity, even so far as regards matters of this world, as was that of Mary, the mother of Washington, or of Letitia, the mother of Napoleon ? What man ' living has wrought a more terrible work than was wrought by the caressing and flattering, raging and cursing, mother of Byron ? Napoleon knew men well. None better. His words were : " The future character of a child is always the work of its mother ; " and to Madame Campan he said : " Be it your care to train up mothers who shall know how to educate their children." Tacitus says of 18 Agricola : " He governed his family, which many find to be a harder task than to govern a province." What would have been the words, had Tacitus had an under- standing, too, of Christian responsibilities ? " Unhappy is the man," says Jean Paul Bichter, " for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable." Where is the man, and where the woman, whose very heart's heart does not quiver in response to that ? The mother, whether she is directly sensible of it or not, is the educator of the strongest and most per- manent part of our humanity, the sympathetic and moral nature the very part, too, which is the most complex and the most sensitive, and the most difficult to brace and adjust to perfect harmony. The greatest obstacle that education has to contend against is wilful- ness. This evil is inborn in the very nature of man, and manifests itself in full force in the very earliest period of life, and in an almost unlimited variety of forms. It is no small thing to subdue it at all ; but it is a great thing, often a thing requiring a wisdom ex- celling that of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, to sub- due it without doing lasting injury to all of the finer qualities of the soul. And yet what bitter discords from within, and what hard reverses from without, shall come, if it be not subdued. There are certain states of the child's mind in which its indulgence in the merest trifle may commence an unhealthful movement of the soul, which will last as long as life lasts. How few are there who fully realize that a trifle to them is no trifle to a child that the cheapest plaything may be a child's kingdom. What an incalculable effect upon man's character has a truthful disposition ; and yet this invariably has its origin in the earliest period of life. I mean not 19 simply the habit of truth-telling, for that, when it springs from the fear of discovery, as in children it is too often made to do, is of little worth. I mean the spirit of truth that which manifests itself in thought and in action, as well as in word, and from which come frankness, openness, good faith, honesty, in one word, sincerity sincerity to one's self, sincerity to mankind in general, sincerity in social relations, sincerity in busi- ness, sincerity in pleasure. This loyalty to truth is a sentiment which the mother alone can thoroughly in- spire ; and yet how often, alas, is it, that she, in her thoughtlessness or her ignorance, contents herself with merely a verbal conformity, and heeds not the saddest form of lying " the lie," as Bacon says, " that sinketh in," and becomes part of the character. The child is an admiring being. " Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and bright hues invest every thing. " Tell me what you admire," says Carlyle, " and I will tell you what manner of man you are ; " and in all education there is nothing so important as this teach- ing what to admire, and why to admire. It is error or neglect in this part of early training, by the mother, that, more than any thing else, produces the false stand- ards and false tastes which so many, in these artificial times, carry with them through life, and which make the lesson so hard to learn, that the simplest and cheap- est pleasures are the truest and most precious. And so of almost every phase of the child's charac- ter ; it is, in great measure, the result of the faithfulness or the unfaithfulness, the wisdom or the folly, of the mother. What responsibility has man to meet, that can exceed either in dignity or in difficulty the right training of an immortal spirit ? What can require the 20 more complete development of every high faculty of the soul ? A weak-hearted and weak-minded mother is the saddest of all sights the sun shines upon. The power of woman, too, in her other domestic re- lations, demands the highest cultivation of her nature. She was made to be the light of the whole household : Alight Shining within, -when all without is night!* It is her peculiar privilege to live away from the world's sharp strife. She has no profession to warp the even- ness of her mind, or cares of business to tarnish the freshness of her soul. Her own peculiar trials she doubtless has, for trial is incident to every human lot. There is a mildew that settles upon all hearts not well ordered, wherever found beneath the skies. But, if woman's heart be well ordered, there is nothing which should hinder or mar its full blossoming ; for her heart, like man's, is in God's world, which is as full of rich, pure, sweet influences, as the morning is of dew-drops ; and yet is not so near the broad highway of life as to be bruised by its violence, or soiled by its dust, or withered by its glare. She was made to live in an atmosphere of light and of love, wooing from her all the in-born sweetnesses of her nature, opening her the more completely to divine refreshings from on high, and calling out odors of faith, and hope, and charity, which shall operate as a healing balm and holy stimulus upon all around. Woman, if she be truly woman, is, within her own household, a vital elemental force, evermore radiating ethereal life and energy. She is a Presence as well as a Power, and achieves by what she is as well as what she does. She inspires unawares. In the light * Rogers. Human Life. 21 of her placid strength, a faith in human nature, and in the possibility of all grand things, grows we trow not how. Public opinion pales into weakness and meanness before her high ideal, and we are slaves no longer. Pier subtle love, her magnetic enthusiasm, cherishes into more genial life the motive that shall prompt brave endeavor, and stay the spirit in the very heat of the strife, like the murmur of far-off music. She endears, and, in endearing, ennobles. She transfuses her temper to our souls without effort, as she paints her image on our eyes. There is no such spell as comes from her sweetness and unassuming strength. Books can instruct and entertain, pictures and statues may bring beauty, and hirelings may duly care for the house ; but love that floods cannot quench, resilient hope, outshining joy, sweet trust and holy fear, bright honor, faithfulness, gentleness, charity, and, chief of all, the impassioned feeling that impels the strenuous will ; these are the " rib of the man," and from these, moulded in living loveliness, his destined help-meet sprang to rouse him and gird him to all noble daring and doing, to make life rich and duty glorious, so that he shall be a true- hearted warrior here on the earth, while yet with her a rejoicing co-traveller toward the skies. We best learn the unsuspected might of a being like this, when we try the desolateness that sinks like night upon the home where once her presence shone and now is seen no more. In view of what woman thus may be, and ofttimes is, re- plete, full-charactered and heavenly as the morning star, alas, that there should ever be occasion for such a cry as that of Milton's against " that unspeakable weariness and despair of all sociable delight, which turn the blessed ordinance of God' into a sore evil under the sun, or at least to a familiar mischief a 22 drooping and disconsolate household captivity with- out refuge or redemption." But the influence of a true woman is not confined to those of her own household. She forms the grace and attraction of all social life. In the days of chi- valry, her bright eyes Rained influence, and judged the prize.* She it was that inspired, to use the language of Burke, "that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud sub- mission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom ; that untaught grace of life, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, w r hich inspired courage, whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." f And she certainly has lost no power, as men have advanced in civilization and Christianity. She yet wins, and leads, and judges with her sweet, still conclusions, and nothing which she in very truth despises and repels, can stand. She holds the keys of social intercourse, and adjusts to her own will what shall be the received standard of propriety and honor. Men, as in knightly times, are not only ready to serve her, but they look to her to show them how she will be served ; and this she does not by ar- bitrary dictate, not often even by conscious design, but by an outflowing movement, a bright benign exhal- ing of mind and soul, which, though impalpable, is not to be ignored or withstood. " Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country," says a French writer, * Milton. L' Allegro, f Reflections on the French Revolution. 23 " women always give the tone to morals." This is true ; and there has never yet been a time of public degrada- tion, in which women of high mark in society have not played a prominent part. I do not pretend that social life is pervaded, as it might be, by the redeeming influ- ence of woman's spirit ; but she has reason to reproach herself, if it is not. Woman, too, if she will, has her post in literature a post recognized as hers, not by courtesy, but by right, and most worthily is she now fulfilling it. I count it one of the most cheering auspices of the times, that her voice is in such large measure en- tering English and American literature. It min- gles among the fierce polemics of the day, " as the lute pierceth through the cymbal's clash," by its very gentleness tempering, and refining, and beautifying all. It is true, and doubtless always will be true, so long as woman retains her retiring womanly nature, that female authorship does not often proceed from sponta- neous impulse, and that it does often come from wrongs too deep to be forgiven, from regrets too bitter to be forgotten, from repinings too sharp to be borne, or from necessities too cruel to be resisted, and that aberrations and harsh discords not seldom arise therefrom, and show themselves in what she gives out to the world ; but it is none the less certain, that the general effect of her utterance through books is, and always must be, in har- mony with the delicate tones of her native soul. Tens of thousands of women, too, are called upon to be the public teachers and guides of childhood and youth, and have thereby a power to exercise an influence upon future national character, scarcely to be estimated. All of the great benevolent enterprises of the day depend upon woman greatly for their support, and she is the 24 almost exclusive minister of the common charities of daily life. Upon her judgment here, as well as upon her spirit, depends a vast amount of social good or evil. In short, there is no limit to woman's influence and re- sponsibility. There is no condition of life in which she is precluded from these, and none in which their exercise may not employ the fullest powers of her nature, even when developed in the most complete measure. Espe- cially is this true in our own country, where woman enjoys higher consideration and greater freedom of ac- tion, than in any other nation of the world, and where, too, the very existence of the government depends upon the sustained aspiration and virtue of the people. In her hands, whether she feels it or not, lie the destinies of the Republic. I have now spoken of the kind of education woman should receive, and of its solemn and yet glorious im- port to her and to the world. A sensible advance, I believe, is every year made throughout the land towards this high standard. If such an advance there really is, we shall in good time hear fewer complaints, that in high life there are to be found so many brilliant crea- tures of fairest face and form, complete in every out- ward charm and adornment, superlative in grace, ex- quisite in tact, airy in spirits, sprightly in converse, and radiant with smiles ; and yet conquest their only thought, and self their only admiration, caring only to keep decently up to the world's mark of virtue, turning social communion into a conventional piece of acting, and reducing all their high means of influence to the service of a morbid excitement, and the gratification of a heartless vanity ; and that in middle life there is so much wretched slavery to outward appearances, so much of carking care and calculating anxiety to imitate the 25 extravagance of wealthier neighbors, so much impover- ishing of mind, closing up of soul and hardening of spirit for the mere tinsel of life, so much wearing away of the heart-strings and spoiling of affection with petty vex. ation and capricious humor, so much wasting aimless- ness and wasted activity, so much speech spoken that is not worth the speaking, so much work wrought that is not worth the working, so much life lived that is not worth the living. KEPORT OF THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE FOR THE YEAE 1855. In the examination which has just closed, some of the pro- cesses which are employed in female education, in this insti- tution, have been exhibited, and some of the results to which those processes have led. One thing has been made obvious to us, but not so much from the examination itself, as from the general aspect of the several classes, as it has progressed and it must have struck every observer we refer to those results of good discipline and careful training, as to habits and man- ners, which are so indispensable in an institution of this kind. The deportment to which we refer could not be the result of a few days' drilling, in anticipation of the occasion. It would certainly betray itself. It would not sit so naturally and grace- fully upon its wearers. The carriage, the expressions of the countenance, the tones of the voice, are often a sure index to the influences, which give type to character. Somewhat in these regards, so far as this institution is concerned, may be owing to the graceful evolutions of the gymnasium attached, and to that high cultivation in music, of which we have had so many creditable exhibitions during the progress of the examin- ation, but particularly in the concert at the close ; but far more, we feel convinced, is owing to the presence of a refined Chris- tian family, and to models worthy of imitation, in a band of kind-hearted, devoted teachers. We have seen, and rejoiced at, the spirit which pervades the daily life of this great family school. It is no small part of education to teach young persons? removed from the restraints and the partialities of home, and 27 brought into contact with others of their own age, but marked by every variety of disposition and character, to know and con- trol themselves, and pay a proper regard to the rights, and even the prejudices of their associates. The indirect and un- designed arrangements and influences of a seminary may have as much, or even more, to do with it, than those which appear prominently, in its external discipline and course of study. But we are satisfied that these fruits of Christian example, refined manners, a kind and faithful discipline, apparent in this school, could never have been secured, if the course of study did not give the permanence which it does to religious instruction. The Bible read through annually, its critical study, together with the study of such works as Butler's Analogy, and the Evidences of Christianity, afford sufficient evidence that the conductors of this institution understand upon what means they must chiefly rely to impart to it its proper pervad- ing spirit, and in laying the foundations of that character, which will secure the future happiness and usefulness of their pupils. The Committee have been exceedingly pleased with the evidence which this examination has afforded ; that it is the object of the instruction given here really to educate the mind ; that the teachers do not merely regard the mind as a receptacle to be filled with the largest possible amount of the details of knowledge, but as having faculties which it should be their aim to develope, discipline and strengthen. A course of aca- demic study can be said to be well finished only when it has been the means of teaching the scholar how to use his faculties, and to go on in the acquisition of knowledge. We are also satisfied that this examination has not been a mere stage performance, or parade, but has been fair and thorough, and has enabled us to judge of the real progress of the pupils. It has reflected great credit on the principals, and the professors and teachers, in all the departments. We believe that a young lady, taking the full course at this institution, enjoys advantages for intellectual cultivation, hardly, if at all, inferior to those enjoyed by our sons at many of the colleges. We, therefore, cordially commend it to all parents who would 28 secure a school for their daughters, where their minds, their manners, and their morals will be carefully guarded and cultivated. JAMES M. MACDONALD, D.D. H. HUMPHREY, D.D. J. BRACE, D.D. SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D. PittsfieU], August 22, 1855. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. LiJJKAKY UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORMA ANGELES 42*10