“I can’t forbear saying something in relation to my granddaughters, who are very near my heart.  If any of them are fond of reading, I would not advise you to hinder them (chiefly because it is impossible) seeing poetry, plays, or romances; but accustom them to talk over what they read, and point out to them, as you are very capable of doing, the absurdity often concealed under fine expressions, where the sound is apt to engage the admiration of young people.  I was so much charmed, at fourteen, with the dialogue of Henry and Emma, I can say it by heart to this day, without reflecting on the monstrous folly of the story in plain prose, where a young heiress to a fond father is represented falling in love with a fellow she had only seen as a huntsman, a falconer, and a beggar, and who confesses, without any circumstances of excuse, that he is obliged to run his country, having newly committed a murder.  She ought reasonably to have supposed him, at best, a highwayman; yet the virtuous virgin resolves to run away with him, to live among the banditti, and wait upon his trollop, if she had no other way of enjoying his company.  This senseless tale is, however, so well varnished with melody of words and pomp of sentiments, I am convinced it has hurt more girls than ever were injured by the lewdest poems extant.”

Life, Lady Mary was at pains to insist upon, is a much better instructor for the young than any story-book, however innocuous it may seem to grown-up people, who for the greater number have not the faculty of seeing how the tale would have affected them in their childhood.

“I congratulate my granddaughters on being born in an age so much enlightened.  Sentiments are certainly extreme silly, and only qualify young people to be the bubbles of all their acquaintance.  I do not doubt the frequency of assemblies has introduced a more enlarged way of thinking; it is a kind of public education, which I have always thought as necessary for girls as for boys.  A woman married at five-and-twenty, from under the eye of a strict parent, is commonly as ignorant as she was at five; and no more capable of avoiding the snares, and struggling with the difficulties, she will infallibly meet with in the commerce of the world.  The knowledge of mankind (the most useful of all knowledge) can only be acquired by conversing with them.  Books are so far from giving that instruction, they fill the head with a set of wrong notions, from whence spring the tribes of Clarissas, Harriets, &c.  Yet such was the method of education when I was in England, which I had it not in my power to correct; the young will always adopt the opinions of all their companions, rather than the advice of their mothers.”

“Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundations of vice,” Mary Astell had laid down as an axiom, and Lady Mary was always propounding this to her daughter.