“I am extremely concerned to hear you complain of ill health, at a time of life when you ought to be in the flower of your strength.  I hope I need not recommend to you the care of it:  the tenderness you have for your children is sufficient to enforce you to the utmost regard for the preservation of a life so necessary to their well-being.  I do not doubt your prudence in their education:  neither can I say anything particular relating to it at this distance, different tempers requiring different management.  In general, never attempt to govern them (as most people do) by deceit:  if they find themselves cheated, even in trifles, it will so far lessen the authority of their instructor, as to make them neglect all their future admonitions.  And, if possible, breed them free from prejudices; those contracted in the nursery often influence the whole life after, of which I have seen many melancholy examples.  I shall say no more of this subject, nor would have said this little if you had not asked my advice:  ’tis much easier to give rules than to practise them.  I am sensible my own natural temper is too indulgent:  I think it the least dangerous error, yet still it is an error.  I can only say with truth, that I do not know in my whole life having ever endeavoured to impose on you, or give a false colour to anything that I represented to you.  If your daughters are inclined to love reading, do not check their inclination by hindering them of the diverting part of it; it is as necessary for the amusement of women as the reputation of men; but teach them not to expect or desire any applause from it.  Let their brothers shine, and let them content themselves with making their lives easier by it, which I experimentally know is more effectually done by study than any other way.  Ignorance is as much the fountain of vice as idleness, and indeed generally produces it.  People that do not read, or work for a livelihood, have many hours they know not how to employ; especially women, who commonly fall into vapours, or something worse.”

Mary was an advocate, one of the earliest advocates, for the higher education of woman.  Although she had educated herself, she realised that the circumstances in her case were exceptional, and no doubt it was also borne in on her that she had been an exceptional girl even as she was a remarkable woman.  It was not so much lack of education against which she tilted, as ill-directed studies.

“You have given me a great deal of satisfaction by your account of your eldest daughter.  I am particularly pleased to hear she is a good arithmetician; it is the best proof of understanding:  the knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.  If there is anything in blood, you may reasonably expect your children should be endowed with an uncommon share of good sense.  Mr. Wortley’s family and mine have both produced some of the greatest men that have been born in England:  I mean Admiral Sandwich, and my grandfather, who was