Nor were the little slights she would now-and-then (following, as I must own, my lead) put upon such mere scholars [and her stupid and pedantic brother was one of those who deserved those slights] as despised not only our sex, but all such as had not had their opportunities of being acquainted with the parts of speech, [I cannot speak low enough of such,] and with the dead languages, owing to that contempt which some affect for what they have not been able to master; for she had an admirable facility for learning languages, and read with great ease both in Italian and French.  She had begun to apply herself to Latin; and having such a critical knowledge of her own tongue, and such a foundation from the two others, would soon have made herself an adept in it.

But, notwithstanding all her acquirements, she was an excellent economist and housewife.  And those qualifications, you must take notice, she was particularly fond of inculcating upon all her reading and writing companions of the sex:  for it was a maxim with her, ’That a woman who neglects the useful and the elegant, which distinguish her own sex, for the sake of obtaining the learning which is supposed more peculiar to the other, incurs more contempt by what she foregoes, than she gains credit by what she acquires.’

‘All that a woman can learn,’ she used to say, [expatiating on this maxim,] ’above the useful knowledge proper to her sex, let her learn.  This will show that she is a good housewife of her time, and that she has not a narrow or confined genius.  But then let her not give up for these those more necessary, and, therefore, not meaner, employments, which will qualify her to be a good mistress of a family, a good wife, and a good mother; for what can be more disgraceful to a woman than either, through negligence of dress, to be found a learned slattern; or, through ignorance of household-management, to be known to be a stranger to domestic economy?’

She would have it indeed, sometimes, from the frequent ill use learned women make of that respectable acquirement, that it was no great matter whether the sex aimed at any thing but excelling in the knowledge of the beauties and graces of their mother-tongue; and once she said, that this was field enough for a woman; and an ampler was but endangering her family usefulness.  But I, who think our sex inferior in nothing to the other, but in want of opportunities, of which the narrow-minded mortals industriously seek to deprive us, lest we should surpass them as much in what they chiefly value themselves upon, as we do in all the graces of a fine imagination, could never agree with her in that.  And yet I was entirely of her opinion, that those women, who were solicitous to obtain that knowledge of learning which they supposed would add to their significance in sensible company, and in their attainment of it imagined themselves above all domestic usefulness, deservedly incurred the contempt which they hardly ever failed to meet with.