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EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS.

There is no subject so much connected with individual happiness and national prosperity as the education of daughters.  It is a true, and therefore an old remark, that the situation and prospects of a country may be justly estimated by the character of its women; and we all know how hard it is to engraft upon a woman’s character habits and principles to which she was unaccustomed in her girlish days.  It is always extremely difficult, and sometimes utterly impossible.  Is the present education of young ladies likely to contribute to their own ultimate happiness, or to the welfare of the country?  There are many honorable exceptions; but we do think the general tone of female education is bad.  The greatest and most universal error is, teaching girls to exaggerate the importance of getting married; and of course to place an undue importance upon the polite attentions of gentlemen.  It was but a few days since, I heard a pretty and sensible girl say, ’Did you ever see a man so ridiculously fond of his daughters as Mr. ——?  He is all the time with them.  The other night, at the party, I went and took Anna away by mere force; for I knew she must feel dreadfully to have her father waiting upon her all the time, while the other girls were talking with the beaux.’  And another young friend of mine said, with an air most laughably serious, ’I don’t think Harriet and Julia enjoyed themselves at all last night.  Don’t you think, nobody but their brother offered to hand them to the supper-room?’

That a mother should wish to see her daughters happily married, is natural and proper; that a young lady should be pleased with polite attentions is likewise natural and innocent; but this undue anxiety, this foolish excitement about showing off the attentions of somebody, no matter whom, is attended with consequences seriously injurious.  It promotes envy and rivalship; it leads our young girls to spend their time between the public streets, the ball room, and the toilet; and, worst of all, it leads them to contract engagements, without any knowledge of their own hearts, merely for the sake of being married as soon as their companions.  When married, they find themselves ignorant of the important duties of domestic life; and its quiet pleasures soon grow tiresome to minds worn out by frivolous excitements.  If they remain unmarried, their disappointment and discontent are, of course, in proportion to their exaggerated idea of the eclat attendant upon having a lover.  The evil increases in a startling ratio; for these girls, so injudiciously educated, will, nine times out of ten, make injudicious mothers, aunts, and friends; thus follies will be accumulated unto the third and fourth generation.  Young ladies should be taught that usefulness is happiness, and that all other things are but incidental.  With regard to matrimonial speculations, they should be taught nothing!  Leave the affections to nature and to truth, and all will end well.  How many can I at this moment recollect, who have made themselves unhappy by marrying for the sake of the name of being married!  How many do I know, who have been instructed to such watchfulness in the game, that they have lost it by trumping their own tricks!