The second department of her duties, as it is the most important, so it must be regarded and exalted in an enlightened system of female education.  It is as the centre of social influence; the genial power of domestic life; the soul of refinement; the clear, shining orb, beneath whose beams the germs of thought, feeling, and habit in the young immortal are to vegetate and grow to maturity; the ennobling companion of man, his light in darkness, his joy in sorrow, uniting her practical judgment with his speculative wisdom, her enthusiastic affection with his colder nature, her delicacy of taste and sentiment with his boldness, and so producing a happy mean, a whole character; natural, beautiful and strong; it is as filling these high offices that woman is to be regarded and treated in the attempt to educate her.  The description of her sphere of life at once suggests the character of her training.  Whatever in science, literature and art is best adapted to prepare her to fill this high position with greatest credit, and spread farthest around it her appropriate influence, belongs of right to her education.  Her intellect is to be thoroughly disciplined, her judgment matured, her taste refined, her power of connected and just thought developed, and a love for knowledge imparted, so that she may possess the ability and the desire for future progress.

Who will say that this refiner of the world, this minister of the holiest and happiest influences to man, shall be condemned to the scantiest store of intellectual preparation for an entertainment so large and noble?  Is it true that a happy ignorance is the best qualification for a woman’s life; that in seeking to exalt the fathers and sons, we are to begin by the degradation of mothers and daughters?  Is there anything in that life incompatible with the noblest education, or which such an education will not ennoble and adorn?  We are not seeking in all this to make our daughters profound historians, poets, philosophers, linguists, authors.  Success of this high character in these pursuits, is usually the result of an ardent devotion for years to some one of them, for which it is rarely a female has the requisite opportunities.  But should they choose occasionally some particular walk of literature, and by the power of genius vivify and adorn it; should there be found here and there one with an intense enthusiasm for some high pursuit, combined with that patient toil which, associated with a vigorous intellect, is the well-spring of so many glorious streams of science, should not such a result of this enlarged education be hailed as the sign of its excellence, and rejoiced in as the proof of its power?  The Mores, the Hemanses, the De Staels, and others among the immortal dead and the living, who compose that bright galaxy of female wit shining ever refulgent—­have they added nothing to human life, and given no quick, upward impulse of the world?  Besides, that system of education which, in occasional instances, uniting