CHAP. V.

ON THE MODE OF INTRODUCING YOUNG

WOMEN INTO GENERAL SOCIETY.

W

HEN the business of education, whether conducted at home or at a public feminary, draws towards a conclufion, the next object that occupies the attention of the parent is what fhe terms the introduction of her daughter into the world. Emancipated from the shackles of instruction, the young woman is now to be brought forward to act her part on the public stage of life. And as though liberty were a gift unattended with temptations to unexperienced youth; as though vivacity, openness of heart, the consciousness of perfonal accomplishments and of personal beauty, would serve rather to counteract than to aggravate those temptations; the change of fituation is not unfre

2

unfrequently heightened by every poffible aid of contraft. Pains are taken, as it were, to contrive, that when the dazzled ftranger fhall ftep from the nursery and the lecture-room, fhe fhall plunge at once into a flood of vanity and dissipation. Mewed up from every prying gaze, taught to believe that her first appearance is the fubject of universal expectation, tutored to beware above all things of tarnishing the luftre of her attractions by mauvaife bonte, ftimulated with defire to outfhine her equals in age and rank, fhe burns with impatience for the hour of displaying her perfections: till at length, intoxicated beforehand with anticipated flatteries, fhe is launched, in the pride of ornament, on fome occafion of feftivity; and from that time forward thinks by day and dreams by night of amusements, and of dress, and of compliments, and of admirers.

I believe this picture to convey no exaggerated representation of the state of things which is often witnessed in the higher ranks

of

of fociety. I fear, too, that it is a picture to which the practice of the middle ranks, though at prefent not fully corresponding, bears a continually increafing refemblance. The extreme, however, which has been de fcribed, has, like every other, extreme, its oppofite. There are mothers who profefs to initiate their daughters, almost from the cradle, into what they call the knowledge of life; and pollute the years of childhood with an instilled attachment to the card-table; with habits of flippancy and pertness, denominated wit; with an "eafiness" of manners, which ought to be named effrontery; and with a knowledge of tales of scandal unfit to be mentioned by any one but in a court of justice. Both thefe extremes are moft dangerous to every thing that is va luable in the female character; to every thing on which happiness in the prefent world and in a future world depends. But of the two the latter is the more pernicious. In that system war is carried on almost from infancy, and carried on in the most deteftable

able manner, against female delicacy and innocence. In the former, that delicacy and that innocence are expofed under the greatest disadvantages to the fudden influence of highly fascinating allurements. It may be hoped however, that, coming to the encounter as yet little impaired, they may have fome chance of efcaping without fevere injury. At any rate, be this chance ever so small, it is greater than the probability, that when affailed from their earliest dawn, by flow poifon inceffantly adminiftered, they should ultimately furvive.

To accuftom the mind by degrees to the trials which it must learn to withstand, yet to fhelter it from infidious temptations, while it is unable to difcern and to fhun the fnare, is the first rule which wisdom suggests with regard to all trials and temptations whatever. To this rule too much at

tention cannot be paid in the mode of introducing a young woman into the common habits of focial intercourfe. Let her

not

not be distracted in the years by nature particularly designed for the cultivation of the understanding and the acquifition of knowledge, by the turbulence and glare of polite amufements. Let her not be suffered to taste the draught which the world offers to her, till fhe has learned that, if there is sweetness on the surface, there is venom deeper in the cup; and is fortified with those principles of temperance and rectitude, which may guard her against unsafe indulgence. Let vanity, and other unwarrantable springs of action, prompt, at all times, to exert their influence on the female character, and at no time likely to exert an influence more dangerous than when a young woman first steps into public life, be curtailed, as far as may be fafely practicable, of the powerful affistance of novelty. Altogether to preclude that affiftance is impoffible. But it may be dif armed of much of its force by gradual familiarity. Let that gradual familiarity take place under the fuperintendence of parents and near relations, and of friends of ap