WOMAN.

PART THIRD.

FEMALE EDUCATION.

OVER the whole world, there has been entertained the most extraordinary variety of opinions, in regard to the capacity and character of woman. While at certain periods, and in some nations, women have been honored, and almost adored-in the greater part of the world, and much oftener, they have been held in contempt, treated as the property of men, and strangely vilified. Everywhere men corrupt women, and then blame them for their corruption. În the highest civilization, this is the case to a limited extent and in individual instances; in other stages of human progress, the rule applies generally to the whole

sex.

This has been and is especially the case with Oriental nations. Thousands of years ago, the Pundits, in their sacred books, wrote in this strange manner of the sex which we delight to honor:

"Women have six qualities: the first, an inordinate desire for jewels and fine furniture, handsome clothes, and nice victuals; the second, immoderate lust; the third, violent anger; the fourth, deep resentment, no person knowing the sentiments concealed in their heart; the fifth, another person's good appears evil in their eyes; the sixth, they commit bad actions."

How strange and odious seem to us these coarse invecives, with which not only the Hindoo and Persian, but the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman writers abound! to us who see developed in the same sex, with education and liberty, a temperate prudence, and exquisite taste; a refin

ed chastity; sweetness of temper; a beautiful candor and unswerving faith; the most disinterested and self-sacrificing benevolence; and finally, every grace and every virtue, which makes woman worthy of the name of angel.

Why this wide difference? We are not to suppose that men have always been unjust in their opinions, or entirely wanton in their satires on the sex. No: the character of woman has doubtless been, in a great degree, such as it has been represented-in other words, it has been what education, and other circumstances, to be treated of in the progress of this work, have made it. Female education seems to be at the very basis of society, since women, as mothers, are destined in a great degree to give, to form, and mould the character of both sexes.

Undoubtedly, the most rapid way in which any people could be improved, in physical, intellectual and moral qualities, would be the proper development of all these qualities, in the female sex. It is no less true, that in no way can a people become so soon depraved and debased as by the same influence. The importance of a proper female education is so evident, and so universally acknowledged, that we need only allude to it; besides, what we propose, is to show rather what it has been, and is, thanwhat it should be.

It is not to be supposed that in the primitive ages, when men were chiefly engaged in gaining a rude subsistence by the chase, from the keeping of flocks, or the toils of agriculture, much attention was paid to the education of either sex. Until the invention of letters, all education must have consisted in acquiring the arts necessary to a subsistence, and in storing the memory with legends of the past. When the whole human race spoke but one language, there could be no trouble in learning others.

The children of each generation acquired, naturally, the knowledge possessed by their parents, and added to it, according as necessity stimulated invention. We may naturally suppose that women, from the first, made tents and clothing, prepared food, tended flocks, did the lighter work of agriculture, while men, as in savage tribes, at the present day, were engaged in war, the chase, and the more active and hardy occupations of life.

In any view of the nations of antiquity, we turn first to Egypt. China, Japan, and the East Indies, seem connected with a different kind of civilization-but all the light and luxury of the Western World we trace to Egypt. Long before Palestine, or Greece, had emerged from barbarismlong before Carthage or Rome were known, Egypt was in a state of the highest civilization, possessed of literature, science, and arts, of the nature of which, her monuments and ruins present us such astonishing evidences. In whatever light we view the Egyptians, no nation of antiquity is so interesting, since they excelled all others in arts, sciences and government, in which they believed that they had been perfecting themselves for one hundred thousand years.

In a country full of splendid cities-where were built monuments whose construction is a puzzle to modern science; whose armies at one time held the world under tribute; whose temples and colleges were the resort of the philosophers of all other nations, and where women occupied an honorable position, since the wife and sister shared the power and dignity of the throne, we may be sure that female education was not neglected.

Athyrte, the daughter of Sesostris, appears to have been educated in the mysteries of Egyptian science, which included astronomy and divination, and she encouraged her father in his project of universal conquest, by assurances of success from her divinations, her dreams in the temples, a magnetic clairvoyance much practiced in early ages, and from prodigies she had seen in the air-such probably as are seen by those gifted with the second-sight.

In ancient Egypt, the women managed the greatest part of the business transactions out of doors, and particularly attended to the commerce of the nation. They must therefore have been skilled in numbers, so far as they were then known, and the use of writing. Their education was of a practical, masculine character; and while the eastern nations taught females little else than music, dancing, and the mere accomplishments; the Egyptians, to render their women useful, not only gave their education a practical character, but the softer embellishments and accomplishments, common to the sex in other countries, were forbidden them.

Herodotus, from the circumstance of women attending to commercial business, and out door affairs, appears to infer that the men attended to domestic and household duties. This idea appears to us without foundation. Doubtless, while women attended to all the ordinary cares and business of life, the men were employed in the cultivation of science and the arts, especially in architecture and sculpture, in building the magnificent cities whose ruins cover all Upper Egypt, in forming the immense catacombs, excavating artificial lakes, and piling up the eternal pyramids. The whole male population must have been sufficiently employed in arts and arms, without being engaged in domestic avocations.

The Phoenicians were a polished nation like the Egyptians, less engaged in agriculture and architecture, but more in foreign commerce. The same may be said of the Babylonians, and of the people around what is now known as the Persian Gulf, who were at one time rich and magnificent almost beyond example. It is difficult to conceive of the wealth, splendor and civilization, that once had their seat in this centre of the Eastern world, composed of North Eastern Africa and South Western Asia. With the exception of the extreme East, all the rest of the world was covered with a darkness and barbarism which we vainly endeavor to penetrate. We find in Central America monuments and ruins which may be referred to the same period. but there is no history or legend to tell us by whom they were erected.

Still, there is little to inform us how women were educated in those remote ages. The splendid ruins of Palmyra, the storied magnificence of Babylon, give us but grounds for reasonable inference. We have, here and there, only some scattered hints, in the history of these periods.

Cyrus, we are told, gave two female musicians, his captives, to Cyaxares. Men and women were educated as musicians to amuse the great, with instrumental and vocal music, and dancing. Some of them must have been instructed in more useful branches of learning, since, among the Medes and Persians, the education of the children of their kings was for ages committed to women. This custom was begun by Dejoces, their first king; like all the

customs of this nation, it was unalterable, and was, doubtless, imitated by the nobility, and finally throughout the State.

It will be said that this custom, which, even to the present day, is retained in Persia, and other Oriental countries, accounts for the effeminacy of their monarchs. Indirectly it does--but the women were first made weak, their passions disordered, and their natures debased by polygamy and slavery. It is only free women who are fit to educate free men; and though we might not be in favor of committing the entire education of men to women, there can be no doubt that none are so fitted to commence and finish it.

We have, in the history of Cyrus, a terrible example of the effects of bad education. The Lydians, whom he had conquered, having revolted, he resolved to carry them all off and sell them for slaves. This resolution he imparted to Croesus, who advised him to take revenge only on the leader of the revolt, and, to prevent any future outbreak, to forbid the Lydians the use of arms, and oblige them to be educated in the most debauched and effeminate manner. Cyrus followed this detestable advice, and the result was that the Lydians soon became the most infamous and aban. doned people in the world.

In the heroic ages of Greece, the women appear to have been educated only in household duties, domestic manufactures, and such accomplishments as served to render their beauty more attractive. In the Andromache of Euripides, Peleus reproaches Menelaus, the father of Helen, for having occasioned the improper conduct of that too celebrated lady, by the bad education he had given her. If, as many suppose, Helen was not a real character, but a type of the times, such education was probably too common, though we have in striking contrast with the dissoluteness of Helen, the virtuous constancy of Penelope.

In later ages of Greece, the education of the women was of the most extraordinary character. The greatest attention was paid to that physical education, which would make them robust, strong, and active; fit to become the mothers of warriors. Accordingly, under the legislation of Lycurgus, the young women were required to dance naked with the young men, to join in public processions,