44

CULTIVATE SELF-RELIANCE.

and deeply moved by the sound of harmonious music. They should have a keen perception of the glories of sunrise and sunset, of the loveliness of dewy pastures folded in the coils of silvery streams, of the grandeur of snow-covered heights, and the majesty and mystery of the sea.

On your duties towards your teachers I need not enlarge; they are summed up in the words willing obedience.

Nor need I speak of your duties towards your school-fellows. They are summed up in the command that you should do unto others as you would that others should do unto you. You will treat them with affectionate confidence; you will be true to them; you will be patient of their infirmities; you will render them generous help; you will interpret their motives charitably.

race.

Against one great evil we must warn our schoolgirls, the want of self-reliance. Many of them fail, because, being outstripped in the race by swifter competitors, their hearts fail them, and they lie down by the wayside, and abandon the This must not be; this feint-heartedness is incompatible with a sincere fulfilment of duty. Whatever the race is, it must be won; whatever the work is, it must be done; and until the race is run, no one can tell who will come in at the winning-post-and until the work is done, no one can decide whether it has been done well or ill. Remember, that the merit lies, not in attaining the prize, but in the bravest effort to attain it. The delicate cannot go so far or so fast as the strong; but so far as they do go, they may be sure to examine the countryside thoroughly, and to allow no feature to escape their observation. Very clever boys or girls are sometimes a positive misfortune in a school, from the deterring and depressing influence they exercise upon their companions. 'Oh, it is of no use trying,' says B., 'for A. is sure to beat us! But that is not the question: the trial must be made, in order that the energies may be fully developed, and no more is asked of B. than that he shall do his best. Nor will his merit be less if he prove unable to do all that has been done by some more gifted person. When a brilliant genius carries off the prizes

ELIZABETH CARTER.

45

of life, we will not, indeed, withhold our admiration; but our sympathies are not fully excited except when those prizes fall to the lot of the hard worker, the industrious plodder. If there be one thing on earth,' says Dr. Arnold, which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, jealously, and truly cultivated.' When the natural genius is one of an inferior order, Perseverance may step in and supply every real or imaginary defect; and the girl who at first may be censured for her supposed 'stupidity' or 'slowness,' may eventually, by earnest labour, by well-directed study, by persistent application, outstrip, or not fall far behind, more brilliant but less industrious competitors. Sidney Smith says of Francis Horner, 'He had an intense love of knowledge; he wasted very little of the portion of life conceded to him,' and it was in this way he placed himself on an equality with others whose natural powers were greater. We advise our Girls, then, not to be faint of heart; not to rest on their oars because they cannot pull as swiftly and strenuously as those who are endowed with greater strength; but to cultivate the virtue of self-reliance, and, along with this, those of humility, of patience, of diligence.

Our Girls will find an admirable pattern or exemplar in Elizabeth Carter, the learned translator of 'Epictetus.' It is true that, at first, she gave small sign of profiting by the careful education her father provided for her, and that so slow was her progress in mastering the rudiments of Latin and Greek that her father frequently advised her to abandon all idea of becoming a scholar. But she possessed-what girls too often lack--tenacity of purpose; she was patient and persevering; and having set a goal before her, was resolute to plod onward until she reached it. She studied assiduously, even adopting the blamable practice of taking snuff at night to keep her awake; and, as a natural result, she triumphed over all her difficulties; the greatest of which, perhaps, was the 'bad method' of teaching then in vogue. Her latest biographer says, 'that many of the most gifted people who ever lived

46

NOT A BLUE-STOCKING.

have been unable to learn except in their own way, and so it was with Elizabeth Carter. She could not endure the study of Latin and Greek grammars, and seeing what they were in those days, it is small matter of astonishment; but she understood the principles of grammar, nevertheless, and became afterwards a sound scholar. The great Johnson, as is well known, in speaking of some celebrated scholar, said "he understood Greek better than anyone he had ever known except Mrs. Carter." At seventeen she translated some odes of Anacreon, and was so well versed in Latin, that her brother, when at Canterbury school, wrote to her, saying that he had translated one of the Odes of Homer so well, it was supposed to have been done by her. At twenty she was a thorough Greek, Latin, and Hebrew scholar, besides having taught herself Italian, Spanish, and German. French had been acquired in childhood, and later in life she learned Portuguese and Arabic.'

A 'blue-stocking! A 'pedant!' Some such terms of ridicule as these would have been applied to her at one time, and even at the present day a certain amount of silly sarcasm is too often poured out upon a 'learned woman.' But Elizabeth Carter was not a pedant; hers was a healthy nature, capable of honest and hearty enjoyment, and by no means unduly absorbed in literary pursuits. She danced well, had much dramatic skill, was a first-rate housewife and needlewoman, and excelled in drawing and music. In active, almost boisterous exercise, she delighted, not disdaining to play at hide and seek, or blind man's buff, with her brothers and sisters; and taking a good, sensible walk every day, without much regard to wind and weather. And here, our readers may 'make a note of it,' to the effect that regular and prolonged open-air exercise is as essential to the health of the mind as to that of the body. Unless the blood flows freely, and the lungs act readily; unless the muscles are firm, and the nerves braced up, the intellect will not do its duty; the brain will be sluggish or irritable; and a peevish temper and lethargic disposition will poison the very springs of life,

ON WRITING HOME.

47

Elizabeth Carter writes to a friend: 'I walked three miles yesterday in a wind that I thought would have blown me out of this planet, and afterwards danced nine hours, and then walked back again.' She rose early: at four or five o'clock in her youth, and between six and seven when in advanced years. And thus she secured a fine equality of disposition, an absolute sanity of intellect, and a calmness and clearness of judgment, which graced her whole life, and accompanied her to her grave at the ripe age of eighty-eight.

Turning to another subject, we may quote, from one of Sir Thomas More's letters to his daughters, some passages of advice which the Girl at School will do well to take to heart. They refer to a duty which school-girls often neglect, or, if they perform it, perform it in a perfunctory and careless manner the duty of Writing Home. This is a duty which should carry an intense gratification and satisfaction with it, as maintaining a tender and loving communication with the homecircle, the sister or the mother or the brother or the father, and enabling one's thoughts and feelings to find a spontaneous expression. We have often been surprised at the indifference shown by many girls to this important task. It seems as if they would naturally avail themselves of every opportunity of strengthening the ties between them and those they love; of informing the latter of their progress or the obstructions to it, of their daily method of life, of their labours and their pleasures. Nothing can be more offensive than the carelessly written, and often ill-spelled, scrawls which some daughters, for instance, appear to consider as all they owe to their affectionate, and often anxious, mothers. Now, on this point, let us hear what

Sir Thomas More says:

'Now, I expect a letter from each of you almost every day that I am absent; neither will I have any such excuses as the shortness of the time, the hasty departure of the messenger, the want of anything to say; for nobody prevents you from writing; and as to the messenger, may you not be beforehand with him, by having your letters always written and sealed to

48

SIR THOMAS MORE'S ADVICE.

wait any opportunity? But as to the want of matter, how can that ever take place when you write to me-to me, who am gratified to hear either of your studies or amusements, who shall be pleased to hear you at great length inform me that you have nothing at all to say, which certainly must be a very easy task, especially for women, who are said to be always most fluent upon nothing. This, however, let me impress upon your remembrance, that, whether you write of serious subjects or the merest trifles, you write always with care and attention. Nor will it be amiss if you first write all your letters in English, and which you will afterwards translate much more successfully, and with much less fatigue, into Latin, while the mind is free from the labour of invention and solely occupied with the expression. But, while I leave it to your own judgments, I enjoin you by all means to examine what you write with great care before you make out a fair copy. Consider the sentences, first in the order in which they are placed, and then attend minutely to their several parts. By this means you will easily discover any improper expression into which you may have fallen; and, even after you have corrected it and written out a fair copy, do not account it irksome still to examine it again; for, in copying over, we are apt to fall into errors which we had already noticed or corrected. By this diligence, your trifles will, in a short time, be of importance; for, as there is nothing so witty and pointed as that it may not be rendered insipid by a stupid and awkward mode of expression, so there is nothing so silly in itself as that it may not, by skilful management, acquire a pleasant and graceful turn.'

Sir Thomas More based his advice, no doubt, on the principle that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Apart from this consideration, is it not-to speak plainly-an impertinence for a girl to send home a letter which has been dashed off hurriedly, and is disfigured by bad writing and bad spelling, such as the writer would not have dared to venture in a school-exercise? Is it not an indication of a painful want of respect, even of a lack of affection?