occasion. There must be some checks to the excessive increase of literature as of population, or we should be overwhelmed by it; and they are happily found in the envy, dulness, prejudices, and vanity of mankind. While we think we are weighing the merits of an author, we are indulging our own national pride, indolence, or ill-humour, by condemning what we do not understand, or laughing at what thwarts our inclinations. The French reduce all philosophy to a set of agreeable sensations: the Germans reduce the commonest things to abstruse metaphysics. The one are a mystical, the other a superficial people. Both proceed by the severest logic; but the real guide to their conclusions is the proportion of phlegm or mercury in their dispositions. When we appeal to a man's reason against his inclinations, we speak a language without meaning, and which he will not understand. Different nations have favourite modes of feeling and of accounting for things to please themselves and fall in with their ordinary habits; and our different systems of philosophy, literature, and art, meet, contend, and repel one another on the confines of opinion, because their elements will not amalgamate with our several humours; and all the while we fancy we settle the question by an abstract exercise of reason, and by laying down some refined and exclusive standard of taste. There is no great harm in this illusion, nor can there be much in seeing through it; for we shall go on just as we did before.*

LOVE.

O LOVE! what may thine emblem be?—
Thine is the Sibyl's branch of gold,
Which gives us, even on earth, to see
Elysium's glittering gates unfold;
And thine the foot, of elfin power,

Whose sight can make the spirit glow-
Like the green ring that gems the moor
An emerald in a waste of woe.

Such art thou, when thy path is sweet,
And leads o'er Hope's delicious plain;
When youthful hearts in music meet,

As summer winds the warbling main :
Such is thy power, when thou dost come
With wing of light and breath of flowers,

And waken in thy votary's home

The lyre that rung in Eden's bowers.

But, ah! far darker powers are thine-
To bid fond hearts in vain to glow,
No rose to bloom, no ray to shine;
And lay young Hope in ruin low!

O baffled Love! thine are the hues

That shroud in gloom the march of years;
And, as the glow-worm lights the dews,

Thou glimmerest on the dark heart's tears.

J.

Benaparte got a committee of the French Institute to draw up a report of the Kantian Philosophy. He might as well have ordered them to draw up a report of the geography of the moon. It is difficult for an Englishman to understand Kant; for a Frenchman impossible. The latter has a certain routine of phrases, into which his ideas run habitually as into a mould; and you cannot get him out of them.

THE CULTIVATION OF WOMEN.

To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine.

SIR,-Turning over a bound volume of the New Monthly Magazine, I chanced the other day upon a paper On Education (vol. vii. p. 562) in which your correspondent arraigns the preceptors and parents of the present times, for their awkward and mischievous interference with the minds and bodies of the rising generation. To a superficial observer, the writer of that article will appear to have made out his case; for the error being in the premises, and not in the reasoning upon them, the conclusions are little likely to be questioned by those who content themselves with the surface of things. Admitting, what this gentleman seems to take for granted, that wisdom, virtue, and happiness are the ends which parents and preceptors propose to themselves in their multifarious attempts "to teach the young idea how to shoot," they are, it must be confessed, out and out the very worst marksmen that ever "handled their bow like a crow-keeper." But the point which is thus assumed as indisputable, is so manifestly false, that it vitiates the whole argument; and I cannot but wonder at the blindness that could so egregiously miss its way and trip against so obvious a stumbling-block. That wisdom or virtue ever entered the head of our education systemmongers, is utterly beyond all credence; cunning and hypocrisy having so generally superseded the real articles in the market, that very few indeed take the trouble of keeping them in their stock: and though more pretences are made respecting happiness, yet, if we look nearly into the matter, we find a thousand people, ay ten thousand, directing the whole efforts of their children to the acquirement of wealth, for one that looks to any other object. Not, however, to deal in personalities, let us examine the several national establishments for education, and see what are the ends they pursue in their systems of tuition. The principal design of all our public schools is notoriously to prepare the boys for-college; and that of our universities to prepare them for— obtaining a fellowship. With girls the matter is still worse: some schools prepare them for the drawing-room, some for the Indian market, and some for a more open, though scarcely less degrading prostitution at home. Military academies (to return to the boys) prepare their pupils for " eyes right;" commercial academies teach the art and mystery of flying kites; the masticatory courses of the inns of court prepare the students for the "whole practice" of "Life in London;" the medical schools prepare for passing an examination, and the theological for ordination. "Virtus post nummos" is the maxim of the best; and it is very well when virtus is not wholly forgotten. If your readers, Mr. Editor, are not satisfied with these examples, let them look to the great system of national education now going on in Ireland. This is precisely a case in which your correspondent would have fallen slapdash into error. Methinks I hear him, "good easy man," arguing with himself from the customary object of the primary schools of other countries, and taking it for granted that the end in view is to teach the peasantry their A. B. C. "Surely," I hear him exclaim, " reading can as well be taught in one book as another; and the wiseacres are most perversely illogical in thus persisting to cram education down the

throats of the people, in the only way in which they will not receive it." If indeed he looked farther, and fancied that he discovered reading not to be the end in view, but, more specifically, reading the Bible, matters would not be much mended. In order to read the Bible at all, men must first learn to read; and a Catholic taught in a profane horn-book is surely much nearer to the possibility of Bible-reading than a Catholic whom you exclude from learning, by refusing to teach him on his own terms. Reading, however, either the Bible or any thing else, is a very secondary matter in this case; and your correspondent would be as much out in this as in his other speculations, if he proceeded in the way I suppose. The real object of the Irish Education Society seems to be neither to educate, nor to proselytize on the great scale. It is no wholesale system of national conversion, but a petty retail trade in seduction, a sort of spiritual swindling and getting of souls upon false pretences, with a view to private promotion rather than to public illumination ;—and the means are admirably adapted to the ends.

That British education is generally well suited to its proposed ends, must be inferred from its notorious success. If it be acknowledged that the universal object of a mother's solicitude is to make her daughter a fine lady, it must be admitted that the present generation are the finest ladies that ever existed. If accomplishment be defined, as it ought to be, "shewy superficial acquirement," our female blue-stockings are the ne plus ultra of gaudy deceptiveness. No one in his senses will, I presume, dispute that the business of a man of rank and fortune is to distinguish himself by his polish (and when has the town known boots of more translucid jet ?)—to exhibit the fineness of his taste in the propriety of his dress (and when were neckcloths better tied than now?)-to pride himself on the most unimpeachable honour (and when was duelling conducted with a more murderous precision?)-to be punctual with creditors (and when were debts more promptly discharged than since the invention of Insolvent Acts?) If we turn to philosophy, Stoicism is many miles behind Dandyism in apathy; and Epicurus was a fool, a mere child, and tyro, when compared with a modern Amphitryon. Archimedes could do nothing without his o, er, whereas the stupidest fellow "about town" will raise a mountain of debt, without the slightest basis of credit for his fulcrum. In the arts, the proof is still more positive. In a mercantile country, the arts, like every other pursuit, are subordinate to the great end of moneymaking, and must follow the demands of the market. Now, the reigning taste of the times being caricature, the perfection of modern art is proved to the extreme, in the blue and red faces commonly called "portraits of a gentleman," which abound in our exhibitions. A commercial population are necessarily but baddish judges of painting; and our painters know well how to please the public taste in that particular; the great majority of their pictures being in this respect perfectly "signs of the times." In music our success is no less; and surely nothing but an education happily directed to that end, could enable our best composers to shut their ears to Cimerosa, Mozart, and Rossini, to forget themselves into the "Woodpecker," "Henry is gone," and "Sweet little cottage" style of song-writing, and fit themselves for producing such melancholy and gentlemanlike ditties, as no other nation but England could endure. There is really great finesse in thus hitting

the fancy of their customers, to a nicety. But the comble of all perfection, the last touch of finish, of which education is susceptible, has been given within a few years, by the invention of a new profession, which has acquired the technical appellation of "cultivating a woman," and those who know nothing of the effects of cultivation, but by an acquaintance with cauliflowers, seacale, and Mr. Knight's gigantic peas, have but a poor and inadequate insight into the full import of the term. To this art, the training men for "the mill" is in every respect inferior; and yet perhaps of all the departments of medical science, this is the only branch that has hitherto proceeded with any thing like certainty. Shame, shame upon the Galens and the Hippocrates! the Cullens and the Hunters! feeble and contemptible are the glimmerings of light diffused through their voluminous productions, when compared to the full blaze of day that illumines the doctors of Newmarket and the Fives Court. Without any other guide than their own empirical experience, these worthies will in a given time raise or reduce a man to the requisite weight, even to an ounce, contrary to an aphorism of the learned Gregory. They know better than Cornaro the means of raising the health to its maximum; they can tell what meat fattens, what nourishment turns to muscle, and what gives bulk without adding any thing to strength. They clear the foggiest pipes, take down the unhealthiest potbelly, and do more for the wind by diet and exercise, than all the dig talis and squills in Apothecaries Hall could effect and yet all this is nothing to the cultivation of a woman!

:

Hitherto women have chiefly been cultivated for the stage, and the art has consequently been confined within the narrowest limits; but now that it has begun to extend its operations into private life, its principles are acquiring a proportionate notoriety. The origin of all things is obscure, and that of "cultivation" among the rest but it is possible that the first glimmerings may be traced to the Caribbee women, who educated their children's head to that flatness which in their eyes formed the beau ideal of external appearance, thus setting the great example to European mothers to sacrifice their children's brains, in favour of the outside of the bead. The New Zealanders likewise educate their infant's ears to a great length, by the insertion of wedges; and the Chinese educate their wives' feet, as is known "lippis et tonsoribus." But the seeds of the most recondite philosophy exist in the instincts of the rudest savages; and this proves nothing against the merits of the professors who have raised this new branch of education to its present perfection.

The first object of a cultivator in taking in hand the raw material of his art, is to determine beforehand what can be made of her: for in this, as in other cases, a certain aptitude is necessary in the subject; and "There is no making a silk purse of a sow's ear." This first inquiry is, whether Nature has made her shoulders susceptible of symmetry; and whether she has predestined them for " a forehand," or "a back front." He examines attentively her build, whether it be susceptible of the voluptuous or the majestic,-better formed for the delicate elegance of the svelte, or the swelling richness of the "en bon point." Not but that an experienced artist can make any thing of a tolerable subject. If man cannot by forethought add a cubit to his stature, it is not the same with woman; at least, what comes to the same thing, the

artist by operating on her carriage, and adjusting her proportions, can give the appearance of height, when nature has refused it. Still, however, art is most successful when it dextrously avails itself of the bounties of nature; and as intellectual cultivation succeeds best when bestowed on a bright genius, and as all the ploughing in the world is nothing to a rich bed of manure, so bodily cultivation produces the most striking results when bestowed on a figure of some natural symmetry. Having determined by a close inspection, what are the laudable points in a girl's structure, or, to use Brown's well-imagined phrase, what are "her capabilities," the great object of cultivation is to make the most of them; to bring every attention to bear upon displaying what is good, and concealing what is defective; upon forcing nature in her favourable dispositions, and averting the mischievous energies of her misplaced bounty. In every variation of the human frame, nature has a specific aim, and the business of art is to conform to her views, and to develope her designs. To this end, the professor commences a series of operations "upon scientific principles," as he terms it, by which the most extraordinary changes are effected. By diet, compresses, and various other artifices, "too tedious to enumerate," flesh is absorbed from one part of the person, in order to be accumulated on another: and the em peror of all the conjurors is not more dextrous in conveying his balls from cup to cup, than our artist in removing a tumid ancle, and transferring the peccant superfluity to some more desirable point of redundance. If a young lady is destined to operate on the hearts of her admirers by a "vis a tergo,” and like the Parthian, to shoot her arrows as she flies, the skill of the artist is exhibited in giving a plumpness and polished undulation to the shoulders, at the expense of a bosom, of which, perhaps, he can make nothing. At the same time, by a peculiar method of moving the body on the haunches, and by bandages well applied, all other fulnesses in front are repressed, while a jutting protuberance is favoured behind, which might put the Venus Callipygia to the blush of inferiority. If, on the contrary, the lady is not formed for "backing her friends," and it is not intended, in the language of the military martinet, that she should "front to the rear," that rear is abandoned without protection, and all the disposable forces accumulated in the van. The head is elevated, the chest thrown forward; a rich and succulent diet is brought to act secundem artem upon the bosom, whose form is either dipartited, or disposed in conglomerated magnificence, according as the osteolegy of the parts afford "ample scope and verge enough," or crib and confine the softer organs within a narrow compass. In these operations, the artist is much assisted by the milliner and the staymaker. Frills and flounces are added or taken away, as fulness is or is not desirable, or as concealment or exposure tend most to the effect in contemplation: gatherings of silk and velvet add to the natural developement of the favourite organ; while tight lacing and straight garments compress the wanton exuberance of an anathematized superfluity. But the great skill of the cultivator is exhibited in giving and maintaining the requisite rotundity to the mature charms of full-blown matrons in the meridian of life. The art bestowed in cooking cutlets and steaks, and in brewing ale, expressly ad hoc, as illustrated in the elaboratory of the divine Miss Prescott of magnetizing memory, would alone suffice to set up an alchemist. The conciliation of high health,