In continuation of my last letter, I shall proceed at once to the minor details of study, and suggest for your adoption such practices as others by experience have found conducive to improvement. Not that one person can lay down any rules for another that might in every particular be safely followed: we must, each for ourselves, experimentalize long and variously upon our own mind, before we can understand the mode of treatment best suited to it; and we may, perhaps, in the progress of such experiments, derive as much benefit from our mistakes themselves as if the object of our experiments had been at once attained. It is not, however, from wilful mistakes, or from deliberate ignorance, that we ever derive profit. Instead, therefore, of striking out entirely new plans for yourself, in which time and patience and even hope may be exhausted, I should advise you to listen for direction to the suggestions of those who by more than mere profession have frequented the road upon which you are anxious to make a rapid progress. In books you may find much that is useful; from the conversation of those who have been self-educated you may receive still greater assistance, as the advice thus personally addressed must of course be more discriminating and special. For this latter reason, in all that I am now about to write, I keep in view the peculiar character and formation of your mind. I do not address the world in general, who would profit little by the course of education here recommended: I only write to my Unknown Friend.

In the first place, I should advise, as of primary importance, the laying down of a regular system of employment. Impose upon yourself the duty of getting through so much work every day; even, if possible, lay down a plan as to the particular period of the day in which each occupation is to be attended to; many otherwise wasted moments would be saved by having arranged beforehand that which is successively to engage the attention. The great advantage of such regularity is experienced in the acknowledged truth of Lord Chesterfield’s maxim: “He who has most business has most leisure.” When the multiplicity of affairs to be got through absolutely necessitates the arrangement of an appointed time for each, the same habits of regularity and of undilatoriness (if I may be allowed the expression) are insensibly carried into the lighter pursuits of life. There is another important reason for the self-imposition of those systematic habits which to men of business are a necessity; it is, however, one which you cannot at all appreciate until you have experienced its importance: I refer to the advantage of being, by a self-imposed rule, provided with an immediate object, in which the intellectual pursuits of a woman must otherwise be deficient. I would not depreciate the mightiness of “the future;" but it is evident that the human mind is so constituted as to feel that motives increase in strength as they approach in nearness; otherwise, why should it require such strong faith, and that faith a supernatural gift, to enable us to sacrifice the present gratification of a moment to the happiness of an eternity. While, therefore, you seek by earnest prayer and reverential desire to bring the future into perpetually operating force upon your principles and practice, do not, at the same time, be deterred by any superstitious fears from profiting by yourself and urging on others every immediate and temporal motive, not inconsistent with the great one, “to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever."

While your principal personal object and personal gratification in your studies is to be derived from the gradual improvement of your mind and tastes, this gradual improvement will be often so imperceptible that you will need support and cheering during many weeks and months of apparently profitless mental application. Such support you may provide for yourself in the daily satisfaction resulting from having fulfilled a certain task, from having obeyed a law, though only a self-imposed one. Men, in their studies, have almost always that near and immediate object which I recommend to you to create for yourself. For them, as well as for you, the distant future of attained mental eminence and excellence is indeed the principal object. They, however, have it in their power to cheat the toil and cheer the way by many intermediate steps, which serve both as landmarks in their course and objects of interest within their immediate reach. They can almost always have some special object in view, as the result and reward of the studies of each month, or quarter, or year. They read for prizes, scholarships, fellowships, &c.; and these rewards, tangibly and actually within their reach, excite their energies and quicken their exertions.

For women there is nothing of the kind; it is therefore a useful exercise of her ingenuity to invent some substitute, however inferior to the original. For this purpose, I have never found any thing so effectual as a self-imposed system of study, the stricter the better. It is not desirable, however, that this system should be one of very constant employment; the strictness of which I spoke only refers to its regularity. As the great object is that you should break through your rules as seldom as possible, it would be better to fix the number of your hours of occupation rather below, certainly not above, your average habits. The time that may be to spare on days in which you meet with no interruption from visitors may also be systematically disposed of: you may always have some book in hand which will be ready to fill up any unoccupied moments, without, even on these occasions, wasting your time in deliberating as to what your next employment shall be.

You understand me, therefore, to recommend that those hours of the system which you are to impose upon yourself to employ in a certain manner are not to exceed the number you can ordinarily secure without interruption on every day of the week, exclusive of visitors, &c. &c. Every advantage pertaining to the system I recommend is much enhanced by the uniformity of its observance: indeed, it is on rigid attention to this point that its efficacy principally depends. I will now enter into the details of the system of study which, however modified by your own mind and habits, will, I hope, in some form or other, be adopted by you. The first arrangement of your time ought to be the laying apart of a certain period every day for the deepest thinking you can compel yourself to, either on or off book.

Having said so much on this point in my last letter, I should run the risk of repetition if I dwelt longer upon it here. I only mention it at all to give it again the most prominent position in your studies, and to recommend its invariably occupying a daily place in them. For every other pursuit, two or three times a week might answer as well, perhaps better, as it would be too great an interruption to devote to each only so short a period of time as could be allotted to it in a daily distribution. It may be desirable, before I take leave of the subject of your deeper studies, to mention here some of the books which will give you the most effectual aid in the formation of your mind.

Butler’s Analogy will be perhaps the very best to begin with: you must not, however, flatter yourself that you in any degree understand this or other books of the same nature until you penetrate into their extreme difficulty, until, in short, you find out that you can not thoroughly understand them yet. Queen Caroline, George II.’s wife, in the hope of proving to Bishop Horsley how fully she appreciated the value of the work I have just mentioned, told him that she had it constantly beside her at her breakfast-table, to read a page or two in it whenever she had an idle moment. The Bishop’s reply was scarcely intended for a compliment. He said he could never open the book without a headache; and really a headache is in general no bad test of our having thought over a book sufficiently to enter in some degree into its real meaning: only remember, that when the headache begins the reading or the thinking must stop. As you value tho long and unimpaired preservation of your powers of mind, guard carefully against any over-exertion of them.

To return to the “Analogy.” It is a book of which you cannot too soon begin the study, providing you, as it will do, at once with materials for the deepest thought, and laying a safe foundation for all future ethical studies; it is at the same time so clearly expressed, that you will have no perplexity in puzzling out the mere external form of the idea, instead of fixing all your attention on solving the difficulties of the thoughts and arguments themselves. Locke on the Human Understanding is a work that has probably been often recommended to you. Perhaps, if you keep steadily in view the danger of his materialistic, unpoetic, and therefore untrue philosophy, the book may do you more good than harm; it will furnish you with useful exercise for your thinking powers; and you will see it so often quoted as authority, on one side as truth, on the other as falsehood, that it may be as well you should form your own judgment of it. You should previously, however, become guarded against any dangers that might result from your study of Locke, by acquiring a thorough-knowledge of the philosophy of Coleridge. This will so approve itself to your conscience, your intellect, and your imagination, that there can be no risk of its being ever supplanted in a mind like yours by “plebeian" systems of philosophy. Few have now any difficulty in perceiving the infidel tendencies of that of Locke, especially with the assistance of his French philosophic followers, (with whose writings, for the charms of style and thought, you will probably become acquainted in future years.) They have declared what the real meaning of his system is by the developments which they have proved to be its necessary consequences. Let Coleridge, then, be your previous study, and the philosophic system detailed in his various writings may serve as a nucleus, round which all other philosophy may safely enfold itself. The writings of Coleridge form an era in the history of the mind; and their progress in altering the whole character of thought, not only in this but in foreign nations, if it has been slow, (which is one of the necessary conditions of permanence,) has been already astonishingly extensive. Even those who have never heard of the name of Coleridge find their habits of thought moulded, and their perceptions of truth cleared and deepened, by the powerful influence of his master-mind, powerful still, though it has probably only reached them through three or four interposing mediums. The proud boast of one of his descendants is amply verified: “He has given the power of vision:” and in ages yet to come, many who may unfortunately be ignorant of the very name of their benefactor will still be profiting daily, more and more, by the mental telescopes he has provided. Thus it is that many have rejoiced in having the distant brought near to them, and the confused made clear, without knowing that Jansen was the name of him who had conferred such benefits upon mankind. The immediate artist, the latest moulder of an original design, is the one whose skill is extolled and depended upon; and so it is even already in the case of Coleridge. It is those only who are intimately acquainted with him who can plainly see, that it is by the power of vision he has conferred that the really philosophic writers of the present day are enabled to give views so clear and deep on the many subjects that now interest the human mind. All those among modern authors who combine deep learning with an enlarged wisdom, a vivid and poetical imagination with an acute perception of the practical and the true, have evidently educated themselves in the school of Coleridge. He well deserves the name of the Christian Plato, erecting as he does, upon the ancient and long-tried foundation of that philosopher’s beautiful system of intuitive truths, the various details of minor but still valuable knowledge with which the accumulated studies of four thousand intervening years have furnished us, at the same time harmonizing the whole by the all-pervading spirit of Christianity.

Coleridge is truly a Christian philosopher: at the same time, however, though it may seem a paradox, I must warn you against taking him for your guide and instructor in theology. A Socinian during all the years in which vivid and never-to-be-obliterated impressions are received, he could not entirely free himself from those rationalistic tendencies which had insensibly incorporated themselves with all his religious opinions. He afterwards became the powerful and successful defender of the saving truths which he had long denied; but it was only in cases where Arianism was openly displayed, and was to be directly opposed. He seems to have been entirely unconscious that its subtle evil tendencies, its exaltation of the understanding above the reason, its questioning, disobedient spirit, might all in his own case have insinuated themselves into his judgments on theological and ecclesiastical questions. The prejudices which are in early youth wrought into the very essence of our being are likely to be unsuspected in exact proportion to the degree of intimacy with which they are assimilated with the forms of our mind. However this may be, you will not fail to observe that, in all branches of philosophy that do not directly refer to religion, Coleridge’s system of teaching is opposed to the general character of his own theological views, and that he has himself furnished the opponents of these peculiar views with the most powerful arms that can be wielded against them.

Every one of Coleridge’s writings should be carefully perused more than once, more than twice; in fact, they cannot be read too often; and the only danger of such continued study would be, that in the enjoyment of finding every important subject so beautifully thought out for you, natural indolence might deter you from the comparatively laborious exercise of thinking them out for yourself. The three volumes of his “Friend,” his “Church and State,” his “Lay Sermons,” and “Statesman’s Manual,” will each of them furnish you with most important present information and with inexhaustible materials for future thought.

Reid’s “Inquiry into the Human Mind,” and Dugald Stewart’s “Philosophy of the Mind,” are also books that you must carefully study. Brown’s “Lectures on Philosophy” are feelingly and gracefully written; but unless you find a peculiar charm and interest in the style, there will not be sufficient compensation for the sacrifice of time so voluminous a work would involve. Those early chapters which give an account of the leading systems of Philosophy, and some very ingenious chapters on Memory, are perhaps as much of the book as will be necessary for you to study carefully.

The works of the German philosopher Kant will, some time hence, serve as a useful exercise of thought; and you will find it interesting as well as useful to trace the resemblances and differences between the great English and the great German philosophers, Kant and Coleridge. Locke’s small work on Education contains many valuable suggestions, and Watts on the Mind is also well worthy your attention. It is quite necessary that Watts’ Logic should form a part of your studies; it is written professedly for women, and with ingenious simplicity. A knowledge of the forms of Logic is useful even to women, for the purpose of sharpening and disciplining the reasoning powers.

Do not be startled when I further recommend to you Blackstone’s “Commentaries” and Burlamaqui’s “Treatise on Natural Law.” These are books which, besides affording admirable opportunities for the exercise of both concentrated and comprehensive thought, will fill your mind with valuable ideas, and furnish it with very important information. Finally, I recommend to your unceasing and most respectful study the works of that “Prince of modern philosophers,” Lord Bacon. In his great mind were united the characteristics of the two ancient, but nevertheless universal, schools of philosophy, the Aristotelic and the Platonic. It is, I believe, the only instance known of such a difficult combination. His “Essays,” his “Advancement of Learning,” his “Wisdom of the Ancients,” you might understand and profit by, even now. Through all the course of an education, which I hope will only end with your life, you cannot do better than to keep him as your constant companion and intellectual guide.

The foregoing list of works seems almost too voluminous for any woman to make herself mistress of; but you may trust to one who has had extensive experience for herself and others, that the principle of “Nulla dies sine lineâ” is as useful in the case of reading as in that of painting: the smallest quantity of work daily performed will accomplish in a year’s time that which at the beginning of the year would have seemed to the inexperienced a hopeless task.

As yet, I have only spoken of philosophy; there is, however, another branch of knowledge, viz. science, which also requires great concentration of thought, and which ought to receive some degree of attention, or you will appear, and, what would be still worse, feel, very stupid and ignorant with respect to many of the practical details of ordinary life. You are continually hearing of the powers of the lever, the screw, the wedge, of the laws of motion, &c. &c., and they are often brought forward as illustrations even on simply literary subjects. An acquaintance with these matters is also necessary to enter with any degree of interest into the wonderful exhibitions of mechanical powers which are among the prominent objects of attention in the present day. You cannot even make intelligent inquiries, and betray a graceful, because unwilling ignorance, without some degree of general knowledge of science.

Among the numerous elementary works which make the task of self-instruction pleasant and easy, none can excel, if any have equalled, the “Scientific Dialogues” of Joyce. In these six little volumes, you will find a compendium of all preliminary knowledge; even these, however, easy as they are, require to be carefully studied. The comparison of the text with the plates, the testing for yourself the truth of each experiment, (I do not mean that you should practically test it, except in a few easy cases, for your mind has not a sufficient taste for science to compensate for the trouble,) will furnish you with very important lessons in the art of fixing your attention.

“Conversations on Natural Philosophy,” in one volume, by a lady, is nearly as simple and clear as the “Scientific Dialogues;” it will serve usefully as a successor to them. It is a great assistance to the memory to read a different work on the same subject while the first is still fresh in your mind. The sameness of the facts gives the additional force of a double impression; and the variation in the mode of stating them, always more striking when the books are the respective works of a man and of a woman, adds the force of a trebled impression, stronger than the two others, because there is in it more of the exercise of the intellect, that is, on the supposition that, in accordance with the foregoing rules, you should think over each respective statement until you have reconciled them together by ascertaining the cause of the variation.

I shall now proceed to those lighter branches of literature which are equally necessary with the preceding, and which will supply you with the current coin of the day, very necessary for ordinary intercourse, though, in point of real value, far inferior to the bank-stock of philosophic and scientific knowledge which it is to be your chief object to acquire. History is the branch of lighter literature to which your attention should be specially directed; it provides you with illustrations for all philosophy, with excitements to heroism and elevation of character, stronger perhaps than any mere theory can ever afford. The simplest story, the most objective style of narrative, will be that best fitted to answer these purposes. Your own philosophic deductions will be much more beneficial to your intellect than any one else’s, supposing always that you are willing to make, history a really intellectual study.

Tytler’s “Elements of History” is a most valuable book, and not an unnecessary word throughout the whole. If you do not find getting by heart an insuperable difficulty, you will do well to commit every line to memory. Half a page a day of the small edition would soon lay up for you such an extent of historic learning as would serve for a foundation to all future attainments in this branch of study. Such outlines of history are a great assistance in forming the comprehensive views which are necessary on the subject of contemporaneous history: a glance at a chart of history, or at La Voisne’s invaluable Atlas, may be allowed from time to time; but the principal arrangement ought to take place within your own mind, for the sake of both your memory and your intellect. Such outlines of history will, however, be very deficient in the interest and excitement this study ought to afford you, unless you combine with them minute details of particular periods, first, perhaps, of particular countries.

Thus I would have Rollings Ancient History succeed the cold and dry outlines of Tytler. Hume’s History of England will serve the same purpose relatively to the modern portion; and for the History of France, that of Eyre Evans Crowe imparts a brilliancy to perhaps the most uninteresting of all historic records. If that is not within your reach, Millet’s History of France, in four volumes, though dull enough, is a safe and useful school-room book, and may be read with profit afterwards: this, too, would possess the advantage of helping you on at the same time, or at least keeping up your knowledge of the French language.

It is desirable that all books from which you only want to acquire objective information should be read in a foreign language: you thus insensibly render yourself more permanently, and as it were habitually, acquainted with the language in question, and carry on two studies at the same time. If, however, you are not sufficiently acquainted with the language to prevent any danger of a division of attention by your being obliged to puzzle over the mere words instead of applying yourself to the meaning of the author, you must not venture upon the attempt of deriving a double species of knowledge from the same subject-matter: the effect of the history as a story or picture impressed on the mind or memory would be lost by any confusion with another object.

Sir Walter Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather” are the best history of Scotland you could read: Robertson’s may come afterwards, when you have time.

Of Ireland and Wales you will learn enough from their constant connection with the affairs of England. Sismondi’s History of the Italian Republics, in the Cabinet Cyclopedia, the History of the Ottoman Empire, in Constable’s Miscellany, the rapid sketches of the histories of Germany, Austria, and Prussia, in Voltaire’s Universal History, will be perhaps quite sufficient for this second class of histories.

The third must enter into more particular details, and thus confer a still livelier interest upon bygone days. For instance, with reference to ancient history, you should read some of the more remarkable of Plutarch’s Lives, those of Alexander, Cæsar, Theseus, Themistocles, &c.; the Travels of Anacharsis, the worthy results of thirty years’ hard labour of an eminent scholar: the Travels of Cyrus, Telemachus, Belisarius, and Numa Pompilius, are also, though in very different degrees, useful and interesting. The plays of Corneille and Racine, Alfieri, and Metastasio, on historical subjects, will make a double impression on your memory by the excitement of your imagination. All ought to be read about the same time that you are studying those periods of history to which they refer. This is of much importance.

The same plan is to be pursued with reference to modern history. The brilliant detached histories of Voltaire, Louis XIV. and XV., Charles XII., and Peter the Great, ought to be read while the outlines of the general history of the same period are freshly impressed on your memory. The vivid historical pictures of De Barante are to be made the same use of: he stands perhaps unrivalled as an objective historian.

Shakspeare’s historical plays are the best accompaniment to Hume’s History of England. Our modern novels, too, will supply you with rich and varied information, as to the manners and characters of former times. They are a very important part of our literature, and ought to be considered essential to the completion of your circle of study. That they also may be rendered as useful as possible, they should be read at the same time with the entirely true history of the period to which they refer.

From history, I have insensibly glided into the subject of works of fiction, one which perhaps previously requires a few words of apology; for the strong recommendations with which I have pressed their study upon you may sound strangely to the ears of many worthy people. In your own enlightened and liberal mind, I do not indeed suspect the indwelling of any such exclusive prejudices as those which forbid altogether the perusal of works of fiction: such prejudices belong, perhaps, to more remote periods, to those distant times when title-pages were seen announcing “Paradise Lost, translated into prose for the benefit of those pious souls whose consciences would not permit them to read poetry." This latter prejudice that against poetry seems, as far as my observation extends, to be entirely forgotten. Fiction in this form is now considered universally allowable; and some conscientious persons, who would not allow themselves or others the relaxation of a novel of any kind, will indulge unhesitatingly in the same sort of love-stories, rendered still more exciting through the medium of poetry. Most women, unfortunately, are incapable of carrying out the argument from one course of action into another, or even of clearly comprehending, when it is suggested to them, that whatever is wrong in prose cannot be right in poetry. In a general way you will be able to form your own judgment on this subject, by observing how much safer prose-fiction is for yourself at times, when your feelings are excited, and your mind unsettled and exhausted. A novel, even the most trifling novel of fashionable life, if it has only cleverness sufficient to engage your thoughts, would be, perhaps, a very desirable manner of spending your time at the very period that poetry would be decidedly injurious to you. Indeed, at all times, those who have vivid imaginations and strong feelings should carefully guard and sparingly indulge themselves in the perusal of poetic fictions.

If it were possible, as some say, to study poetry artistically alone, contemplating it as a work of art, and not allowing it to excite the affections or the passions, there is no kind of poetry that might not be enjoyed with safety in any state of mind: it is doubtful, however, whether any work of art ought to be so contemplated. Its excellence can only be estimated by the degree of emotion it produces; how then can an unimpassioned examination ever form a true estimate of its merit? When such an inspection of any work of art can be carried through, there is generally some fault either in the thing criticized or in the critic; for the distinctive characteristic of art is, that it is addressed to our human nature, and excites its emotions. In the words of the great German poet:

Science, O man, thou sharest with higher spirits;
But art thou hast alone.

Pure science must be the same to all orders of created beings, but, as far as our knowledge extends, the physical organization of humanity is required for a perception of the beauties of art: therefore physical excitement must be united with mental, in proportion as the work of art is successful. Do not then hope ever to be able to study poetry without a quickened pulse and a flushing cheek; you may as well leave it alone altogether, if it produces no emotion. It must be either rhyme and no poetry, or to you poetry can be nothing but rhyme.

Think not, however, that I do wish you to leave it alone altogether; nothing could be farther from my purpose.

There is some old saying about fire being a good servant, but a bad master. Now this is what I would say of the faculty of imagination, as cultivated and excited by works of fiction in general, including, of course, poetic fictions. As long as you can keep your imagination, even though thus quickened and excited, under the strict control of religious feeling as long as you are able to prevent its rousing your temper to an uncontrollable degree of susceptibility as long as you can return from an ideal world to the lowly duties of every-day life with a steady purpose and unflinching determination, there can be no danger for you in reading poetry. Perhaps you will, on the contrary, tell me that all this is impossible, and, coward-like, you may prefer resigning the pleasure to encountering the difficulties of struggling against its consequences: but this is not the way either to strengthen your character or to form your mind. All cultivation requires watchfulness and additional precautions, either more or less: you must not, for the sake of a few superable difficulties, resign the otherwise unattainable refinement effected by poetry. Besides, its exalting and ennobling influence, if properly understood and employed, will help you incalculably over the rugged paths of your daily life; it will shed softening and hallowing gleams over many things that you would otherwise find difficult to endure, many duties otherwise too hard to fulfil; for there is poetry in every thing that is really good and true. Happy those practical students of its beauties who have learned to track the ore beneath the most unpromising surfaces! Poetry, I look upon, in fact, as the most essential, the most vital part of the cultivation of your mind, as from its spirit your character will receive the most beneficial influence: you must learn the double lesson of extracting it from every thing, and of throwing it around every thing; and, for the better attainment of this object, you must study it in itself, that you may become deeply imbued with its spirit.

Along with the poetry of every age and of every nation, I would have you diligently study the criticisms of the masters of the art. It is true that the intimate knowledge of all that has been written on this hackneyed subject will never supply the want of natural poetic taste, of that union of mental and moral refinement which produces the only infallible touchstone of the beautiful; still such criticisms will tend to refine and sharpen a natural taste, where it does exist; and without bringing its technical rules practically to bear upon the objects of your delighted admiration, they will insensibly improve, refine, and subtilize the natural delicacy of your perceptions.

No criticisms can perhaps equal the masterly ones of Frederick Schlegel, or those of the less powerful but not less rich mind of Augustus William Schlegel,” those two wonderful brothers,” as a modern littérateur has justly called them. Leigh Hunt, with perhaps more poetic originality, but with less accuracy of æsthetical perception, will be a useful guide to you in English poetry. Burke’s “Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful” will give you the most correct general ideas on the subject of taste. These are always best and most influential after they have been for some time assimilated with the forms of the mind. It is a far more useful exercise to apply them yourself to individual cases than merely to lend your attention, though carefully and fixedly, to the applications made for you by the writer. Alison’s “Essay on Taste,” though interesting and improving, saves too much trouble to the reader in this way.

Your enjoyment and appreciation of poetry will be much heightened by having it read aloud, by yourself to yourself, if you should have no other sympathizing reader or listener.

The sound of the metre is essential to the full sense of the meaning and of the beauty of all poetry. Even the rhymeless flow of blank verse is absolutely necessary to an accurate and entire perception of the effect the author intends to produce: it is in both cases as the colouring to a picture. It may be, indeed, that part of the composition which appeals most directly to the senses; but all the works of art must be imperfect which do not make this appeal; for, as I said before, all works of art are intended to affect our human nature.

A well-practised eye will, it is true, detect in a moment either the faults or the excellence of the rhyme or the flow; but the effect on the mind cannot be the same as when the impression is received through the ear.

Nor is the fuller appreciation of the poetry you read aloud the only advantage to be derived from the practice I recommend. Few accomplishments are more rare, though few more desirable, than that of reading aloud with ease and grace. Great are the sufferings inflicted on a sensitive ear by listening to one’s favourite passages, touching in pathos, or glorious in sublimity, travestied into twaddle by the false taste or the want of practice of the reader. For it is not always from false taste that the species of reading above complained of proceeds; on the contrary, there may be a very correct perception of the writer’s meaning and object, while from want of practice, from mere mechanical inexpertness, there may be an incapability of giving effect to that meaning: hence arises false emphasis, and a thousand other disagreeables.

In this art, this important art of reading aloud, simplicity ought to be the grand object of attainment, at the same time that it is the last that can be attained. It is a point to reach after long efforts; not to start from, as those of uncultivated or artificial taste would imagine. I must repeat, that it cannot be acquired without persevering practice. The best time to set vigorously about such practice would be when you have but just listened with dismay to the injuries inflicted on some favourite poet by the laboured or tasteless reading of an unpractised performer.

From reading aloud, I pass on to a still more important subject, that of writing: both are intimately connected branches of the main one cultivation of the mind. When this latter is attained in the first place, a slight individual direction of previously acquired powers will enable you to succeed in both the former. In your own case, however, as in that of all those who have not the active organisation which involves great facilities for mechanical efforts, it will be quite necessary to give a special direction to your studies for the attainment of any degree of excellence in both those arts. Those, on the contrary, whose organization is more lively and vigorous, and whose nature and habits fit them more for action than thought, will find little difficulty in making any degree of cultivation of mind an immediate stepping-stone to the other attainments: such persons can read at once with force and truth as soon as education has given them accurate perceptions; they will also write with ease, rapidity, and energy, as soon as the mind is furnished with suitable materials. This is a kind of superiority which you may often be inclined to envy, at least until experience has taught you, in the first place, that the law of compensation is universal, and in the second, that every thing is doubly valuable which is acquired through hard labour and many struggles. For the first, you may observe that such persons as possess naturally the mechanical facilities of which I have spoken will never attain to an equal degree of excellence with those whose naturally soft and inactive organization obliges them to labour over every step of their onward way. They can, I repeat, never attain to the same degree of excellence, either in feeling or expression, because they do not possess the same refined delicacy of perceptions, the same deep thoughtfulness and intuitive wisdom, as those who owe these advantages to the very organization from which they otherwise suffer. This is another illustration of the universal law that action is always in inverse proportion to power. For the second, you will find that there is a pleasure in overcoming difficulties, compared with which all easily attained or naturally possessed advantages appear tame and vapid: and besides the difference in the pleasurable excitement of the contest, you are to consider the advantage to the character that is derived from a battle and a victory.

When I speak to you of writing, and of your attaining to excellence in this art, I have nothing in view but the improvement of your private letters. It can seldom be desirable for a woman to challenge public criticism by appearing before the world as an author. “My wife does not write poetry, she lives it,” was the reply of Richter, when his highly-gifted Caroline was applied to for literary contributions to her sister’s publications. He described in these words the real nature of a woman’s duties. Any degree of avoidable publicity must lessen her peace and happiness; and few circumstances can make it prudent for a woman to give up retirement and retired duties, and subject herself to public criticism, and probably public blame.

The writing, then, in which I have advised you to accomplish yourself, is the epistolary style alone, at once a means of communicating pleasure to your friends, and of conferring extensive and permanent benefits upon them. How useful has the kind, judicious, well-timed letter of a Christian friend often proved, even when the spoken word of the same friend might, during circumstances of excitement, have only increased imprudence or irritation!

Few printed books have effected more good than the private correspondence of pious, well-educated, and strong-minded persons. Indeed, the influence exercised by letters and conversation is so much the peculiar and appropriate sphere of a woman’s usefulness, that all her studies should be pursued with an especial view to the attainment of these accomplishments. The same qualities are to be desired in both. The utmost simplicity for nothing can be worse than speaking as if you were repeating a sentence out of a book, except writing a friendly letter as if you were writing out of a book, a great abundance and readiness of information for the purpose of supplying a variety of illustrations, an intelligent perception of, and a cautious attention to, that which you are called upon to answer, a conciseness of expression, that is perfectly consistent with those minute details, which, gracefully managed, as women only can, form the chief charm of their conversation and writing, with all these you should be careful to give free play to the peculiarities of your own individual mind: this will always, even where there is little or no talent, produce a pleasing degree of originality.

Before every thing else, however, let unstudied ease, I could almost add carelessness, be the marked characteristics of both your conversation and your writing. Refined taste will indeed insensibly produce the former, without any effort of your own, far better than the strictest rules could do.

The praises of nonsense have been often written and often spoken; nor can it ever be praised more than it deserves. However “within its magic circle none dare walk" but those who have naturally quick and refined perceptions, assisted by careful cultivation. Narrow indeed is the boundary which divides unfeminine flippancy from the graceful nonsense which good authority and our own feelings pronounce to be “exquisite." The unsuccessful attempt at its imitation always reminds me of Pilpay’s fable of the Donkey and the Lapdog: The poor donkey, who had been going on very usefully in its own drudging way, began to envy the lap-dog the caresses it received, and fancied that it would receive the same if it jumped upon its master as the lap-dog did: how awkwardly and unnaturally its attempts at playfulness were executed, how unwelcome they proved, I need not tell you. Nothing is more difficult than playfulness or even vivacity of manner nothing is so sure a test of good breeding and high cultivation of mind; either may carry you safely through, but their union alone can render playfulness and vivacity entirely fascinating.

After all that I have written, I must again repeat what I began with, that you are to try each different mode of study for yourself, and that the advice of others will be of use to you only when you have assimilated it with your own mind, testing it by your own practice, and giving it the fair trial of patient perseverance.

I ought perhaps, before I close this letter, to make some apology for recommending, as a part of your course of study, either Rollin or Hume, one because he is “trop bon homme," the other because he is not “bon” in any sense of the word. My apology, or rather my reason, will, however, be only a repetition of that which I have said before, viz. that I should wish you to read history strictly, and merely, as a story, and to form your own philosophic and religious opinions previously, and from other sources.

So many valuable and important histories, so many necessary books on every subject, have been written by the professed infidel, as well as by the practical forgetter of God, that you must prepare yourself for a constant state of intellectual watchfulness, as to all the various opinions suggested by the different authors you study. It is not their opinions you want, but their facts. Most standard histories, even Hume and Voltaire, tell truth as to all leading facts: after half-a-century or so of filtration, truth becomes purified from contemporary passions and prejudices, and can be easily got at without any importantly injurious mixture.

It was to mark my often-repeated wish that you should philosophize for yourself, that I have omitted the names of Guizot and Hallam in the list of authors recommended for your perusal. With the tastes which I suppose you to possess and to acquire, you will not be likely to leave them out of your own list. The histories of Arnold and Niebuhr also belong to a distinct class of writings. I should prefer your being intimately acquainted with the so-called poetical histories which have been so long received and loved, before you interest yourself in these modern discoveries.

The lectures of Dr. Arnold upon Modern History contain, however, such a treasure of brilliant philosophy, of deep thought and forcible writing, that the sooner you begin them, and the more intimately you study them, the better pleased I should be. With respect to his singular views on religion and politics, you must always keep carefully in mind that his peculiar mental organization incapacitated him from forming correct opinions on any subject connected with imagination or metaphysics. You will soon be able to trace the manner in which the absence of these two powers affected all his reasonings, and closed up his mind against the most important species of evidence. I carry on the supposition that you have formed, or will form, all your views on religion and politics from your own judgment, assisted by the experience of those whose mind you know to be qualified by their many-sidedness to judge clearly and impartially upon universal, not partial data. Remember, at the same time, however, that you belong to a church which professedly protests against popes of every description, against the unscriptural practice of calling any man “Father upon earth.” May you attend diligently, and in a child-like spirit of submission, to the teaching of that Holy and Apostolic Church, and there will then be no danger of your being led astray either by the infidel Hume or the sainted Arnold.

Finally, I would again refer to that subject which ought to be the beginning and end, the foundation and crowning-point of all our studies. Let “whatever you do be done to the glory of God." Earthly motives, if pure and amiable ones, may hold a subordinate place; but unless the mainspring of your actions be the desire “to glorify your Father which is in heaven,” you will find no real peace in life, no blessedness in death. As one likely means of keeping this primary object of your life constantly before you, I should strongly recommend your making the cultivation and improvement of your mental powers the subject of special prayer at all the appointed seasons of prayer; at the same time, your studies themselves should never be entered upon without prayer, prayer, that the evil mingled with all earthly things may fall powerless on your sanctified heart, prayer, that any improvement you obtain may make you a more useful servant of the Lord your God more persuasive and influential in that great work which in different ways is appropriated to all in their several spheres of action, viz. the high and holy office of winning souls to Christ.