which young ladies bring home with them from school, forms but a very small part of that which they will be expected to possess. Indeed, such is the illimitable nature of knowledge, that persons can only be said to know much or little by comparison. It is by comparing ourselves with others, and especially with those who are more advanced in life, that we first learn the important secret of our own deficiencies. And it is good to keep the mind open to this truth, for without having clearly ascertained our own inferiority, we should always be liable to make the most egregious mistakes, not only by telling those around us what they already know, and wearying our acquaintance with the most tedious common-place; but by the worst kind of false assumption—by placing ourselves in exalted positions, and thereby rendering our ignorance more conspicuous.
All this, however, though a fruitful source of folly and ridicule, is of trifling importance compared with the absolute want—the mental poverty—the moral destitution, necessarily occasioned by an absence of true knowledge; we must begin, therefore, by opening our minds to the truth, not by adopting the opinions of this or that set of persons, but by reading the works of the best authors, by keeping the mind unbiassed by the writings or the conversation of persons infected with prejudice, and by endeavouring to view every object in its full extent, its breadth, its reality, and its importance.
It is the grand defect in woman's intellectual condition, that she seldom makes any equivalent effort to do this. She is not only too often occupied with the mere frivolities of life, to estimate the true value of general knowledge; but, she is also too apt to hang her credulity upon her affections, and to take anything for granted which is believed by those whom she loves. It is true, this servility of
