much more than of fine repartees or brilliant dialogue. We know of no one writer of the other sex, that has a high character for humor-no Rabelais, no Sterne, no Swift, no Goldsmith, no Dickens, no Irving. The female character does not admit it.

Women cannot write history. It requires too great solidity, and too minute research for their quick intellects. They write, instead, delightful memoirs. Who, but an antiquary or historical commentator, would not rather read

Lucy Hutchinson's Life of her Husband, than of the pro

any

fessed histories of the Commonwealth-and exchange Lady Fanshawe for the other royalist biographers?

Neither are women to turn politicians or orators. We hope never to hear of a female Burke; she would be an overbearing termagant. A species of a talent for scolding, is the highest form of eloquence we can conscientiously allow the ladies.

Women feel more than they think, and (sometimes) say more than they do. They are consequently better adapted to describe sentiments, than to speculate on causes and effects. They are more at home in writing letters, than tracts on political economy.

The proper faculties in women to cultivate most assiduously are, the taste and the religious sentiment; the first, as the leading trait of the intellectual; and the last, as the governing power of the moral constitution. Give a woman a pure taste and high principles, and she is safe from the arts. of the wiliest libertine. Let her have all other gifts but these, and she is comparatively defenceless. Taste purifies the heart as well as the head, and religion strengthens both. The strongest propensities to pleasure are not so often the means of disgrace and ruin as the carelessness of ignorant

virtue, and an unenlightened moral sense. This makes all the difference in the world, between the daughter of a poor countryman, and the child of an educated gentleman. Both have the same desires, but how differently directed and controlled. Yet we find many lapses from virtue in the one case, where we find one in the other.

Believing that what does not interest, does not benefit the mind, we would avoid all pedantic lectures to women, on all subjects to which they discover any aversion. Study should be made a pleasure, and reading pure recreation. In a general sense, we would say the best works for female readers are those that tend to form the highest domestic character. Works of the highest imagination, as being above that condition, and scientific authors, who address a different class of faculties, are both unsuitable. An admirable wife may not relish the sublimity of Milton or Hamlet; and a charming companion be ignorant of the existence of such a science as Algebra. A superficial acquaintance with the elements of the physical sciences is worse than total unacquaintance with them.

Religion should be taught as a sentiment, not as an abstract principle, or in doctrinal positions, a sentiment of love and grateful obedience; morality impressed as the practical exercise of self-denial and active benevolence. In courses of reading, too much is laid down of a dry nature. Girls are disgusted with tedious accounts of battles and negotiations, dates and names. The moral should be educed best fitted for the female heart, and from the romantic periods, and the reigns of female sovereigns, or epochs when women held a very prominent place in the state, or in public regard. We would have women affectionate wives, obedient daughters, agreeable companions, skilful economists, judicious friends;

but we must confess it does not fall within our scheme to make them legislators or lawyers, diplomatists or politicians. We therefore think nine-tenths of all history is absolutely useless for all women. Too many really good biographies of great and good men and women can hardly be read, and will be read to much greater advantage than histories, as they leave a definite and individual impression. The reading good books of travels is, next to going over the ground in person, the best method of studying geography, grammar and rhetoric (the benefit flowing from these studies is chiefly of a negative character), after a clear statement of the elementary rules) are best learnt in the perusal of classic authors, the essayists, &c.; and, in the same way, the theory of taste and the arts. The most important of accomplishments is not systematically treated in any system-conversation. But a father and mother, of education, can teach this better than any professor. Expensive schools turn out half-trained pupils. Eight years at home, well employed, and two at a good but not fashionable school, are better than ten years spent in the most popular female seminary, conducted in the ordinary style.

Men of quick imaginations, ceteris paribus are more prudent than those whose imaginations are slow, for they observe more in less time.-Hobbes' Treatise of Human Nature.

It is perhaps worth remarking that the Principles of Human Knowledge were published in 1710, at a time when the author was only five-and-twenty, as was

* 1844.

*

**

*

The Essay on Vision, the greatest by far of all his works, and the most complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together, that perhaps ever existed. * I mention this the more because I believe that the greatest efforts of intellect have almost always been made while the passions are in their greatest vigor and before hope loses its hold on the heart, and is the elastic spring which animates all our thoughts.-Hazlitt-Literary Remains-Lecture on Locke's Essays.

WE design the present article rather as a sketch of literary statistics, a table of instances, to illustrate the general principle we aim to establish, than as anything like a complete survey or accurate digest of the subject which it would require a volume to contain. We consider the fact as having an historical basis, as founded in the history of letters, that true genius comes to maturity much sooner than is generally supposed. In a word, we have merely collected a number of witnesses to confirm the maxim stated by Steele, though in a rather restricted form. It occurs in a paper of the Lover, number twenty-two: "I am apt to think that before thirty, a man's natural and acquired parts are at that strength, with a little experience, to enable him (if he can be enabled) to acquit himself well in any business or conversation he shall be admitted to."

The vulgar error is to rate the growth of the individual intellect of the original with the ordinary progress of "the common mind;" to measure the giant by the common standard of human stature. This is evidently absurd. Yet no error is so common as to attempt to depress cleverness by sneers at the youthful age of the aspirant, like the taunts of Walpole directed against Pitt, and like those of every dull man, of middle age, who has a fixed position (beyond which he is not likely to rise), at those who are evidently fast rising above him. No young man of talent, but has had enemies such as these to encounter; men who seem to take a fiendish

delight, and cherish a malicious pleasure in seeking to depress everything like genuine enthusiasm and the buoyant ambition of the bright boy or the brilliant young man. This arises half the time from sheer malice, and as often from pure ignorance of the nature and temperament of genius. When the "climber upward" has gained his place among his peers, then these miserable flatterers cringe and fawn as basely as they formerly maligned and ridiculed him; and would fain crowd out of sight his old friends and staunch adherents. In his green age and budding season the youth of genius craves and requires sympathy. It is with him, especially. (and, in a measure, with all men,) an intellectual want, as evident as the coarsest necessary elements of existence.

By early maturity of genius, we mean no prodigies of childish or boyish talent-such we always distrust, as unhealthy prematureness, generally resulting in a feeble manhood. Wonderful boys are almost always dull men. No particular point of time can be fixed, but manly intellects are at their maturity somewhere between twenty-five and thirty; and in good constitutions, this vigor and freshness remain sometimes to a great age. Youth is a heavy charge to lay against any writer, yet one becoming daily of less weight. Surely it is a season which furnishes qualities and feelings not to be expected in later life, and at least to be cherished for that reason. To the contemners of youthful genius, we would reply, in the words of the admirable Cowley, himself an example of precocity of talent: "It is a ridiculous folly to laugh at the stars because the moon and the sun shine brighter." Let every captious critic, also, read Bacon's exquisite essay on "Youth and Age," in which he will find the truest justice allotted to each period of this our mortal life.