Beatrice or the Wycherly family Author:Mary White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. " Children," says the learned doctor Watts, " when they can walk, and talk, when they have learned their.mo- ther tongue, when they begin to give ... more »some more evident discoveries of their intellectual powers, have their minds framed and moulded fit for the reception of piety and virtue." The affections, the senses, the appetites, unless governed by a good understanding, will become wild instruments of madness and mischief; and the understanding itself would fall into many errors, dreadful and pernicious, if not instructed in that which it ought; and it is the duty of those who take upon themselves the task of guiding the tender plant, to place in it such ideas as will flourish with its growth, and be rendered more beautiful by maturity. Lady Holt, to use her own phrase, had no idea of these things. To Beatrice'sanxious thirst after knowledge, she constantly replied—" What use can it be to her ? This is not an age of blue stockings; and a plain education is best for her. I never knew much good arise from so much reading. My daughters never read only what was proper and necessary." True; but lady Holt's daughters were beauties ; they had had just time to come from school, go to two or three country balls, be admired, get lovers, then offers, and then be married. There were no solitary hours for them; they were not shut up in a solitary library, and told to amuse them- selves ; and therefore it was not much to be wondered at that lady Holt's daughters were not reading women. The dowager thought women were born to be married—to grow rich—and to have families : to be charitable also was a part of her creed; but as to enriching the mind with literary treasures, she never gave it a thought. Beatrice knew her catechism perfect—said her prayers steadily, and without mi...« less