compassing. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows,
however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only
tease him.

And indeed, if there were to be any difference between a girl's
education and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should
be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and
serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not
more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of
patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and
quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element
of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books;
only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as
they fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with
the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly.

Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to the sore
temptation of novel reading, it is not the badness of a novel that
we should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest
romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious
exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as
false history, false philosophy, or false political essays. But the
best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders
the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid
thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never
be called upon to act.

I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern literature is
particularly rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, these books
have serious use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy