studies, you must devote much more time and attention to the
embellishing, because refining branches of literature, than would be
necessary for those whose office is not so peculiarly that of soothing
and pleasing as woman's is. Even these lighter studies, however, must be
subjected to the same reflective process as the severer ones, or they
will never become an incorporate part of the mind itself: they will, on
the contrary, if this process is neglected, stand out, as the knowledge
of all uneducated people does, in abrupt and unharmonizing prominence.

It is not to be so much your object to acquire the power of quoting
poetry or prose, or to be acquainted with the names of the authors of
celebrated fictions and their details, as to be imbued with the spirit
of heroism, generosity, self-sacrifice,--in short, the practical love of
the beautiful which every universally-admired fiction, whether it have a
professedly moral tendency or not, is calculated to excite. The refined
taste, the accurate perceptions, the knowledge of the human heart, and
the insight into character, which intellectual culture can highly
improve, even if it cannot create, are to be the principal results as
well as the greatest pleasures to which you are to look forward. In
study, as in every other important pursuit, the immediate
results--those that are most tangible and encouraging to the faint and
easily disheartened--are exactly those which are least deserving of
anxiety. A couple of hours' reading of poetry in the morning might
qualify you to act the part of oracle that very evening to a whole
circle of inquirers; it might enable you to tell the names, and dates,
and authors of a score of remarkable poems: and this, besides, is a
species of knowledge which every one can appreciate. It is not, however,
comparable in kind to the refinement of mind, the elevation of thought,
the deepened sense of the beautiful, which a really intellectual study
of the same works would impart or increase. I do not wish to depreciate