distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the
immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the
sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled
plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn--and that she
can only learn by cultivation--to discern with joy, and drink in
with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true; and to turn
with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad,
the ugly, and the false.

And if any parent should be inclined to reply: "Why lay so much
stress upon educating a girl in British literature? Is it not far
more important to make our daughters read religious books?" I
answer--Of course it is. I take for granted that that is done in
a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are books
and books; and that in these days of a free press it is
impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of
very different shades of opinion, and very different religious
worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest importance to a
girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral
sense, in a word, her whole womanhood, so cultivated and regulated
that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false,
the orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely
sentimental, the Gospel from its counterfeits.

I should have thought that there never had been in Britain, since
the Reformation, a crisis at which young Englishwomen required
more careful cultivation on these matters; if at least they are to
be saved from making themselves and their families miserable; and
from ending--as I have known too many end--with broken hearts,
broken brains, broken health, and an early grave.