INTRODUCTION.

After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world
with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful
indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when
obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference
between man and man, or that the civilization, which has hitherto
taken place in the world, has been very partial. I have turned
over various books written on the subject of education, and
patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of
schools; but what has been the result? a profound conviction, that
the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the grand source
of the misery I deplore; and that women in particular, are rendered
weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating
from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in
fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state;
for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil,
strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting
leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on
the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived
at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a
false system of education, gathered from the books written on this
subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human
creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses
than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so
bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the
present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire
love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their