10 grant want of the French shed Napoleon the first of
ress of La Reine Hortense. "The iriuous and nooomplished inatrat-French nation," replied Madame Cam-pan, wants mothers." The self-same it is supplied we shall look vain for any thorough or permanent.
provement amongst the people. Though they have profound revoronco for the paternal authority, and though numerous and affecting instances of Autiful obedience to parents are to be met with in their popular writings, t Chinese mother las not succeeded in making a Chinese Homo. It is ensy the case, Chinese girls are' brought up under n aystem which is as fatal to intollectu"l us it is to physical development. From our childhood we have been taught to shader at the practise of cramping female children's feotin tight bandages; and the wood-cat of a limb so crushed and dwarfed, which was presented to oar boyish gaze, is to this day a unsty rer memory. roproind's eye. Bat the spectacle of the mind robbed of all opportunity for vigorous and hoalthfal oxoreis f whole lives consumed i really far more the anploasant picture truncated foot, We have many' grievous blanders to answer for in our xystom of female education, Wo may not soo anything to borist of in the charnotor of the teaching which reduces, us the outcome and flower of English culture, "the girl of the period." Bat at all events we ort from snperfinons energy. Our training far isos us with hoydens and Araazon schools of China produce pulseless The Chinese wife hus no ro-scarees of mind, no snsegy of body, spi f congenial duty. effect it ix impossible to inn, more joyless and usolese thi female life in the Middle Kingdom, Yho habits of the ancient Roman ma.
wore recorded in four words Domum mansit—Lanam feel of the thousands of women about us, who are removed from the necessity. of daily toil for daily broad, simply romain at hom, without wool-work to employ their fugers and dissipate their being we believe, a fiir and not an overcharged picture of the onse, scornns strange that foreign beno not sought to remedy th wna in a bold and comprehensive spirit, to innugnrato' an improved sya tom of female oduention in China, We are aware that many praiseworthy ab tempts. in this direction. have eon made, but they seem to us to have boon wholly inadequate to the extent' of the evil. If the social improvement of China is to be effected at all, the most important agonoion to be used in the work are Commerce and Educa min; and the sox whioh it is most! important for the Instraotor to rona, in our judgment, the-female, But if' any good ix to be dono, the persons sent to do it should be selected with truction should be pre shionld be most seriously consid Actual " book learning" is wot wear 40 important as the cultivation of gout holpfal habits, The girl not be taught merely to rend and to write, but she should be trained to mine the most of all the fueulties with which, ho lias been endowed, Prudonce, talness and activity uro the qui that brighten a home, and. these should be ineulentod ax the very first points, OF cotirse, in a Chinese Girl's school as in every other, the character of the Mistross" would' have immense weight, and hor example would "lo more than hours spout over mannale and catechisms; but when we 400 what haw been dono in remote and une spheres of labour, funding some saving common to csany this ar= nous task, and to work this neglected. mine. We huve been lod into these reflootions by ronding and comparing two documenis. One, nlettor addressed by the Rev. BE. W. Syle to the Indies of Shanghai, containing thd outlines of a scheme for initiating a ce-operative atom of female education in Chinn. by opening a school i Shanghai, nnd the other a paragraph in the Pull Malt Gazeta, which we extract in another column, relative to Mis work in India, Wo onunot help ox-pressing very. sincere tion for the energy and Inrgo-mindedness dis played by this Indy. Hor view of the whole question, Hough oxprossod with great modesty, appears to us to be clear and compro and hor pnst ex perience augurs well for the sieves of the Indian scheme, The schools aslab~ lished at Cairo by Misx Whately, and the Singapore establishments have, we behave, worked well, and if the Chinese gilt fod w tencliee'iko-minded with ise Carpenter, good results, though they may be long deferred, avo cortait ultimately to be nttuined,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.