236 LOW-PRICED TEACHING NOT ALWAYS CHEAPER.

now-a-days may be heard to utter such a dire threat as the following:

"I do intend, with God's good blessing,

To send my gals a governessing."

Notwithstanding the schoolmaster is now said to be abroad (abroad he certainly is, much more than at home) the thick ignorance that prevails in even highly respectable families is astonishing, when so many impostors can be palmed upon them : pretending to teach everything, most of them can in reality teach nothing. I know of one myself, for instance, now resident in the family of a professional gentleman, who has been so badly grounded even in the humble science of arithmetic, that when she buys a yard of ribbon for herself she can never tell how much change she ought to take. Once I heard her try to count the monthly portions of her yearly salary, but it baffled her completely, and she gave it up in despair; yet several children are entirely dependent on this ignoramus for their instruction in that as well as other "branches," of which she is equally ignorant! "They manage things better in France," in this respect as in many others. The government there has created competent boards for examination into the capabilities of public and private teachers, both male and female, which grant the indispensable diploma only to the competent. But does the bargain-loving English public deserve any better treatment than it gets? How can families ever expect a dozen different branches to be imparted to their children, of

which there are several that separately require a lifetime to learn properly; for all which they are only to pay from thirty to forty pounds a year?-a paltry sum, and scarce so much as they give to a hard-handed menial. Some folks find a conscience too dear to keep.

A recent writer on the subject, Madame Beraud Riofrey, herself once a teacher, has shown that governesses, capable of teaching the various branches now demanded in modern education, must have laid out from £800 to £1000 in their own instruction; and that for such, £200 a-year would not be too great a salary. Are girls, therefore, to remain uneducated? no, but even sheer unpretending ignorance is better than a semblance of showy accomplishments. As for music, it has been well observed

"No martyrology can furnish a thousandth part of the victims that have been sacrificed to the forced music mania of England. If we had the power to ascertain by vote how many persons of the fashionable world are bored by elaborate instrumental music and mechanical singing, we should find thousands who would wish, with Dr. Johnson, that it were not merely difficult, but quite impossible. If pleasure is expected from merely instrumental music, unaccompanied by a genuine voice, the end of so much expense and trouble is not attained; neither is drawing, without the power of original design, worth any very heavy expense. A graceful mien, however, a richly stored mind, and the power of self-government, are happy possessions, whose influence is far beyond any mechanical skill of the hands. Let not then the superficial things, which are so early laid aside, be preferred by parents in the choice of a governess to the precious attainments, which, when once they are imparted to her, last the pupil through life. Let them

238

PETTICOAT-RENOUNCING LADIES

listen to Madame Riofrey, and be convinced that these excellences cannot be united with several professorships of the arts in one person, either in the teacher or the taught. She truly says: From the general view taken of education, it would seem that we were born only for pleasure, that our path through this world was to be strewed with roses, and that twenty or thirty years of our existence could pass, without any event occurring that required the exertion of our judgment, or called for any strength of mind or the assistance of religion.'

It is painful to reflect, that from this class of incapables-spoilt for housewives, yet unfit for teachers, and quite unsuitable as companions—or, lower still, from among young women in situations of household servitude, the very best of our sex in the middle classes, who may not have the means of establishing themselves in business, are obliged to select their wives, or go without. A cruel alternative !

I know not whether I ought to set down itinerant lecturing as one of the employments fairly falling" within the women's province; but our notorious countrywoman, Fanny Wright, has contrived to pick up more money in that way than any half-dozen industrious tailoresses, so much her superiors in genuine respectability. After long lecturing against marriage, after a most immoral fashion, she now lays claim to be married herself, and bears the title of Madame Darusmont. Who the man may have been that had the courage and taste to couple himself to such a grim ogress, I cannot imagine; but it is strange, and says little for " philosophic" consistency, that Mrs. Woolstoncraft in England formerly, Madame Dudevant (George Sand) in France, and

IN COATS OF MALE.

239

now the other woman (?) in America, all three bitter railers against matrimony, have been unable to live without husbands. Why, even the most back-sliding believers in the religion which they have vilified, and do so mortally abhor, could not have evinced so great a discrepancy between precept and practice as this. I had the curiosity, when in Philadelphia, to go and hear part of one of her lectures at the Military Hall there. It was on "the rise and progress of Liberty in America"-a subject of which, I could plainly see, this venomous vixen knew as little as I do of the administrative details of the twopenny post-offices in Pekin. I heard her utter sundry blasphemies against the Federalists-Colonel Hamilton, Mr. Jay, &c.—whom she accused of being the corrupters of the mind of Washington, and the betrayers of their country for " English gold" (!), and predicted all sorts of calamities on the country and its present rulers, for not carrying democratical principles far enough. Her lectures ultimately produced so much excitement, that the city authorities got her turned out of the hall--and this most despotically, although properly; thereupon she took to the fields: a public row put an end to that. Fanny cried out against oppression, and she was right, so far; but alas! "liberty-loving" men are often quite as inconsistent as marriage-hating women.

240

COMPENDIOUS ACCOUNT OF

LETTER XVI.

GENERAL LEGISLATURE, GOVERNMENT, AND JUSTI, CIARY OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE General Legislature, or CONGRESS, of the United States, consists of two chambers, a Senate and House of Representatives; and, constitutionally, must as semble once a year, on the first Monday of De cember, when a message is delivered to them by the President.

The SENATE, or upper house, consists of fortyeight members, chosen by the legislatures of the several states, each sending two. They are elected for six years, one-third going out by rotation every two years. The Vice-president of the United States, is president ex-officio of the Senate. He has no vote, except when the numbers are equal.

The members of the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES are elected by every state in the union, each sending representatives in proportion to its population, at the rate of one member for every 47,700 persons. The suffrage in the electors may be considered as universal. The members sent by each state`respectively are in the following proportions :-) :-Maine, 8; New Hampshire, 5; Vermont, 5; Massachusetts, 12; Rhode Island, 2; Connecticut, 6; New!