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reason why the memory of the blind is so tenacious is probably that, not being diverted by objects surrounding them, they can concentrate their attention firmly and fixedly. Nor need this become wearisome, for you will rest often. The school exercises will be so arranged that every hour, or perhaps every half-hour, you will be released. Professional men have every week to sit down with the pen in hand, and bend the mind, and task all their powers, and write three hours at a time, without rising from the chair, or laying down the pen. I would willingly engage thus to sit and labour three hours daily, for seven days in the week, if that would accomplish all I feel bound to do; and surely a young lady can give her mind and her attention to her lesson for half an hour, when she knows that at the end of that time she will be released.

6. Study any thing that is assigned to you cheerfully.

How often do you hear scholars say, and they think it oftener than they express their dissatisfaction, "This study will be of no possible use to me; in after life I shall never

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use it, and why must I study it now ?" Whenever this discontent arises, you forget the objects of study as illustrated in the last chapter. Very likely you may never be called to use the particular study; but you do not study for the sake of the knowledge you lay up in your memory for future use, but more especially for the purpose of disciplining the mind, teaching it how to think, to discriminate, to acquire, to call up and to use its own powers. You are teaching the ship to obey the helm hereafter. You are gaining power over your own attention and thoughts. You are learning to control your powers and faculties at your will. If the study of mathematics, languages, or magic, will do that, then study these. The nervous child might be set to hold a gold watch with care, not because he will be called upon, in after life, to hold gold watches for any length of time, but because it aids him to control himself, and it teaches him to be careful. We make the colt draw the bush around the field, not because it will be his future employment to draw bushes, but because we

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wish to teach him to draw, and not to be frightened at what is to come after him. You may, or you may not, wish to instruct other minds hereafter; but whether you do or not, every lesson which you now thoroughly understand will be of use all the way through life. We care not whether you ever see an algebra again after you have mastered it. The benefits of studying it do not depend on the question whether you ever again see those problems which now cost you so many hours of patient labour. The solutions may not remain, but the benefit of having conquered these difficulties will not pass away.

The waters that have been thoroughly filtered remain pure, though the filter is no longer used. So that, whatever study is thought best for you to pursue, take hold of it cheerfully, and let no foolish notion that it will not be useful in life prevent your doing that study full justice.

7. Select those studies which are best to strengthen the mind.

Young ladies who are brought up in good society will have abundant opportunities to

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improve their taste and to cultivate and refine their manners. But if they neglect to strengthen the faculties of the mind at school, they can never do it. To do this, they can use mental arithmetic. Scarcely any exercise can be more valuable than the practice which enables you to carry accurately long processes of addition or multiplication "in the head." And we must confess that we take great delight in hearing a young lady recite well in algebra, and in Euclid, and if they could and would go on to the higher mathematics, we should be still more pleased. For there is no study, which, on the whole, is so good to strengthen the mind as mathematics. In studying Latin or Greek, you acquire a discriminating power over language, and learn what is the force, position, and strength of words. In mental philosophy you learn how the mind works: but to teach it to work, and how to work hard, give us give us mathematics. Though it may be that Cambridge and Oxford, so long rivals, and so eagerly contending for preeminence, one devoting the strength in mathematics and the other ranking the dead

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languages as of the first importance, have at last decided rightly, when each tries to unite both branches of study.

As to what are called accomplishments,— they doubtless have their use and their place. But whether they compensate for the immense amount of time spent on them is another question. For example, I have often thought that, if half the time spent in learning to draw and to paint were spent, under a competent teacher, in learning how to judge of paintings and drawings, how to discriminate and enjoy what is really beautiful, it would be far more advantageous to most young ladies. To be a poor artist is not very desirable; but to be a good judge of the works of art, is a very high and pleasurable accomplishment; and I am sometimes led to wish that the same expense, which is frequently laid out in teaching the young ladies of a seminary to draw and paint, could be laid out in procuring beautiful pictures, with a real artist to come in for a few days each term and lecture upon them, and teach how to judge and how to enjoy good paintings, drawings,