clergyman's daughters in the neighbourhood, and they used to admire the ingenuity of Eugenius, who amused himself with a turning-lathe, and made most of the little trays and other utensils that were used in the fa mily. Seeing so many convenient things made out of shapeless masses, Alathea, looking steadily at the moon one evening on a walk with us, she turned to Eugenius, and having kissed his hand, looked up with timid anxiety, and said, My dear papa, will you tell me who turned the moon? Yes, Alathea, I can tell you that at once,---it was the great papa of the whole world, that turned the moon and every thing in the world is the workmanship of his hands. Here the conversation ended. Alathea be. came immediately thoughtful, but soon after ran off to her play, and I heard no more of her query till next morning; when, sitting at our work, after the lesson of the day was over, Alathea looked tenderly and significantly at me for some time, and said, My dear mamma, what a strange thing that was my papa told me yesterday about the moon! I durst not answer him, for I thought he was saying a thing that was impossible; and you know papa always tells me, that nobody should ever joke about GOD. My dearest Alathea, what your papa told you yesterday is not only not impossible, but one of the few things that one can know to a certainty. If you was to find a wooden trencher, a tray, or an egg-cup in the ground, would not you know that it had not grown, there, but been placed there by somebody, and that it had been turned in a turning-lathe out of a piece of wood? Yes, mamma. Then, my dear Alathea, the world was originally like a shapeless piece of wood, and the great papa of the world turned every thing in a lathe of his own to answer the good purposes. of his children and his creatures; and we are all his children and his creatures; men, women, children, horses, cows, sheep, and dogs, and every thing that lives or moves, or has any kind of being. ~ Alathea leaps upon my knee, kisses me again and again; and laughing in tears, cries out, Q, mamma! this is charming. Then papa is my brother, and you are my sister, and my grandpapa made the moon and every thing else. I now instantly take her off from the continuance of this conversation, as being quite above her capacity, and gently lead her to the workmanship and occupations of the day, leaving the impression to produce its beneficial effects hereafter. Thus, Mr Editor, have I given you a slight sketch of the commencement of my plan of female education, which, if -- you do not forbid, shall be followed out in some of your future papers, with a description of the more interesting, though not more important period of education, which is to follow; and I remain, Sir, with esteem for your undertaking, your sincere well-wisher, SOPHIA. SIR, Female Education, continued. TO THE EDITOR OF THE BEE. I HAVE read and considered, with great care and attention, the letters of Sophia on the subject of the education of women: and I must freely acknowledge, that her arguments have, in my mind, produced complete conviction of the propriety of the system she wishes to establish. I contemplate this system as the most important branch of that instauratio magna which will take place in human society hereafter, and which in many respects is already begun. "Surely," said the admirable Maclaurin, in the last lecture he gave to his class of natural philosophy at Edinburgh," it is in the womb of time, and "in the power of GOD, to grant us a far "greater improvement of our faculties, or " even to endow us with new faculties, of which, at this time, we have no idea, for penetrating farther into the scheme of na ture, and approaching nearer to himself, the 1 "first and supreme cause. We know not "how far it was proper or necessary that we "should not be let into knowledge at once, but should advance gradually, that, by com 66 66 paring new objects, or new discoveries, with "what was known to us before, our improve. "ments might be more complete and regular: "or how far it may be necessary or advan"tageous, that intelligent beings should pass "through a kind of infancy of knowledge: "For new knowledge does not consist so much "in our having access to a new object, as in comparing it with others already known; observing its relations to them, or observing 66 what it has in common with them, and where" in their disparity consists. Thus our know "ledge is vastly greater than the sum of "what all its objects separately could afford; 66 and when a new object comes within our "reach, the addition to our knowledge is the "greater the more we already know; so that ❝it increases not as the new objects increase, "but in a much higher proportion." d Now, Sir, let us apply this grand and lu minous doctrine to the new system of educa tion for the Sex, and we will see at a glance, that it is impossible to calculate the beneficial effects it would have upon society. The best employed women, in the higher ranks, have much more leisure than men ; their organs are more delicate and irritable, their imaginations more vivid, and their situations much less subject to be, sullied and debased by gross mixture with inferior society, much less subject to be degraded by intemperance; and, therefore, in the faculties of the mind, much more liable to be effectually improved. Supposing there are, at this moment, twenty thousand men in the world, whose minds have been refined by science, by art, and by the general culture of philosophy and literature, in such a way as, in some important department or other, to increase the mass of useful science and art, to touch society, at large, and to advance the welfare of mankind; we may fairly state the numbers of indiyiduals, who would be added to the workers of this magnificent machine for raising the su perstructure of human happiness, by the introduction of women, at an equal, if not a superior quota; and how much this might accelerate the improvement of society, upon Maclaurin's undeniable principles, is past all calculation. Without going back to the age of the Scipios for examples, I shall venture to assert, that the education of boys by women, (fitted for the task,) is more favourable for the growth of great men than that conducted by pedants and I believe all the truly great men the world has produced have been indebted to this circumstance for their superiority, where extreme adversity, and other very uncommon arrangements, have not been the means of calling forth their abilities. What |