ses live upon a mount, and there is no enjoying any of their favours, unless you can climb to the heights of Parnassus." Having been led to these remarks on two kinds of reading, which form such prominent objects of attraction to the female mind, will my amiable hearers permit me to solicit their attention for a few moments to a very brief and cursory review, of some branches of learning, the elements of which are taught in this seminary. I say the elements; for considering the various objects of study that a school presents, and the time allotted for their attainment, it cannot be expected that science can be here pursued through all its details by the youthful mind. A solid foundation is here laid: A commendable spirit of industry in the pupil, aided by the help of judicious friends, must hereafter complete the superstructure. READ, ING with correct emphasis and agreeable cadences, is certainly a very pleasing qualification; and the specimens you have lately afforded us, my young friends, have exhibited a very satisfactory evidence of the capacity and faithfulness of your tutor, and of your dispositions to improve by his instructions. While care in avoiding an indistinct rapidity of utterance, and its contrary, a drawling monotonous manner is observed, your accent and pronunciation regulated by the proper standards, and due regard paid to your pauses and cadences, you will find your own pleasure in reading, and that of your friends in hearing you, much increased. We expect to see still more anxiety manifested on the part of the pupils, for improvement in this delightful exercise. The WRITING of a neat fair hand, adds greatly to the other accomplishments of ladies. It gives a grace to composition, and is generally considered a strong evidence of a polite education. To a reasonable extent it can be acquired by all, and our examination of your performances furnishes ground for believing that this seminary affords abundant means for that purpose. The study of GRAMMAR as the precursor and handmaid of composition, is too obviously beneficial to need argument to induce your cons tinued diligence in its pursuit. To render it however truly serviceable, you should carefully attend to the meaning and operation of its rules, and not only fix them carefully in your memories, but learn to apply them with judgment. The art of COMPOSITION Combines utility and ornament of the most valuable and embellishing kind in the structure of the female scholar. To be able on all the occasions of life in which it may become necessary, to assume your pen with a modest confidence, to embody your thoughts with ease and elegance, to rise above that awkwardness and vulgarity of diction which disgrace the ill educated woman, to delight your distant friends with the beauty of your style, and the spriteliness of your periods, are assuredly objects calculated to arouse your ambition and stimulate your exertions, to become proficients in this charming employment. You are here, we trust, acquiring a taste for fine writing that will lead to frequent future attempts. There is nothing wherein the benefit of continued practice is more fully experienced than in this. Epistolary communication with your absent friends, offers a large field for the amendment of your style. Without too laboured an attention to the construction of your sentences, yet with a moderate regard to correctness and purity of language, this species of writing will enable you to exhibit all the vivacity of your fancies, all the sensibility of your hearts. There are many fine models of letter-writing to which your literary friends can assist you in recurring, but the admirable essays and letters to be found in the Spectator, Tatler, Rambler, Adventurer, and other classical works of a like kind, will supply the best examples of a style which you may safely imitate. A knowledge of GEOGRAPHY is a creditable acquisition for a lady. It furnishes a vast body of interesting and amusing information, contributes to a better understanding of historical events, and renders more intelligible the accounts we are constantly receiving of many of the important transactions that are from time to time occurring in the world. It forms a proper accompaniment to the study of HISTORY: a branch of learning equally entertaining and instructive. This, is well as BIOGRAPHY, is a source of the highest moral improvement. It enlarges our knowledge of men and things, teaches us to infer from what has happened what may happen again," and affords us incontrovertible evidence of the justice of the ways of Providence in educing "from partial evil universal good." The body of well-written history now extant is so extensive, that an almost inexhaustible fund of information is presented by it to the inquisitive mind. Your individual enjoyment of its estimable treasures will of course be regulated by your opportunities for its pursuit; but an acquaintance with the history of your own country, and of that from which we derive our origin, is within the reach and should be aspired after by every young lady. ARITHMETIC, or the art of computation, will prove an acquisition of practical advantage, whatever may be your future station in society. If your fortune should not raise you above the necessity of personal exertions for your own support, you will find great benefit from a know ledge of figures; and if you should be elevated above such a necessity it will protect you from imposition, and enable you with more ease and accuracy to regulate your pecuniary affairs. Among the other exhibitions of your talents and acquirements, we have been much delighted, my young friends,' by the specimens you have given us of your practical acquaintance with SACRED MUSIC. Although a regular course of scientific instruction in the theoretical principles of music, does not constitute a part of the system of education adopted in this academy, yet the occasional lessons and opportunities for practice here afforded you, will, we hope, incite you to the further improvement of a taste for Psalmody. There is certainly no more honourable motive for the cultivation of music, than that of its employment in the praises of the MOST HIGH. "When thus applied," a classical writer observes, “it raises noble ideas in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise and rapture, lengthens out every act of worship, and produces more lasting and permanent impressions on the mind than those which accompany any transient form of words, that are uttered in the ordinary method of religious worship." I would add to this encomium, young ladies, that it assimilates your gratifications here to those of the harmonious beings in another state, described by Milton, who incessantly raise "The sacred sound and waken raptures high, YOUNG LADIES, In all the departments of study I have enumerated, your recent examination has evidenced in some great proficiency, and in others a progress fully proportioned to their years and opportunities. It is our wish to encourage you to new endeavours, to profit by the kindness of your parents and guardians, who here afford you such sufficient means of instruction, and by the judicious and laborious application of those means to your several capacities, by the able and attentive preceptor whom they have assigned you. The best return you can make both to the former and the latter, is diligence in the prosecution of your studies, and an undeviating observance of the regulations of the seminary in which you are placed. To you, young ladies, on whom the honours of this institution are about to be conferred, permit us to say, that the proofs you have given us of your attainments are gratifying to our feelings, and honourable to you. We hope the taste for learning you have here imbibed, will not be eradicated by the closing of your studies and exercises in this place; but that it will continue and increase. The correct sentiments and lau dable industry which you have manifested, during the period of your tuition, gives us an assurance that you will endeavour in future amid all your other employments and amusements to find intervals of leisure for the further prosecution of literary research. By so doing you will open to yourselves new and exhaustless sources of gratification and delight. In the fruition of health and plenty, the pleasures of literature will give them a real zest. In the distresses of sickness or poverty, should they ever unfortunately assail you, next to the consolations of religion, these pleasures will often most effectually tend to your mental relief. May you be preserved from such evils, and abound in all the felicity attainable in this life, preparatory to greater in the realms above. To the respectable audience who have attended the exercises of this evening, and the full examination which took place last week, whether they be interested as the near relatives and friends of the pu pils, or favour us with their company from a love of literature, and a desire of witnessing the abilities which the emulation and industry of the pupils have enabled them to display, we trust that nothing has occurred to change their favourable opinion of the utility and beauty of Female Education. The subject is calculated to excite a high degree of interest in every philanthropic breast, and merits a better discussion than it has now received. If I have erred in too readily yielding to the unexpected and flattering request of the respectable gentlemen with whom I am associated in the superintendence of this seminary, I rely on their and your feelings for supplying every deficiency; congratulating myself if I may in the smallest degree, aid my brethren in increasing the number of the patrons of female improvement and in encouraging the blooming candidates for literary reputation whose studies we have recently examined, to a spirit of enterprize and emulation in the pursuit of knowledge, an unerring regard to moral rectitude, and a distaste for every thing that has a tendency to destroy their love of profitable reading, the purity of their principles or the amiableness of their dispositions. TRAVELS FOR THE PORT FOLIO. LETTERS FROM GENEVA AND FRANCE, Written during a residence of between two and three years in different parts of those countries, and addressed to a lady in Virginia. LETTER LXV. THERE is nothing in the ancient church of St. Medard that would be thought deserving the attention of a stranger; there are no Corinthian columns, no pictures by eminent masters, no superb altar-piece, nor any dome suspended as it were by magic, in the air; it is a simple and old-fashioned place of worship recommended only by its intrinsic sanctity, and by the memory of the Abbe Paris: you will have seen an account of this celebrated Abbe in Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV, of the miracles that were operated at his tomb, and of the measures taken by the government to put an end to the confluence of people there from all parts of the kingdom: as the sacristan was absent, his wife accompanied me about the church, and I soon perceived, that she was a firm believer in the Abbe. The world, she said, was become sadly incredulous, and except a sick lady from Lyons, I was the only stranger who for several months, had visited their church, and yet who could doubt the powerful intercession of the Abbe in Heaven, for, laying aside the numbers of miraculous cures performed in the last century, was not his influence apparent in the preservation of their church, not the slightest ornament of which had been carried away or injured during the whole of the revolution? She wished me also to take notice by climbing up into a window, that though we were now in the dead of winter, the tomb of the Abbe was green with vegetation, and assured me, that if I returned at another hour, her husband would find means to get access for me within the enclosure that is still walled up, and that I might procure some of the earth from about the grave, or a piece of the tombstone in case of sickness in my family hereafter. There are some subjects upon which the reason that Providence has given us, must embolden us to reject all human testimony: the firm persuasion of the witness, and even of the person who has been miraculously operated upon, are to no purpose; it is still more probable that they are both deluded by appearances, or misled by their own prejudices and passions, than that the Almighty should have suspended the laws of nature if human testimony were to prevail, there would be no end of miracles. Racine, the most polished scholar, and one of the most amiable and upright men of the age, and Paschal, a genius of still su |