The whole system of education, as practised by the Protestants of the United States, is wrong; religious prejudice prevents their learning from the Catholics, and particularly from the Jesuit Catholics, who are far in advance of their Protestant brethren. They learn from the child as they teach the child. In the first place, none are permitted to teach who are not by nature, as well as by education, qualified to teach; nature must give the gentleness, the kindness, and the patience, with the capacity to impart instruction. They learn, first, the child's nature, the peculiarities of temper, and fashion these to obedience and affection; they first teach the heart to love—not fear; they warn against the evils of life—teach the good, and the child's duties to its parents, to its brothers and sisters, to its teachers, to its playmates, and to its God. When the heart is mellowed and yields obedience in the faithful discharge of these duties, and the brain sufficiently matured to comprehend the necessity of them, then attention is directed to the mind; its capacities are learned and known, and it is treated as this knowledge teaches is proper: it is, as the farmer knows, the soil of his cultivation, and is prepared by careful tillage before the seed is sown. The vision of the child's mind is by degrees expanded; the horizon of its knowledge is enlarged, and still the heart's culture goes on in kindness and affection. The pupil has learned to love the teacher, and receives with alacrity his teaching; he goes to him, without fear, for information on every point of duty in morals, as on every difficult point of literary learning. He knows he will be received kindly, and dealt with gently. Should he err, he is never rebuked in public, nor harshly in private; the teacher is aggrieved, and in private he kindly complains to the offender, whose love for his preceptor makes him to feel, and repent, and to err no more. All this is only known to the two; his school-fellows never know, and have no opportunity for triumph or raillery. Thus taught from the cradle, principles become habits; and on these, at maturity, he is launched upon the world, with every safeguard for his future life. So with the girl. With the experience of forty-five years, the writer has never known a vicious, bad woman, wife, or mother trained in a Jesuit convent, or reared by an educated Catholic mother.
The daughters of the pioneers of Georgia's early settlements received a home education; at least, in the duties of domestic life. In the discharge of these duties, they gained robust constitutions and vigorous health; they increased the butcher's bill at the expense of the doctor's; and such women were the mothers of the men who have made a history for their country, for themselves and their mothers. I may be prolix and prosaic, but I love to remember the mothers of fifty years ago—she who gave birth to Lucius Q.C. and Mirabeau B. Lamar, to William C. Dawson, Bishop George Pierce, Alexander Stuart, Joseph Lumpkin, and glorious Bob Toombs. I knew them all, and, with affectionate delight, remember their virtues, and recall the social hours we have enjoyed together, when they were matrons, and I the companion of their sons. And now, when all are gone, and time is crowding me to the grave, the nobleness of their characters, the simplicity of their bearing in the discharge of their household duties, and the ingenuousness of their manners in social intercourse, is a cherished, venerated memory. None of these women were ever in a boarding-school, never received a lesson in the art of entering a drawing-room or captivating a beau. They were sensible, modest, and moral women, and their virtues live after them in the exalted character of their illustrious sons. Their literary education in early life was, of necessity, neglected, because of the want of opportunities; but in the virtues and duties of life, they were thoroughly educated; and none of these, or any of their like, was ever Mrs. President or Secretary of any pretentious or useless society or association.
The little education or literature they acquired was in the old log school-house, where boys and girls commingled as pupils under the teaching of some honest pedagogue, who aspired to teach only reading, writing, and arithmetic, in a simple way. It must not be supposed, from the foregoing remarks, that I object to female education; on the contrary, I would have every woman an educated woman. But I would have this education an useful and proper education; one not wholly ornamental and of no practical use, but one obtained at home, and under the parental care and influence—such an one as made Mrs. Ripley, of Concord, Massachusetts, the wonder and admiration of every sensible man. She who studied La Place's Mécanique Céleste when she was making biscuit for her breakfast, and who solved a problem in the higher mathematics when darning her stockings; an education where the useful may be taught and learned to grace the ornamental—where the harp and piano shall share with the needle and the cooking-stove, and the pirouettes of the dancing-master shall be only a step from the laundry and the kitchen.
The duties of wives and mothers are to home, husband, and children; and this includes all of woman's duty to the country, and in the intelligent and faithful discharge of which the great ends of life are subserved. Good neighborhood, good government, and happy communities secure the implanting and cultivation of good principles, and the proper teaching of proper duties. The wise direction of literary education to sons and to daughters, all comes within the range of home, and home duties especially incumbent upon mothers. The domestic duties and domestic labors should be a prime consideration in the education of daughters. The association of the mother and child from birth, until every principle which is to guide and govern it through life is implanted, makes it the duty of the mother to know the right, and to teach it, too. Example and precept should combine; and this necessity compels a constant watch, not only over the child's, but over the mother's language and conduct. All these duties imply a close devotion to home: for here is the germ which is to grow into good or into evil, as it is nursed and cultivated, or wickedly neglected. Begin at the beginning, if you would accomplish well your work; and to do this, application and assiduity are indispensable; and these are duties only to be discharged at home. They admit of a relaxation of time sufficient for every social duty exacted by society, if that society is such as it should be; and if not, it should neither occupy time not attention.
In this is comprised all woman's duties, and they are paramount; for upon their successful application depend the well-being of society and the proper and healthful administration of wise and salutary laws. The world is indebted to woman for all that is good and great. Let every woman emulate Cornelia, the Roman mother, and, when a giddy, foolish neighbor runs to her to exhibit newly purchased jewels, be found, like the Roman matron, at her tambour-work; and like her, too, when her boys from school shall run to embrace her, say to the thoughtless one, "These are my jewels!" and Rome will not alone boast of her Gracchi and their incomparable mother.
The duties of home cultivate reflection and stimulate to virtue. For this reason, women are more pious than men; and for this reason, too,