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Untitled Article
Before ten years of age they ate separated entirely from each other in education ; but long before that , distinct systems of discipline have been adopted with each . The bandage upon the feet of a Chinese woman does not more effectually restrain her from the bounding elastic step natural to a young vigorous being ,
than do the admonitions of the mother or the governess restrain the growth of natural beauty in the mind and form of European girls . Walking some time since in Kensington Garden , I saw a band of young boarding-school ladies ; they were proceeding in as regular order as a file of soldiers going to relieve guard . Each of these girls had an open book in her hand ; alas ., to a
fairer book spread out before them they were probably blind , of a profounder book which each carried in her own breast they will probably ever remain ignorant ! The author of * Godolphin ' ( whoever that be ) observes that it is delightful to woman to feel her dependence . Whence was this fancy won ? It is delightful to her , being dependent , to feel perfect confidence in that on
which she depends , as the wretch afloat from a wreck will rather grasp a rock than a reed . But the sense of enjoyment consorts alone with independence : self-power is the most invigorating , enjoying consciousness of which the human mind is capable ; they who are happy without it are so from unexercised or deficient intellect ; theirs is the bliss of the blind who never knew light . Constraint , acting in the place of rational instruction , is one of
the grand ills of civilized humanity , beginning as it does with birth , and ending only when the lifeless frame mixes its ashes with the earth . The left-handed escapes made from this constraint form the rare and brief holidays of social existence . How rapturous is the emotion which the young man , first entering on life , experiences when he feels or fancies that he has the power of originating his own actions ! What luxury of civilization can keep the savage from the life of freedom , although of hardship , which he leads in the wild ? How joyously burst forth the
energies of young children when they escape from school ! Were it possible to put the question to the whole world , and to let it be decided by a show of hands , whether freedom , to those who had it , was not the first blessing , and to those who had it not , the first desire , we should have the skies darkened by the
shadow of assenting palms , and the miserable few who did not lift their hands would die of terror during the brief eclipse . For my own part , I wonder that the electric spark of genius has ever been elicited amid the conqlaciation of civilized life ; for , as a free frame is necessary to a fine attitude , so is a free mind to fine
thought , and its daring and divine expression . Why is it that the beat light of the world , that which lives in the human eye , so rarely lightens with flashes of mind and heart ; that eloquence leaps bo rarely from the lip ? Because constraint , induced or adopted , ie continually putting winkers upon eyes , and bits and
Untitled Article
774 Acephal **
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 774, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/28/
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