Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/378

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
364
NEW YORK.
Chap. XVI.

that they are unaffected, lively, and agreeable. The repose so studiously cultivated in England, and which is considered perfect when it has become listlessness, apathy, and indifference, finds no favour with our lively Transatlantic neighbours; consequently the ladies are very naïve and lively, and their manners have the vivacity without the frivolity of the French. They say themselves that they are not so highly educated as the ladies of England. Admirable as the common schools are, the seminaries for ladies, with one or two exceptions, are very inferior to ours, and the early age at which the young ladies go into society precludes them from completing a superior education; for it is scarcely to be expected that, when their minds are filled with the desire for conquest and the love of admiration, they will apply systematically to remedy their deficiencies. And again, some of their own sex in the States have so far stepped out of woman's proper sphere, that high attainments are rather avoided by many from the ridicule which has been attached to the unsuitable display of them in public. The young ladies are too apt to consider their education completed when they are emancipated from school restraints, while in fact only the basis of it has been laid. Music and drawing are not much cultivated in the higher branches; and though many speak the modern languages with fluency, natural philosophy and arithmetic, which strengthen the mental powers, are rather neglected. Yet who has ever missed the higher education which English ladies receive, while in the society of the lively, attractive ladies of New York? Of course there are exceptions, where active and superior minds become highly cultivated by