in generally accessible, I yet think that there is some danger—it may be great danger—that the young will depend too much on what is done for them, and think too little of what, if they are to be really cultivated and intelligent women, must be done by them. No system of instruction can possibly supersede thoughtful effort and diligent attention in the pupil, or compensate for wise application of attainments when girlhood merges into womanhood.
There is a sense, and a very important sense too, in which every one who really is well-informed must be self-taught. Instruction given is one thing, instruction received another. No plans of education can supersede or supply a substitute for the faculty of attention and the practice of diligence. What the young mind desires and resolves to do for itself is of the utmost importance to that mind. Instruction may stream on and over the mind like water over a mirror, and make no abiding-place in it.
In the times gone by, people were rather to be pitied than blamed if they were ignorant. "Ignorance of what they could not know" was not culpable. But now, with all the facilities which schools and libraries afford, ignorance is a disgrace which every right-minded young person should resolutely avoid. When darkness prevailed, none were to blame for not seeing; but to be voluntarily dark amid the blaze of day, that is indeed culpable. It is the awful
