HINTS

TOWARDS FORMING THE CHARACTER OF A YOUNG PRINCESS.

I call that a complete and generous education, which fits a person to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices both of public and private life, of peace, and of war. -Milton.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER.

MY LORD,-Could it have been foreseen by the author of the following pages, that in the case of the illustrious person who is the subject of thein, the standard of education would have been set so high; and espacially, that this education would be committed to such able and distinguished hands, the work might surely have been spared. But as the work was gone to the press before that appointment was announced, which must give general satisfaction, it becomes important to request, that if the advice suggested in any part of the work should appear presumptuous, your lordship, and still more the public, who inight be more forward than your lordship in charging the author with presumption, will have the candour to recollect, that it was offered not to the learned bishop of Exeter, but to an unknown, and even to an imaginary preceptor.

Under these circumstances, your lordship will perhaps have the goodness to accept the dedication of the following pages; not as arrogantly pointing out duties to the discharge of which you are so competent, but as a mark of the respect and esteem with which I have the honour to be,

My lord, your lordship's most obedient and most faithful servant,

April 2, 1805.

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE,

Ir any book, written with an upright and disinterested intention, may be thought to require an apology, it is surely the slight work which is now, with the most respectful deference, submitted, not to the public only, but especially to those who may be more immediately interested in the important object which it has in view.

If we were to inquire what is, even at the present critical period, one of the most momentous concerns which can engage the attention of an Englishman, who feels for his country like a patriot, and for his posterity like a father; what is that object of which the importance is not bounded by the shores of the British islands, nor limited by our colonial possessions ;-with which, in its consequences, the interests, not only of all Europe, but of the whole civilized world, may hereafter be in some measure implicated; what Briton would hesitate to reply, the education of the Princess Charlotte of Wales?

After this frank confession of the unspeakable importance of the subject in view, it is no wonder if the extreme difficulty, as well as delicacy of the present undertaking, is acknowledged to be sensibly felt by the author.

It will too probably be thought to imply not only officiousness, but presumption, that a private individual should thus hazard the obtrusion of unsolicited observations on the proper mode of forming the character of an English princess.-It may seem to involve an appearance of unwarrantable distrust, by implying an apprehension of some deficiency in the plan about to be adopted by those, whoever they may be, on whom this great trust may be devolved: and to indicate self-conceit, by conveying an intimation, after so strong an avowal of the delicacy and difficulty of the task, that such a deficiency is within the powers of the author to supply. That author, however, earnestly desires, as far as it may be possible to obviate these anticipated charges, by alleging that under this free constitution, in which every topic of national policy is openly canvassed, and in which the prerogative of the crown form no mean part of the liberty of the subject, the principles which it is proper to instil into a royal personage, become a topic, which, if discussed respectfully, may without offence, exercise the liberty of the British press.

The writer is very far, indeed, from pretending to offer any thing approaching to a system of instruction for the royal pupil, much less from presuming to dictate a plan of conduct to the preceptor. What is here presented, is a mere outline, which may be filled up by far more able hands: a sketch which contains no cousecutive details, which neither aspires to regularity of design, nor exactness of execution.

To awaken a lively attention to a subject of such moment, to point out some circumstances connected with the early season of improvement, but still more with the subsequent stages of life; to offer, not a treatise on education, but a desultory suggestion of sentiments and principles; to convey instruction, not so much by precept or by argument, as to exemplify it by illustrations and examples; and, above all, to stimulate the wise and the good to exertions far more effectual; these are the real motives which have given birth to this slender performance. VOL. II.

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Had the royal pupil been a prince, these hints would never have been obtruded on the world, as it would then have been naturally assumed, that the established plan usually adopted in such cases would have been pursued. Nor does the author presume in the present instance, to insinuate a suspicion, that there will be any want of a large and liberal scope in the projected systein, or to intimate an apprehension that the course of study will be adapted to the sex, rather than to the circumstances of the princess.

If, however, it should be asked, why a stranger presumes to interfere in a matter of such high concern? It may be answered in the words of an elegant critic, that in classic story, when a superb and lasting monument was about to be consecrated to beauty, every lover was permitted to carry a tribute.

The appearance of a valuable elementary work on the principles of Christianity, which has been recently published in our language, translated from the German under the immediate patronage of an august personage, for the avowed purpose of benefit to her illustrious daughters, as it is an event highly auspicious to the general interests of religion, so is it a circumstance very encouraging to the present undertaking.

It is impossible to write on such points as are discussed in this little work, without being led to draw a comparison between the lot of a British subject, and that of one who treats on similar topics under a despotic government.—The excellent archbishop of Cambray, with every advantage which genius, learning, profession, and situation could confer; the admired preceptor of the duke of Burgundy, appointed to the office by the king himself, was yet in the beautiful work which he composed for the use of his royal pupil, driven to the necessity of couching his instructions under a fictitious narrative, and of sheltering behind the veil of fable, the duties of a just sovereign, and the blessings of a good government: he was aware, that even under this disguise, his delineation of both would too probably be construed into a satire on the personal errors of his own king, and the vices of the French government, and in spite of his ingenious discretion, the event justified his apprehensions.

Fortunate are the subjects of that free and happy country who are not driven to have recourse to any such expedients; who may, without danger, dare to express temperately what they think lawfully; who, in describing the most perfect form of government, instead of recurring to poetic invention, need only delineate that under which they themselves live; who, in sketching the character, and shadowing out the duties of a patriot king, have no occasion to turn their eyes from their own country to the thrones of Ithaca or Salentum.

HINTS

TOWARDS FORMING THE CHARACTER OF A YOUNG PRINCESS. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. of the expectant sovereign. If, in such cases, the wants and weaknesses of human naWE are told that when a sovereign of an-ture could indeed be wholly effaced, as easicient times, who wished to be a mathemati-ly as they are kept out of sight, there would cian, but was deterred by the difficulty of attainment, asked, whether he could not be instructed in some easier method, the answer which he received was, that there was no royal road to geometry. The lesson contained in this reply ought never to be lost sight of, in that most important and delicate of all undertakings, the education of a prince!

It is a truth which might appear too obvious to require enforcing, and yet of all others it is a truth most liable to be practically forgotten, that the same subjugation of desire and will, of inclinations and tastes, to the laws of reason and conscience, which every one wishes to see promoted in the lowest ranks of society, is still more necessary in the very highest, in order to the attainment either of individual happiness, or of general virtue, to public usefulness, or to private self-enjoyment.

at least be some reasonable plea against the charge of cruelty. But when, on the contrary, the most elevated monarch must still retain every natural hope and fear, every affection and passion of the heart, every frailty of the mind, and every weakness of the body, to which the meanest subject is liable; how exquisitely inhuman must it be to provide so sedulously for the extrinsic accident of transient greatness, as to blight the growth of substantial virtue, to dry up the fountains of mental and moral comfort, and in short to commit the ill-fated victim of such mismanagement to more, almost, than human dangers and difficulties, without even the common resources of the least favoured of mankind,

Yet, must not this be the unaggravated consequence of not accustoming the royal child to that salutary control which the corruption of our nature requires, as its indisWhere a prince, therefore, is to be edu-pensable and earliest corrective? If those cated, his own welfare no less than that of foolish desires, which in the great mass of his people, humanity no less than policy, mankind are providentially repressed by prescribe, that the claims and privileges of the want of means to gratify them, should, the rational being should not be suffered to in the case of royalty, be thought warrantmerge in the peculiar rights or exemptions | able, because every possible gratification is

within reach, what would be the result, but | ces! Nothing short of the soundest, most the full blown luxuriance of folly, vice, and rational, and, let me add, most religious edmisery? The laws of human nature will ucation, can counteract the dangers to which not bend to human greatness; and by these they are exposed. If the highest of our no immutable laws it is determined, that hap-bility, in default of some better way of guardpiness and virtue, virtue and self-command, ing against the mischiefs of flatterers and deself-command and early habitual self-denial, pendents, deem it expedient to commit their should be joined together in an indissoluble sons to the wholesome equality of a public bond of connexion, school, in order to repress their aspiring noThe first habit, therefore, to be formed tions, and check the tendencies of their birth; in every human being, and still more in the-If they find it necessary to counteract offspring and heir of royalty, is that of pa- the pernicious influence of domestic luxury, tience, and even cheerfulness, under post- and the corrupting softness of domestic indulponed and restricted gratification. And the gence, by severity of study and closeness of first lesson to be taught is, that since self- application; how much more indispensable command is so essential to all genuine virtue is the spirit of this principle in the instance and real happiness, where others cannot re- before us? The highest nobility have their strain us, there, especially, we should re-equals, their competitors, and even their sustrain ourselves. That illustrious monarch, periors. Those who are born within the Gustavus Adolphus, was so deeply sensible sphere of royalty are destitute of all such exof this truth, that when he was surprised by trinsic means of correction, and must be one of his officers in secret prayer in his wholly indebted for their safety to the soundtent, he said, 'Persons of my rank are an-ness of their principles, and the rectitude of swerable to God alone for their actions; this gives the enemy of mankind a peculiar advantage over us; an advantage which can only be resisted by prayer, and reading the Scriptures.'

their habits. Unless, therefore, the brightest light of reason be, from the very first, thrown upon their path, and the divine energies of our holy religion, both restraining and attractive, be brought as early as possi ble to act upon their feelings, the children of royalty, by the very fate of their birth, would be of all men most miserable.'

As the mind opens, the universal truth of this principle may be exemplified in innumerable instances, by which it may be demonstrated, that man is a rational being only so Let it not, however, be supposed, that any far as he can thus command himself. That impracticable rigour is here recommended ́; such a superiority to the passions is essential or that it is conceived to be necessary that to all regular and steady performance of du- the gay period of childhood should be renty; and that true gratification is thus, and dered gloomy or painful, whether in the cotthus only insured, because, by him who thus tage or the palace. The virtue which is habitually restrains himself, not only every aimed at, is not that of the stoic philosophy; lawful pleasure is most perfectly enjoyed; nor do the habits which are deemed valuabut every common blessing, for which the ble, require the harshness of a Spartan edusated voluptuary has lost all relish, becomes cation. Let nature, truth, and reason, be a source of the most genuine pleasure, a source of pleasure which is never exhausted, because such common blessings are never wholly withheld.

consulted; and, let the child, and especially the royal child, be as much as possible, trained according to their simple and consistent indications. The attention, in such inThe mind should be formed early, no less stances as the present, should be the more than the person and for the same reason. watchful and unremitting, as counteracting Providence has plainly indicated childhood influences are, in so exalted a station, necesto be the season of instruction, by communi- sarily multiplied; and every difficulty is at cating at that period, sucì: flexibility to the its greatest possible height. In a word, let organs, such retention to the memory, such not common sense, which is universal and quickness to the apprehension, such inquisi- eternal, be sacrificed to the capricious tastes tiveness to the temper, such alacrity to the of the child, or to the pliant principles of any animal spirits, and such impressibility to the who may approach her. But let the virtue affections, as are not possessed at any subse- and the happiness of the royal pupil be as quent period. We are therefore bound by simply, as feelingly, and as uniformly conevery tie of duty to follow these obvious de- sulted, as if she were the daughter of a prisignations of Providence, by moulding that vate gentleman. May this attention to her flexibility to the most durable ends; by sto- moral and mental cultivation be the supreme ying that memory with the richest know- concern, from honest reverence to the offledge; by pointing, that apprehension to the spring of such a race, from a dutiful regard highest objects; by giving to that alacrity its to her own future happiness, and from reabest direction; by turning that inquisitive-sonable attention to the well-being of those ness to the noblest intellectual purposes; millions, whose earthly fate may be at this and, above all, by converting that impressi- moment suspended on lessons, and habits, bility of heart to the most exalted moral use. received by one providentially distinguished If this be true in general, much more for- female !

cibly does it apply to the education of prin

CHAP. II.

a general knowledge of ancient languages, it is presumed, may be dispensed with. The On the Acquisition of Knowledge. Greek authors, at least, may doubtless be THE course of instruction for the princess read with sufficient advantage through the will, doubtless, be wisely adapted, not only medium of a translation; the spirit of the to the duties, but to the dangers of her rank. original being, perhaps, more transfusible The probability of her having one day func- into the English, than into any other mctions to discharge, which, in such exempt dern tongue. But are there not many forcases only, fall to the lot of females, obvious-cible reasons why the Latin language should ly suggests the expediency of an education not be equally omitted?* Besides the adnot only superior to, but in certain respects, vantage of reading, in their original dress distinct froin, that of other women. What the historians of that empire, the literature was formerly deemed necessary in an in- of Rome is peculiarly interesting, as being stance of this nature, may be inferred from the most satisfactory medium through which the well-known attainments of the unfortu- the moderns can obtain an intimate knownate lady Jane Grey; and still more from ledge of the ancient world. As the Latin the no less splendid acquirements of queen itself is a modification of one of the Greek Elizabeth. Of the erudition of the latter, dialects, so the Roman philosophers and we have particular account from one, who poets, having formed themselves, as much was the fittest in that age to appreciate it, as possible, on Grecian models, present to the celebrated Roger Aschasm. He tells us the nearest possible transcripts of those us, that when he read over with her the masters whom they copy. Thus, by an acorations of Eschines and Demosthenes in quaintance with the Latin language, we are Greek, she not only understood, at first brought into a kind of actual contact not onsight, the full force and propriety of the ly with the ancient world, but with that language, and the meaning of the orators, portion of it which, having the most direct but that she comprehended the whole and the fullest intercourse with the other scheme of the laws, customs, and manners parts, introduces us, in a manner the most of the Athenians. She possessed an exact informing and satisfactory, to classical and and accurate knowledge of the Scriptures, philosophical antiquity in general. and had committed to memory most of the what is still more, the Latin tongue enables striking passages in them. She had also us for ourselves, without the intermediation learned by heart many of the finest parts of of any interpreter, to examine all the parThucydides and Xenophon, especially those ticular circumstances in manners, interwhich relate to life and manners. Thus course, modes of thinking and speaking, of were her early years sedulously employed that period which Eternal Wisdom chose in laying in a large stock of materials for (probably because it was ever after to apgoverning well. To what purpose she im-pear the most luminous in the whole retroproved them, let her illustrious reign of for-spect of history) as fittest for the advent of ty-five years declare ! the Messiah, and the bringing life and immortality to light by the gospel.

But

cally exact and elegant in the use of her own language; and her ability to manage it with gracefulness and vigour will be considerably increased. †

If the influence of her erudition on her subsequent prosperity should be questioned; If to this may be added lesser yet not unlet it be considered, that her intellectual at- important considerations, we would say, tainments supported the dignity of her cha- that by the acquaintance which the Latin racter, under foibles and feminine weakness-language would give her with the etymoloes, which would otherwise have sunk her gy of words, she will learn to be more accucredit: she had even address enough to con-rate in her definitions, as well as more crititrive to give to those weaknesses a certain classic grace. Let it be considered also, that whatever tended to raise her mind to a level with those whose services she was to use, and of whose counsels she was to avail herself, proportionably contributed to that mutual respect and confidence between the queen and her ministers, without which, the results of her government could not have been equally successful. Almost every man The royal father of the illustrious pupil is said to of rank was then a man of letters, and lite-possess the princely accomplishment of a pure classical rature was valued accordingly. Had, there- taste. Of his love for polite learning, the attention fore, deficiency of learning been added to in-which he is paying to the recovery of certain of the lost feriority of sex, we might not at this day works of some of the Roman authors, is an evidence. have the reign of Elizabeth on which to look Who does not consider as one of the most interestback, as the period in which administrative ing passages of modern history, that which relates the energy seemed to attain the greatest possi-effect produced by an eloquent Latin oration pronounble perfection.

Yet, though an extended acquaintance with ancient authors will be necessary now, as it was then, in the education of a princess,

Of the modern languages, if the author dares hazard an opinion, the French and German seem the most necessary. The Italian appears less important, as those au

ced in a full assembly, by the late empress Maria The-resa, in the bloom of her youth, and beauty, so late as the year 1740? Antiquity produces nothing more touching of the kind.