The female instructor, or Young woman's companion : being a guide to all the accomplishments which adorn the female character, either as a useful member of society - a pleasing and instructive companion, or a respectable mother of a family. With many pleasing examples of illustrious females. To which are added, useful medicinal receipts, and a concise system of cookery, with other valuable information in the different branches of domestic economy.

Date:
[1812]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The female instructor, or Young woman's companion : being a guide to all the accomplishments which adorn the female character, either as a useful member of society - a pleasing and instructive companion, or a respectable mother of a family. With many pleasing examples of illustrious females. To which are added, useful medicinal receipts, and a concise system of cookery, with other valuable information in the different branches of domestic economy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    genuine and lasting kindnesses on those whom they are designed to benefit, and never fail, when pursued from conscientious motives, to meliorate the heart of her who is engaged in them. In pointing out that which ought be done, let justice be rendered to that which has been done. In the discharge of the domestic offices of kindness, and in the exercise of charitable and friendly regard to the neighbouring poor, women in general are exemplary. In this latter branch of Christian virtue, an accession of energy has been witnessed within a few years. Many ladies have shewn, and still continue to shew, their earnest solicitude for the welfare of the wretched aud the ignorant, by spontaneously establishing schools of industiy and of religious instruction; and with a still more beneficial w armth of benevolence, have taken the regular in- spection of them upon themselves. May they stedfastly persevere, aud be imitated by numbers ! Among the employments of time, which, though regarded with due attention by many young women, are more or less neglected by a considerable proportion, moderate exercise in the open air claims to be noticed. Sedentary confinement in hot apartments on the one hand, and public diversions frequented on the other, in buildings still more crowded and stifling, are often permitted so to occupy the time, as by degrees even to wear away the relish for the freshness of a pure atmosphere, for the beauties and amusements of the garden, and for those “ rural sights and rural sounds,” which delight the mind unsubdued by idleness, folly, or vice. Enfeebled health, a capricious temper, low and irri- table spirits, and the loss of many pure aud continually re- curring enjoyments, are among the consequences of such mis- conduct. But though books obtain their reasonable portion of the day, though health has been consulted, though the immediate demands of duty have been fulfilled, and the dictates of benevolence obeyed, there will yet be hours remaining unoccupied ; hours for which no specific employment has yet been provided. For such hours it is not the intention of these pages to prescribe any specific employ- ment. What if some space be assigned to the useful and elegant arts of female industry ? A well regulated life will never know a vacuum sufficient to require a large share of amusements to be sought abroad to fill it. DOMESTIC ECONOMY. Economy is so important a part of a woman’s character, so necessary to her own happiness, and so essential to her performing properly the duties of a wife, and of a mother, that it ought to have the precedence of all other accomplishments, and to take its rank next to the first duties of life. Yet this is too often neglected (