The Female Student, or Lectures to Young Ladies, by Mr.4.
PHELPS, is the reprint of an American publication, which has found such favour in Transatlantic eyes as to have reached a se- cond edition. The origin of the book was thus. The principal of the Troy Female Seminary, a kind of public proprietary school, as we divine, departed for Europe, leaving Mrs. PHELPS as a locutn tenens ; and on every Saturday afternoon this lady assem- bled the pupils, and lectured them on any thing and every thing— education, mental and physical, public and private, abstract and applied, the faculties and discipline of the mind, ancient and modern languages, ancient and modern geography, history, mythology, rhetoric, and logic, as well as emotions and feelings, and natural and moral philosophy. To us who judge by English notions, and whom much reading has made fastidious, the Lec- tures seem to consist of formal commonplace. The opinion of the American public is indeed opposed to us ; but we will main- tain our judgment against all the book-buyers of the United States. Nothing shall shake us but a certificate under the hands of the two hundred young ladies of Troy Seminary, stating that Mrs. PHELPS had hit upon the most agreeable mode of passing the Saturday afternoon.
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