If these preliminary hints awaken any curiosity, or win any confidence, towards the designs of this little book, you will not throw it aside just yet; nor wonder if, before resuming this part of the subject, I take great pains to secure the attention and confidence of daughters, as well as of mothers. Read the next chapter, therefore, on their account, or to your daughters; and do give weight to whatever is experimentally true in it, by setting your “seal” to its truth.

No. II.

A DAUGHTER'S PRINCIPLES ANALYZED.

IN addressing you, "I will (first) incline my ear unto a Parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp" of ALLEGORY. And, should I close my appeal in the same way, you will forgive me. Both Rachel and Miriam are real characters, and will, I fear, recognise themselves but you, I hope, will try in vain to identify either.

Both young men and maidens venerated the aged SHESHBAZZAR, and vied with each other in honouring his 66 grey hairs as a crown of glory." He was a second conscience to all the youth of Beersheba, who studied to maintain a good conscience towards God or man. When the young men looked upon the daughters of the Canaanites, and thought of allying themselves with "aliens from the common

wealth of Israel," they remembered that Sheshbazzar would not bless the forbidden union; and turned their attention to the daughters of the Covenant. When the maidens of Beersheba were fascinated by the garb and bearing of the sons of Belial, they felt that they could not meet the eye of the holy Patriarch, and drew their veils closer around them in the streets. Thus all the plans of the young had a tacit reference to his opinion, and the hope of his approbation and benediction mingled with their brightest prospects. "What will Sheshbazzar think of me?" was a question, which, however simple in itself, disentangled whole webs of sophistry, and unmasked the most plausible appearances. It revealed the secrets of the heart to the conscience, and the frauds of the conscience to the judgment. was, indeed, a simple question; but it searched the reins like "the candle of the Lord,"-because all who reflected, felt that the good old man could have no object but their good; and that whatever influence he had acquired over

It

them, was won, not by stratagem, but by weight and worth of character. It was the spell of his fine spirit, which, like the mantle of Elijah, cast upon the ploughman of Abelmeholah, drew them after him as with "cords of love." Amongst the daughters of the Covenant, who listened to his wisdom, and loved his approbation, Rachel was the most enthusiastic. She was modest as the lily of the valley, but sensitive as the tremulous dewdrops which gemmed it. Like the clouds of the spring upon Carmel or Hermon, she wept and smiled in the same hour. Her spirit soared at times like the eagle of Engedi, until lost in the light which is full of glory; and, anon, it drooped like the widowed dove in the gloomy avenues of Heshbon and Kedron. She was alternately glowing and freezing; too high or too low. In all things, but in her modest gentleness, she was the creature of circumstances. Even in Religion, she had no fixed principles. She was feelingly alive to its beauties, but dead to its real spirit. Whilst it inspired thoughts

which breathed, and words which burned, with immortality, she was enraptured with it: but when its oracles or ordinances led to thoughts of penitence, or words of humiliation, she had no sympathy of spirit with them. She wept, indeed, over her fallen nature; but not because it was fallen from the moral image of Jehovah. The loss of intellectual power, not the loss of holy feeling, grieved her. She felt deeply mortified, because she could not maintain all the mental elevation of a rational being; and she thought her mortification, humility! She deplored the weakness and waywardness of her mind, in the strongest terms of self-abasement; but not because her mind disliked secret prayer and self-examination. She lamented that she had so little communion with God; but it was not the communion of a child with a Father, nor of a penitent with a Saviour, but the communion of a poet with the God of nature-of a finite Spirit with the Infinite Spirit

-that had charms for her. She admired the prophets; but not for the holiness which ren