dress to receive strangers, and are utterly re gardless of our appearance with them. Affection and respect are kept alive by attention to matters of apparently inferior import. Slatternly wives have been the subjects of many a satire, and of many a serious remonstrance: they deserve every odium that can be poured upon them. We do not want a Dean Swift to disgust us with the filthy pictures of an imagination delighting in nastiness; but if women are called to the exercise of domestic virtues, they are called to the unremitting observance of cleanliness and neatness: these keep alive affection, virtue, and happiness; attention to them should form a material branch in the education of young females. In giving instruction, the aid of example should be added. A writer on Education, speaking of a governess (and it is equally suitable to a mother), says of her appearance to her pupils, "she should never be seen in their company until she is dressed for the day; and no matter how plain, so as it is decent:

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and good sense will point out the reasons for this part of her conduct, namely, to prevent in her pupils that slovenly practice so common among young women, of not appearing to the best advantage in the morning, a species of idleness which, if contracted in youth, seldom wears off in advanced years." No: as the spring is, so will be the other seasons: if it be without buds, the summer will have no beauty; there will be no abundance in autumn, no provision for winter. Train up a young girl to habits of simplicity, cleanliness, neatness and order, and in her advanced life she will not depart from them.

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Young women have been represented as vain of personal charms; but this, too, they learn from the folly of instructors and those around them. Beauty exists merely in the ideas that people form of it; and there is a diversity of opinion on the subject, among all the nations of mankind. Beauty is an attraction; but let young women be instructed

that it ceases to charm when unaccompanied by grace and virtue: where there is a fair exterior, let it be the study, instead of giving birth to vanity, that it may enclose as fair a mind. Where the features are plain, let virtue adorn them with a beauty that shall never fade. A gentleman in France walking through a gallery of portraits, stopped before that of a most beautiful woman; he was struck with its loveliness, but said at the same time, "lovely as that countenance is, there is an expression in it which gives me a feeling of horror." On enquiry, he found it was that of the celebrated Madame Brinvilliers, who was executed for the murder of her husband, and who, before her death, confessed crimes innumerable and dreadful. I have seen a beautiful face so disfigured with evil passions, that not a trace of beauty remained in it; and the most homely face that I ever saw, is one which I always contemplate with pleasure, from the mind which shines through it. Dr. Fordyce, in his Sermons to Young Women,

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makes beauty to add grace to piety. Piety may add grace to beauty, but can derive none from it. It strikes me that there is too much attention to effect, as it is called, in the popular novel of Cœlebs, in the scene where Lucilla is represented as kneeling in prayer by the bed-side of the dying woman. It might have been quite as well that Colebs had not been introduced on this occa

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sion. There was a young girl, who in the 2017 retirement of her father's house, had been accustomed to devote a part of the day t reading the Bible, and to the exercise of other religious duties; she went, however, on a long visit with a gay party, and her religious duties were laid aside, and forgotten. Returning home, she revisited her apartment. She happened to catch a glimpse of her face in a looking-glass, and was shocked with the alteration she perceived in her own features every trace of that sweet and calm serenity which religion inspires had vanished. She burst into tears, and resolved never more to forget those duties, the

exercise of which had given that peace to her heart, which was diffused over her countenance.

In Dr. Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women, he is perpetually recommending to them to acquire, or practise, this or that grace or virtue, because it will render them objects of attraction to the other sex. In plain words, as if the study how to get a husband were the most essential one of a young woman's life. He talks to them of the station they are one day to fill, as wives and mothers. I do not decry what God and Nature have ordained: there is a mutual attraction in the sexes; there is a wish in them to render themselves agreeable to each other: but it is to degrade female virtue, to hold out the love of men as a reward: she is to be loved and practised for her own sake. An amiable temper and deportment are equally essential in all the relations of life: besides, there are many amiable and virtu̟ous females, destined to be neither wives nor