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ance, and never failed to encourage, by recount-
ing his own early struggles, those who had their
own way to make in the world. His hand was
open to his old fellow-workmen whom age had
left, as youth found them, in poverty. He
would slip a five-pound note into the hand of
an old man or a widow in such a way as not to
wound their delicacy, but rather to make them
feel that they were conferring instead of receiv-
ing an obligation by accepting it. To poor
Robert Gray who had acted as bridegroom for
him, when so many years before he had borne
pretty Fanny Henderson to his humble home,
he left a pension for life. He died on the 12th
of August, 1848, in the sixty-seventh year of
his age.
A year before his death some one who
wished to dedicate a book to him, asked what
were his "ornamental initials." "I have no
flourishes to my name, either before or after,"
he replied. "I think it will be as well if you
merely say George Stephenson."

It was enough. So long as the iron rails continue to bind in one far-distant climes, and the iron horse, his creation, opens up new fields for industry and multiplies and diffuses the enjoyments of life--so long will men honor the memory of the Northumberland collier-the Father of Railways.

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tion, orthography, etymology, embroidery, rhetoric, philosophy-natural and moral-geology, anthropology, philology, physiology, calisthenics, ouranography, Scriptural exegesis, music

vocal and instrumental-the languagesFrench, Italian, German, and Spanish-dancing, and the Christian evidences; all of which elegant accomplishments Madame Grandelouve undertakes to teach for a hundred dollars or so a quarter, invariably in advance, extras not included.

Of course, Mary Anne goes to the fashionable school, and from that moment is entirely at the mercy of Madame and her coadjutors. As mothers are confiding, and fathers, though suspicious, preoccupied, it is not surprising that neither the one nor the other knows any thing about the guardians to whom they delegate the care of their children. Is it not enough that Mrs. A sends her daughters to Madame's school because the rich Mrs. B does, and Mrs. B hers because the fashionable Mrs. C does, and Mrs. C hers again because the respectable Mrs. D does, and so on to the end of the alphabet of aristocracy? Who of them cares to know any thing about Madame, except that she is the recognized head of the most fashionable school, and of her qualifications as a teacher but that she is ignorant of the English language? Madame has a very flourishing account to give of herself, however, and will tell you, of course, that she is a Marquise, and that her family belonged to the ancienne noblesse, but having lost all in devotion to the Bourbons (who, if they had had half as many friends before their fall as they appear to have had since, might be reigning to this day), had nothing to leave her but a De before her name, without a sou to support it. Proud as she was, it was not surprising under the circumstances that she should, after exhausting her patience, youth, and beauty in waiting for better fortune, have yielded at last to the ambitious designs of Monsieur upon her maiden dignity. If Monsieur's own account be also to be taken-and we know no reason why it should not as readily as Madame's—there was no very good ground for hesitation on her part to become his wife. Will he not tell you-and you will, of course, believe him, as you have heard the same story so many times from so many of his unfortunate countrymen-that he was the favorite aide-de-camp of the Grand Napoleon, and, with sword in hand, fought his way through Europe by his side? Will he not tell you, too, that he might now be at least a Mar

WHERE OUR DAUGHTERS GO TO SCHOOL. WHATEVER may be certain paternal notions in regard to the advantages of a home education, the maternal resolution, of course, carries the day; and when mamma emphatically declares that it is time for Mary Anne to go to school, papa mildly submits without the thought of a protest, except it be that of a probable protest to his note on this prospective addition to his current expenses. "She shall have every advantage, the dear girl," says mamma, looking proudly at the embryo belle. "Every advantage," echoes papa, with a mild expression of doubt. "We must send her to Madame Grande louve," continues mamma. “Grandelouve ?” repeats, inquiringly, papa. "Yes! Madame Grande louve's; where the rich Mrs. Brown sends her daughters, the most fashionable school in the city," is the conjugal response. Papa is puzzled, and says so, to discover what the wealth of Mrs. Brown, or the fashion of Madame Grandelouve, can possibly have to do with revealing to his daughter the mysteries of reading and spelling and plainstitch, which he supposes to be about the range of the capacity of a child of ten. Papa accord-shal of France, were it not that he preferred ingly ventures an opinion to the effect that Mary "make de fire de young ladies' idees" to handAnne is hardly advanced enough to appreciate ling the artillery of the armies of Louis Napothe full advantages of the school presided over leon. With such antecedents, and such disinby fashion and patronized by wealth. "Read-terested devotion to the cause of American feing, spelling, and plain-stitch! Whoever heard of such old-fashioned stuff being taught at any respectable modern school?" spitefully exclaims mamma, who takes care to inform the slow master of the house that her daughter is as good as any one else's daughter, and shall learn elocu

male education, who can doubt the propriety and advantage of trusting your daughter to Madame and Monsieur her husband? You are a Protestant, probably, and wish your child to be taught to worship God; Madame and Monsieur her husband divide their homage between Vol

and yet they are set to inculcating those higher branches of learning which make such an imposing array of ologies and ographies in the grand circular of the Grande louves. Then don't be surprised if your daughters, after having gone through the whole circle of the sciences under such auspices, should be unable to add up a mantua-maker's bill, or write a servant's character without the aid of a dictionary.

taire and the Pope. You are an American, and | merely of teaching the elements of education, wish your child to be taught to love your country and its institutions; Madame and Monsieur her husband are French, and very naturally prefer all that is French. Your native language is the English, and you wish your child to be taught its construction and literature; Madame, and Monsieur her husband are foreigners, and whatever they may know of their own tongue, they certainly are not sufficiently expert in yours to pretend to teach it. In regard to morals and manners you may have some American notions of your own, which you consider good principles, and with which you would like to have your child impressed; Madame and Monsieur are from Paris, and have brought with them from that lively place, doubtless, not only the lighter graces of life, but some of the less severe views of its duties.

We do not object, let it be well understood, to a full cultivation of the intellectual powers of woman. We do not hold, because she is said to belong to the weaker sex, that her intellect is capable of digesting nothing but the thinnest of literary slops. Though we do not believe that women should learn whatever men were taught, we do believe that there is a greater difference in their education than there should be. We do not desire, it is true, to see the petticoat flaunting in the pulpit-to hear the gentle voice of woman raised among the bickerings of the court, or the noisy disputations of the senate-and to have her delicacy blunted by the hardening experiences of the surgical shambles of a hospital

66

in the dark, dissolving human heart, And holy secrets of this microcosm,

Granting that Madame was a Marquise of the old régime, and Monsieur might be a Marshal of the new Empire, where is the proof that they are fit to educate your daughters? They may be both what they give themselves out to be, and yet not even competent to teach their own language, and much less yours. In regard to their specialty, which is supposed to be the French tongue, we have known favorite pupils turned out of their establishment, after a long course of five years—with the finishing touch of the sixth-who could not conjugate the verb avoir, and would be puzzled to purchase a pair of gloves in Paris without the aid of a courier. We believe it was one of Madame and Monsieur's most polished graduates who lately, on her wedding tour in Paris, undertook to make out a list of her husband's linen for the French washerwoman, and wrote "6 shemises." Her Benedict was something of a wag, and having caught a glimpse of the handiwork of his accom-rious purpose of life than the gossip about what plished wife, wrote under it, "6 hemises," determined that if his shirts were to be deprived of their proper French appellation, at any rate they should not be robbed of their masculine gender.

Madame and Monsieur, whatever they may think of their own skill in imparting a knowledge of the French language, are sufficiently modest to delegate to others the duty of teaching the of-course-inferior English. They supply themselves, accordingly, with a corps of coadjutors, of whose competency Madame and Monsieur, being the employers, are, of course, the only authorized judges. Their judgment is very naturally influenced by the cost; and deciding that the cheapest will answer their mercenary purposes the best, they accordingly provide themselves with teachers of the various departments whose salaries shall not be so large as to interfere with Madame and Monsieur's prospects of profit. Good teaching can not be had without good pay; and it is not surprising that a very inferior article is the result of Madame and Monsieur's parsimonious calculations. They pay their teachers a price which would not secure for our common schools those capable

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest;" yet there is no reason why women should be always kept with "nimble fingers and vacant understandings." If the necessities of some compel them to a constant routine of stitching, patching, and mantua-making, there are thousands of others who, in this land of female priv. ilege, are under no obligation to do any thing but what they please. These are those who, having the leisure, should occupy it with storing their minds with something more to the se

Miss A does or Miss B wears. We need not discuss the question as to the equality or inequality of the capacity of the two sexes. It is enough for us to know that what woman knows falls far short of what she is able to learn. We need not worry ourselves with the fear that she will devote so much time to study that none will be left for household duty. We are not afraid that the philosophy of Lord Bacon will divert her from the cookery of Monsieur Soyer. We need not be anxious lest any acquired tastes for art should interfere with the instincts of nature. We do not think there is any danger of her falling so deeply in love with artistic beauty that she will be unmindful of her own, and the emotions and affections it engenders. We need not alarm ourselves about the possible increase of feminine learning seriously diminishing the census.

We do not believe that there is any imminent prospect of the United States being depopulated by woman giving up to books what is meant for mankind, and becoming so philological as to cease to be philoprogenitive. Our beautiful women will never be content to remain in the cocoon condition of book-worms, when they can flutter forth in the light of social ob

We submitted the following catechism to a Grande louve pupil who, as she informed us with a very decided expression of youthful consciousness of dignity, is only to have another quarter at school before she will be finished, and we received the accompanying answers. Modestly declining the severer philosophical, and complimentarily avoiding the purely elementary trial, we directed our examination to some of the topics of the day:

Question. "Where is Kansas ?"

Answer. "Kansas? Oh! that's not in our Geography."

Question. "Where is Glasgow ?"

Answer. "Oh, in Edinburgh, to be sure! the place where Miss Madeleine Smith poisoned her lover."

Question. "Where is India ?"

Answer. "India? Why India is- let me think; I used to know-we studied that last year-but I've forgotten. We're in Ancient Geography now."

servation with all the brilliancy of butterflies. | prived of their elevating influences. We have They will never lose their desire to please oth- heard of great generals who could neither read ers, whatever may be their own delight in study, nor write correctly, and the Duke of Marlborough, and they will be, as they have ever been, seek- who was no less renowned as a gallant than as ing admiration and finding it-provoking love a warrior, was said to be under the necessity of and inflaming it lying in wait for hearts and keeping a secretary to indite his billet-dour. We catching them-getting lovers and marrying have never heard, however, of even the humhusbands and being wives, becoming mothers. blest students of history, science, and philosoThe danger is not that our women may be-phy, except those of our fashionable schools, come so learned as to cease to be practically who had not perfected themselves in the simple useful, but rather that they may be so ignorant elements of learning. as to become positively useless. The proper cultivation of the feminine intellect will not only give the knowledge of duty, but the inducements to pursue it. It is the frivolousness of female life that is to be feared. It is the intellectual balance to regulate the wheels of caprice and the springs of emotion which is wanted in our women. This can only be acquired by good mental discipline, which we hardly need say but few of our fashionable schools supply. The very class which has the means and the leisure for high culture, and the social position to give due efficacy to example, is the one which is most at the mercy of incompetent teachers, and, being ill educated, is the least capable of guiding public opinion. Many a country girl, with only a few months of winter's discipline, in some remote forest schoolhouse, is superior in all the solid acquirements to the most finished pupils of the most fashionable metropolitan "institutions for young ladies." Parental solicitude, however, will not be satisfied unless Fashion gives a sanction to parental hopes. "We can afford it, and our daughters shall have every advantage," you will hear again and again, but what that advantage is none can tell. There is, however, a myste-ter?" rious something in the pretensions of Fashion, to which, it seems, we must give up all, even our daughters. It is a sham, we know, and yet we build our hopes upon it. It is an untruth, we know, and yet we trust in it. It is neither what it seems, nor does it do what it says. Who will pretend to deny that fashionable female education is no education at all? Who does not know that the array of science and philosophy which is pretended to be taught is never learned? Take from your daughter one of those imposing text-books from which Madame Grande louve has gathered her grand programme of study, so pretentiously displayed in the Grandelouve circulars, turn over the leaves and start an incident of history, a fact in science, or a principle in philosophy for conversation, and observe how your accomplished offspring sustains herself! If, however, distrustful of your own capacity for such a trial, you prefer a more elementary test, try her in the spelling-book or dictionary, and if she comes off creditably in the orthography of the one or the interpretation of the other you will have reason for some parental pride, in the possession of a Grandelouve pupil who knows something. History, science, and philosophy are noble studies, and we do not know of any reason why women should be de

.

Question. "What's a thermometer ?"

Answer. "A kind of glass instrument to tell how hot it is."

Question. "What's the boiling-point of wa

Answer. "Oh, botheration! who can tell that? Ask the cook."

Question. "Who wrote the Waverley novels?"

Answer. "Mr. Waverley, to be sure!" Such were pretty much the results of our questioning of a promising pupil of the Grandelouves. She is not apparently deficient in natural capacity. A bright eye and a lively expression of face show a quickness of apprehension equal to the acquisition of at least the elements of education. Notwithstanding her confused notion of the geographical relations of the various parts of the world, she is evidently not deficient in the phrenological bump of locality, for she can find her way to Stewart's, and through the ins and outs of that intricate establishment of fashion without a guide. though we have well-founded doubts about her general arithmetic, her ignorance can come from no want of natural powers of calculation, for we know that she is equal to the computation of the numerous breadths necessary to swell her delicate girth to the fullness of fashionable requirement. We are justified in questioning her knowledge of geometry, though it is in the Grande louve programme, and yet her deficiency can be owing to no original fault of eye for

Al

proportion, for she can describe with unerring | respondence, stolen interviews, frenzied passion, accuracy a hooped circle, and find its centre with the exact precision of a professor of mathematics.

satiated lust, a new caprice, disgust at the old and a struggle for freedom from its bonds, jealousy and resistance, despair and death, are the elements of the tragedy-more fearful in its natural horrors than any drama of passion ever wrought out in the hot imagination of poet or playwright.

No! the deficiencies in the education of our youthful misses can not be put down to any want of natural powers of understanding. The fault is to be attributed to the fashionable school, which is no school at all, but a mere sham, which, by some accident or other, gets a certain social sanction, under the cover of which the intellect of our young girls is starved upon the mere husks of learning, or fed unwhole-ble for the tragedy. There can be little doubt somely upon the frivolities of life.

As we believe that nothing but the saddest experience of the worst of homes can justify the sending of young girls to the best of boardingschools, we emphatically declare ourselves in favor of a domestic education. We would more especially object to the practice so prevalent throughout our country of tearing girls, just at the period of budding emotion, from the restraints of home, and sending them to the schools of our large cities, where they can not escape the unwholesome excitements and worse influences of metropolitan life. We have all read the fearful tragedy of the Glasgow poison

case.

Miss Madeleine Hamilton Smith is the eldest daughter of Scotch parents, residing in Glasgow. They belong to the United Secession Churchthe most rigid of the sects of Presbyterian Scotland. The severe domestic discipline, the religious training, the daily reading of the Bible, the morning and evening prayer, the well-kept Sabbath, the careful avoidance of all unhealthy social excitements, the rigid abstinence from public amusements, the strict watchfulness against the intrusion into the domestic circle of the doubtfully moral, the resolute parental will, and the uncompromising filial obedience, are supposed to be the characteristics of the family of Miss Smith, as of all the religious families of Scotland. The daughter, from her personal beauty, her natural quickness of intellect, and liveliness of disposition, becomes the pride of her parents, whose natural yearning for their first-born is strengthened by the brilliant promise of their child. "Every advantage" must, of course, be secured for so hopeful an offspring. Madeleine Smith, then, is accordingly sent to a boarding-school in London to "finish." She returns to her native city with all the fashionable metropolitan accomplishments, and with the self-assurance acquired in the publicity of London life and the unreserved freedom of promiscuous boarding-school fellowship. She can now by an artful coquetry give full effect to all her natural charms. She plays heedlessly with the social excitements of the hour. She finds a ready partner for the game in a young French coxcomb. Her parents become alarmed, and everely forbid the dangerous partnership. She feigns to submit, but continues the unlawful alliance. She now risks all-filial duty, social requirement, virtue-and loses all. Secret cor

We know the facts, and can draw our own inference. In connection with our subject, however, we may say that there are thoughtful men who hold the boarding-school system responsi

that the prevalent practice of sending girls to schools away from home and those safeguards which God and nature have appointed is full of danger. The hired guardian of the distant establishment may have all the usual guarantees of virtue and judgment, and yet not be able to guard like a mother against the approach of vice. There are the chances of profligate teachers, corrupt servants, and vicious school-fellows; and there is the more certain and not less dangerous effect of the want of that feminine reserve and modest retirement which only belong to the seclusion of private domestic life.

However strict may be the discipline of a metropolitan boarding-school, it is impossible that its pupils can be entirely withdrawn from the morbid influences of a large city. Especially must this be the case when such institutions-as is generally the practice receive, indiscriminately, all scholars that present themselves, from any family whatsoever able and willing to incur the expense. With the system of day-pupils, who mingle without restraint with those who are boarders, there can be no exclusion from the outside world. The tastes and habits, the follies and vices of this or that fashionable parent, are sure to affect the child, who conveys the poison to her companions. With this direct communication it is impossible to avoid the impure contagion of city life. And if we are to believe what we hear of boarding-school-girl coquetting, corresponding, rendezvousing, and secret maœuvring, we must conclude that the poison works as freely as it is received.

Parents, in fact, would not desire isolation from metropolitan influences, even if it were possible. Their purpose in sending their daughters to the large cities is that they may be directly exposed to such influences, and receive through them what they would term finish, but we believe to be corruption. It is true there is a certain air of what may be called style to be acquired by a residence in a large city and association with its "best society." The value of this, however, is very much overestimated; for after all, it is only a conventional standard of manners, dress, and conversation, which have been arbitrarily assumed by the few whose pretentious superiority prompts them to distinguish themselves from the many. Fashionable society is imposing, we grant, for it is sustained by all the profuse expenditure of prodigal wealth; it is attractive to the eye certainly, with its impressive circumstances of

grand houses, dashing equipages, and costly drapery of dress; it is seductive, no doubt, for it incites to pleasure by every luxurious appeal, the lordly leisure, the gay revel, and wanton enjoyment, to the gratification of sense; it gives, it must be confessed, to its habitués a bearing, if not of superiority, at least of distinction from the masses. The polish acquired, however, is ordinarily that which the material can receive only by being first hardened. When we see how, at any sacrifice of heart and intellect, parents will send their daughters to fashionable metropolitan schools for the professed purpose of obtaining this external polish of manners, we are reminded of the practice of swallowing arsenic, to beautify the complexion, by those aspiring beauties who, to remove a pimple, or to give a touch of artificial color, do not hesitate to destroy health and endanger life.

AN OLD BACHELOR'S LAST LOVE.
I.

I HAVE no faith in the idea that we mortals
can love but once. Nature is not so stingy.
Every one is liable to have as many loves, at
least, as he has phases in life. That young
man of twenty, whom I remember to have called
myself, alias Jenkins, twenty years ago, was as
different in love matters, as in all others, from
the present writer, as twenty years hence, per-
haps, will be the old man of sixty, calling him-
self (if he sees fit) by the same name.

It is one of the caprices of young gentlemen in their teens-and a very sensible caprice it is, too-to like women of mature years, women riper than themselves, married women even; and the liking, within proper limits, is apt to be reciprocated. For mere girls they have a kind of contempt, borrowed from the contempt they have for their late boyhood and what of it still lingers about them. They have that greenest of all horrors, the horror of being thought green; they stroke their chins impatiently in search of the much-coveted beard, and as soon as its first down appears-that soft, delicious, prophetic fuzz-they purchase a razor, hoist up their collars, proclaim themselves men, and fall in love with women of thirty.

Is this the first and only love about which we hear so much? Judging from my own experi

should incline to hope not. The seraphic being upon whom I laid out my rising affections (Miss Anna Condor) was an old maid of thirty-five, who coiled herself about my heart, like the cunning serpent that she was, and then unreeled herself, at a day's notice, to encircle and wed a rich widower of fifty (Squire Lemon), whom she squeezed to death in less than six months, and from whom she inherited a widow's "pile" of half a million. And yet I loved her dearly, and gave her the "firstlings of my heart!"

It is not only that girls brought up under the present system of fashionable female education are useless for all the serious duties of life, but there is something worse than this. Their want of intellectual culture and tastes gives them, in their emptiness, an eager hunger for the excitements, follies, and vices of the world; while their deficiency in strength of character, from the neglect of moral discipline, makes them ready victims to all unwholesome influences. Society has been anatomized of late with a bold hand, and its morbid structure and diseased pro-ence, which was like that of most others, I ducts laid bare with a freedom of revelation that has, no doubt, startled many a timid looker-on. The origin of the disease, however, has escaped these anatomists, who would seem to have been so absorbed by the monstrous results of social perversion that they have not investigated the causes. The material greed of the age, with its inordinate love of wealth, its gross tastes for show, its drunken revel of excitement, and its debauchery of sense, may be attributed, in a great degree, to the want of those nobler objects of enjoyment which can only be supplied by a higher culture. To woman, more especially, must we look for aid to lift society from its low grovelings. She must first, however, be true to her angelic character, and plume her own wings for a loftier flight before she will have the power to raise the aspirations of others. It is to sound female education that we look for the elevation of woman's character. With this will come, as a necessary accompaniment, a sympathetic purity of sentiment and refinement of taste on the part of man. If you desire that the vanity, the gross-cessor, who was nevertheless, in her day, the ness, and vice should be swept away, and society set in order with taste, grace, and innocence, you must take care that those who are to be the future guardians of the social household are possessed of the proper qualifications. These are certainly not to be acquired at Madame Grandelouve's, or any other fashionable school of which we are cognizant. Keep your daughters at home, then, we pray you. What they may learn less there will, intellectually, be no loss; and what they will acquire, morally, will be a great gain.

Others may have been more fortunate in their first love, but few are disposed to immortalize it.

An old friend of mine, now at Saratoga spending his fourth honeymoon, declares that the intensity of his love has increased in every instance in "arithmetical proportion" (whatever that is, and I believe it is something tremendous), each of his wives seeming to him so much more lovely than her immediate prede

paragon of women, that he wondered how he could ever have dreamed of any body else. But if this is so, what becomes of our theories of first love?

Now I have not only to confess my heresies on this subject to the reader, who is proverbially "indulgent," but am dreading the day when I must make a clean breast of them to Clara Vernon, which will be a much more formidable matter -the said Clara being my last love. How shall I have the courage to declare my passion to her-if passion it is-seeing that she

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