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by them on the intellect; their common sense | and her stimulated, feverish heart bounds to has less shrewdness and more native tact; their grasp them. Are the laws of her being exewisdom has less experience and more intuitive cuted? Are her instincts met? Are her deep force; and whatever ability or genius they dis-yearnings satisfied? Set aside all the solemn play is uniformly characterized more by their considerations of religion, and take her simply temperament, rearing, and intimate relationships and wholly as a creature of sensibility and acthan by the stamp of the outward world. Na- tion; is such a cold, conventional life a life to ture trains them by unlike methods. Men are her? The firm, adamantine bounds of nature aggressive; they are born warriors; they in--never sterner than when dealing with woman stinctively carry the temper of fighting into-interpose their hard restraints. She can not every matter; business, politics, diplomacy, are find her own counterpart, her image, her lost full of manœuvres, evolutions, and counter-inheritance, her offered patrimony, in the outmarches; women are receptive and yielding, ward world; and hence she is doomed to suffer never waiting for truth to subdue them, but hastening to render a cordial and joyful obedience-satisfied with knowledge when they can feel its benefits, and not looking to its exterior ends. Owing to these peculiarities of her con-ess and valor. But Providence rarely suspends stitution, womanly mind is much more adjunctive to character and life than the intellect of manhood: it has less to do with the work and more to do with the welfare of the world; and hence, in estimating the bearings of her culture on the interests of society, we must not turn to the more public and demonstrative spheres of rivalship and renown, but to those quieter and purer scenes which lie divinely embosomed in the blessedness of Home.

the penalty of her own violated and outraged constitution. No doubt there are exceptional instances in which women are called to serve the world in high achievements of individual prow

its organic rules, and in no case are we entitled to argue, from such facts, that we have a right to oppose its established modes of procedure.

The noblest thing that a woman can do is to make herself noble. She has much more power over her own character than over any outward object. It would seem as if Providence had consulted this very end in limiting her external relations to society. Denied the opportunity, no less than relieved of the necessity, of contact with the great world, why is this, but that her fresh energy and buoyant spirit may be concentrated on herself and in her private companionships? It is to this calm, inspiring home-life that she should bring the treasures of a culti

Now, certainly, there is no point that should be more tenaciously guarded than the one just noticed. The whole philosophy of womanly education is embraced in what she is by the creative ordination of God; in the capacity, scope, and worth of her redeemed nature; in the posi-vated mind and character. Nor should any contion assigned her in the providential economy viction be stronger than that she may here find of human society; in the stewardship she has the amplest and most rewarding scope for the to fulfill; in the trust confided to her hands for exercise of all her activity. No woman that has the solemn reckoning of the final judgment. contemplated home in the light of Divine truth, Where else but in the immortal mind itself and appreciated it in the warmth of Divine love, can we find motives and ends for life-giving and could desire a nobler or better field for personlife-sustaining action? Where else but in its al exertions. And although her usefulness profound emotions, its quick and far-reaching ought not to be restricted within its circle, yet sensibilities, its restless upheavings, its bound- she should always realize that she is most servless faculties, its many-colored fancies, and its iceable to humanity in the discharge of such equally diversified facts? Where but in this vast duties as nature has laid nearest to her heart. world of thought, affection, will, aspiration, There is need, just now, that this truth should struggle, sorrow, bliss-bound to earth, bound be pressed on the attention of many well-meanto heaven-communing with angels, tortured ing but mistaken people. A mania for usefulby demons and every hour, every moment, ness-for the glare and glitter of public demonwaking or sleeping, evolving an experience in strations-for vast schemes of philanthropy-is which natural and supernatural unite or repel; beginning to seize the souls of many good wowhere but in this miracle of spiritual being and men, and to hurry them into false efforts. Vaeternal destiny, can we find the import and aim rious causes have combined to quicken their of a true and genuine culture? This, then, is sensitiveness to existing evils; growing intellithe real standard of womanly education—viz., gence, generous feelings, religious culture, have the practical, personal benefit to her character-made them alive to the wrongs and miseries of the work wrought within her—the wisdom and power which it imparts to enable her to develop, control, and elevate her own nature, and make it a fit instrument to accomplish God's plan in its redemption. Suppose this process reversed-suppose that woman is taught and trained to think, act, and live in the open world and for it. The prizes of earthly ambition are held up before her; social position, wealth, luxury, fashion, are rendered intensely attractive,

society; and it is most praiseworthy that their hearts should respond, in truthfulness of sentiment and propriety of endeavor, to the touching appeals forced upon them. But to what painful excesses of ultraism has this passion for usefulness gone! A morose and vindictive temper; a keen impatience of the presence of wretchedness; a fiery haste to obliterate all traces of error, injustice, and suffering; and, in some instances, a poorly-concealed contempt for

Providence, and its tolerations of depravity, are not rare spectacles among this class of persons. One can not avoid believing, if he is to trust the evidence of his senses, that many of them are positively vitiated by their philanthropy-or, rather, by what passes under that name. What a strange perversion this of their nature! What a mysterious alembic that, which, out of the elements of peace, sympathy, and benevolence, distills the rancor, strife, and bitterness of evil passions! A true, genuine philanthropy, such as the great work of human progress demands, must rest on domestic sentiments. It must be born in hearts that have learned their love and trust at the fireside-at the household altar-in the daily tenderness and devotion of family duty. Whenever it diverts the mind from the paramount interests of home, and, as we have sometimes seen, sacrifices the affections of private companionship for an imaginary public good, it is no philanthropy, but a blighting, withering counterfeit, that will fall a victim to its own idolatry.

genial scenes. All this is utterly wrong, and
doubtless the excess will correct itself; but
meanwhile what an office devolves on our wo-
men? Domestic education, according to the
Divine plan, is certainly the work of both par-
ents. The circumstances of the age, however,
have thrown it into the hands of our women,
and as they have submitted to the onerous bur-
den, our only hope is that they will bravely sus-
tain their trust. Never were womanly offices
as important as now; never had they so much
to do and to do well; for, apart from the ordi-
nary tasks of household life, the intense excite-
ments of the outward world require a balancing
power of domestic nurture, greater than in any
previous period of human history. Amidst the
crowded marts of business, along the highways
of trade, in the seats of commerce, in private
walks, in public scenes, by newspapers, by the
shop-windows, by the placards on the wall, in
every association and connection, in the omni-
bus and on the steamboat, the growing mind
of our country, acute in its impressibility, open
in all its avenues, eager for thought and action,
is in close contact with the means and agen-
cies that educate its tastes and form its habits.
The power of external life over us has been
vastly enhanced, far more so than the power
of schools, colleges, and books-and it is amaz-
ing to observe how much the individual will,
the personal directiveness, the silent, solitary,
outworking of nature, have been subordinated
to the tyrannic type of a common, uniform
grasping worldliness. How is this monopoly to
be abated? How are the excesses of external
education to be restrained?
A proper culture
at home offers the only hope of remedy; and if
this beneficent influence is employed, it must be
through cultivated women.

Looking at the present position of American
women, and especially considering her as the
main stay of our domestic interests, it is not
difficult to determine the kind and degree of
education which she ought to receive.
needs the culture of common-sense, and she

She

Aside from the fact that women are ordained to find their main sphere of action in domestic retirement, there are evils in our civilization that render their watchful ministry at home more than ever necessary and desirable. Our men, from the lowest to the highest, are now, more or less, public characters; and it would appear that we have fallen on an age full of exactions on private leisure and personal service. A monstrous system of taxation covers the whole land, and there is no escape from its rigid hold on your time, purse, and efforts. Once, in years gone, the public used to be a retired, dignified, old-school personage, that had a tender respect for his own independence and was quite chary of accepting too many offices from its kind friends. Said friends were not vassals, but freemen bold and stanch, living after their own strong impulses and rarely called away from private affairs. But a new era has come. The entire framework of society must be reconstructed; individual agency totters and trembles under its mountainous load; and we are half-needs the culture of all her highest and noblest crazed at the bare idea of what is expected of faculties. By all means let her acquire the us. Besides this, men are driven to compress substantial virtues of industry, skill, prudence, nine lives into one. Moderate labor, steady at- in every-day affairs. Every hour of life puts a tention, small gains, and slow profits, are obso- premium on these great qualities, and whoever lete things. A man, at this day, must keep is indifferent to their practical value will soon time with the steam-engine, and swing his mus- find herself arrayed at the bar of vengeance. cles as fast as pistons and cranks move. For- But these are "of the earth, earthy." They merly the night was considered a reserved house- are valuable in their place, but only in their hold right, but the claims of business, societies, place. Now it is quite easy to exaggerate this and outside interests have played havoc with department of womanly life, and as we happen the once exclusive property of wife and chil- to have an extra share of facility in the art of dren. Few men are now faithful to their sacred, intensifying any thing that passion or prejudomestic tasks. Cares, struggles, ambitions, dice commends, we have magnified this matter engross them; and as there happens to be a most unreasonably. Judging from the langigantic machinery of proxies, they shift re- guage of some of our writers, and from the tone sponsibility on professional substitutes, who un- of thought common to various sections of the dertake to do every thing and do nothing. country, one would suppose that women ought Thousands of homes in our land are mere stop- never to raise their eyes higher than a butterping-places, where husbands call, spend a few churn, and always prefer the polish of furniture exhausted hours, and hasten off to more con- to the polish of fine manners. If they under

stand astronomy enough to know when the sun | my dinner ready by one o'clock, and a clean tarises, and philosophy sufficient to comprehend ble-cloth too!" the mechanics of a sewing-machine, they need seek no science beyond; cooking-stoves, and yeast mixtures, and self-sealing cans, will supply the rest. To help on the furor in behalf of domestic drudgery, we have an interminable list of books, teaching the theory of keeping house and the practice of driving every body out of it. And then the recipes! The recipes, swarming throughout your habitation, installed in closets, reigning from cellar to attic, and putting your whole dominions under military exactness-so that you must eat, drink, sleep, sneeze, and die by recipe. Doctors are sensible-recipes should be in a dead language.

Where public opinion and private usages bind down women to this extent in domestic care and oversight, the same effects are produced that we find in men devoted to the service of mammon. The heart, owing to the intenser strength of affections and the ceaseless call for the exercise of the gentler sympathies, may not be as rapidly and as thoroughly hardened. But the chilling process goes on; the warmth of generous, glad emotions forsakes the blood; and at last the unhappy martyr to kitchen stoves and shining brass has nothing left but a pair of bony, leathery hands, a worn-out frame, and a vacant brain. Such a history of married life is painThere is such a popular clamor on this sub-ful, and next to brutal treatment, is deplorable. ject of "domesticity" in women, and the kitch- Among those evils to which women are subject en is so eloquently glorified, that we are not sur-evils that involve no deep suffering from maprised at its materializing effect on their charac- lignity or vice-there is scarcely any thing more ter and life. The most of women take the truth pernicious to all true growth and culture than of public opinion for granted, and they prompt- this grinding slavishness to domestic routine. ly acquiesce in its dictates. All this hubbub at It is little short of cruelty to expect and demand agricultural fairs over pots of preserves and nice this of woman; she was made for something quilts, and the loud emphasis in newspapers and purer and higher; marriage was designed to magazines on the grandeur of a good dinner, yield her daily joy and blessedness, by elevating have been carried to a ridiculous extreme; and her aims, gratifying her aspirations, and furwe have ceased to be shocked at the taste that nishing her spirit with the means of communing can tie together with white ribbon a cookery-with whatever is refined, truthful, and excelbook and the Holy Bible as a present for a love-lent; and if this opportunity is denied her, the ly bride. No man of sense can ever depreciate real worth of life has been forfeited to a fiction the domestic skill necessary to a thrifty, man- of conventionalism. aging, successful wife, but pray let it not be Admitting, as all must, the necessity that pushed to a disgusting excess. Any one who women should be fully trained to the care and has traveled over the United States, and close- management of the internal interests of the ly observed its domestic life, will indorse the as- household, there are comparatively few who see sertion that there is a false public opinion in how these virtues are to be preserved from dethis matter-false, not in kind, but in degree. generation into vices. Nothing is more certain Yielding to its stern requirements, we have than that all the prudential offices of our nature known many gifted and noble women "settle are to be exalted by the companionship of highdown" after marriage in the routine of domestic er sentiments, and that Heaven has established drudgery, abandon all literature, neglect per- no other method to save them from weakening sonal study and culture, lest they should be sus- the intellectual and moral tone of character. It pected of the tastes and refinements of elegant is this education in the best faculties of her mind scholarship. Nor is any style of speech more that woman needs. She needs it for her own common than to hear intelligent men speak of sake, and for the sake of others. First among their wives simply as "good housekeepers," and her obligations are those which she is bound to we have known some who thought it no compli- discharge to her own immortal being-a gift ment if you spoke of the "better half" in any from God which she is to honor with a ceaseless other strain. One case occurs to us that may psalm of thanksgiving. To develop the capacserve to illustrate this aspect of American charity within her-to quicken her inward hearing acter. Mr. had recently buried his wife, so that no whisper of truth shall be lost-to pua woman of rare excellence, known for her good-rify the inward sight so that every trace of the ness, and appreciated by all. Talking of her to some sympathizing friends, a few days after her death, we heard one of the persons present-a noble-hearted man, who had experienced the keenest sorrow in the loss of his wife-make a touching allusion to Mr. -'s bereavement. "Ah, Sir," replied the desolate husband, "ah, Sir, she was a capital housekeeper!" Just then another gentleman, not quite overcome by the ludicrous reply, ventured to allude to the worth of the departed wife, and to speak of the irreparable loss which Mr. had sustained. "Yes, Sir," said the widower, " she always had VOL. XV.-No. 90.-3 D

divine hand, however dim and faint to other eyes, may be clearly seen-to strengthen the will, that it may be competent to every office of decision, fortitude, and courage-to inform and establish conscience so that it may have the might, as it has the right, to rule-to cultivate reason and imagination so that their joint action shall embrace all the scope of available wisdom, reaching from the humblest fact recorded on a clod to the loftiest ideality that in the sacred pauses of life awakens a new and thrilling consciousness of awaiting immortality-to discipline the affections so that they may com

municate power to the intellect and purity to conduct to listen to those great intuitions that evermore are struggling to recover their lost language and utter forth their ancient messages of the grandeur and glory of our birth and destiny-to renew, by a spiritual and divine agency, that image which sin and sorrow have darkened in guilt and saddened in grief; this is the law of her nature, stamped with the authority of God, and fraught with the issues of eternity. It is here-in her own soul-that true, genuine power is to strike its roots. Here it must accumulate its resources; here it must gather all its varied agencies and auxiliaries of action. Every hour of life she will need the serene friendship of her own spirit; the deeds of daily existence will return her thoughts and purposes to it for justification, and she will find that experience and struggle-all that makes our circumstances--will continually draw on this source for the interpretation of their mystic meaning and the vindication of their providential designs.

nicate the beauty and purity so inspired; "more blessed" to welcome others to be sympathetic sharers in them; "more blessed," because more divine, to give yourself to the world than for nature and revelation to give their treasured tributes to you. And never does this cardinal law, the summary of all excellence, attest its virtue more strikingly than in the moral and social history of women. Retired from the world, the instinct of expression desires to breathe itself forth. It is an urgent, painful want, that must be gratified. Confined within themselves they die, no matter how happily they are surrounded with the fortunes of life. They must see their image in outward objects. They must utter their souls in some hallowed work. A moral purpose, full of youthful vigor, is constantly impelling them to embody their inward being in the enduring deeds of goodness. And hence the world has the best possible security that truly cultivated women will exert their talents in a right direction. So firmly are they held to If her nature be thus cultivated, she will find the principles of pure morality, and so intimatethat in forming her mind and character on the ly are the high, distinctive sentiments of Chrisground of her own individuality as related to tian ministration interwoven with their ideal of the divine law, she has acquired the spirit and pleasure, that the general rule must always be means of social and domestic influence. Who- as above stated. On nothing can we count with ever fits herself for the communion of a heav-more certainty than that the large body of eduenly life, has adopted the surest and truest plan cated women-educated in nature as well as in to fulfill all the obligations springing from the mind-will always be found loyal to the spiritual ties of home and country. For although this interests of humanity. Radicals, fanatics, Quixgreat work may begin in personal considera-otic reformers can not, to any considerable extions, it soon rises into a higher connection; tent, proceed from them. Now and then a disand self, growing more and more faithful to appointed, crushed spirit may rush into some of its developed instincts, and led out toward the the protean forms of intellectual lunacy; here, ends of moral benevolence, yearns to prove a we may have the morbid fruits of a badly-trainbenediction and a joy to all within its reach. ed childhood, and there, the fierce resistance of The true, real, vital self, lives as selfishness a womanliness that has been allowed to experidies, and its wise heart, taught of God, em-ence none of the charms of a free and buoyant braces the grandest law of intellectual and spiritual existence, viz., that whatever it has can only become its own by being consecrated to the use and benefit of others. Receiving those memorable words, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," it realizes them, not as a mere statement of the duty of charity, but as the announcement of a central truth, that must be imbedded in the very core of every just, generous sentiment, every noble feeling, every right action. Is it "blessed" to open the mind to the inspiring gladness of nature, to learn the lessons of beauty as they are taught in the fresh scenes of each returning day, to bow down before the sublimities of the universe and be exalted by their presence? Is it "blessed" to follow the guidance of imagination as it traces the har-princesses were clothed in gorgeous robes. mony of philosophy, poetry, and religion, and, true antiquity hallows its altar and its worship. at last, rests in the completeness of truth as re- It is the antiquity of goodness. It is the anvealed in the perfectness of love? And is it tiquity of memories that have descended from "blessed" in those selecter moments of life, Eden, with no profane mixture of traditions; when intense feeling floods the mind, to lay the and in kindred union with those associations, heart close to this redeemed earth, and, gather-responsive to their influence, and instinct with ing the mighty throb of the sea and of the air their spirit, women must form a phalanx of prointo its strong pulse, silently sink into a rapture tection around the sanctities of home, and exeof joy? "Blessed" is all this, whenever and cute, as a daily ministry, the offices of guardwherever felt; but "more blessed" to commu-ianship over its love and peace.

being; but taken as a class, they must adhere to the grand old stationary landmarks. Standing on the bold promontories that for ages have overlooked the ocean of life, they will watch those surging waters on which their hearts have launched so many precious freights. Conservative they must be by the intuitions, aims, and hopes of their being; conservative in intellect, faith, virtue, practice; for Heaven will not permit the fireside, where they dwell, to be subjected to those revolutionary agencies that throw down and build up other institutions. It was before statesmanship in point of time, as it is higher than statesmanship in point of wisdom. Home was crowned with womanly beauty and tenderness, long ere kings wore a diadem or

A

The chief and acknowledged captain of our revels was Marquis Cotesbury; he had worthy companions in Tom Francis, Charley Ashton, and the rest, but all these "paled their ineffectual fires" before Marquis. I had been at college with him, and was now an inmate of his splendid bachelor residence in the city of and one of the jovial company, in spite of my comparative youth.

Claiming such a culture for our women, we | every thing. The Psalmist says, "The merryshould leave the argument incomplete if we did hearted do sigh;" but in the times I speak of I not insist on the fact that the substantial virtues never heard any sighing. of the household, and the attainment of a high excellence in all the beautiful forms of wisdom, sentiment, and affection, are perfectly consistent. Men there are who can not see the whole truth on this subject; men, who look along a narrow, mathematical line, and discern nothing outside of it. Idolaters of Utility, they have no idea of God's world beyond a mass of dirt that absorbs water and produces harvests. The beauty of the rainbow is not half so sensible a thing to I shall endeavor to speak of Marquis briefly. them as a lady's ribbon; and in this cold, cal- He impressed every one from the first moment lous spirit, they think of the universe merely as of meeting. He was the perfect model of physa good piece of machinery, worked pretty well ical beauty. I have never seen a man whose considering how much is to be done. But this personal appearance was one-half as striking. brutalizing creed has none of the heart of heaven In Greece he would have rivaled, at the court in it. Far otherwise thought He, the Christ of of Pericles and Aspasia, that world's wonder AlGod, in whose hands the delicate flowers smiled cibiades; and I remember, more than once, inas they breathed a lesson of trust in Providence, stituting the comparison in my mind. He was and who, not disdainful of the grass beneath at this time about twenty-six years of age, very His feet, found, in its waving verdure, the sub- tall, of a most distinguished carriage, and charlime truths of eternity. No man who recog-acterized by what is called in Europe the bel air nizes the workmanship of the Creator in the material objects around him, and marks the adaptation of their multitudinous forces to accomplish the great ends of wisdom, can ever depreciate utility. But if our minds were freed from the tyranny of the senses-if reason could assert its sway over the understanding, and truth demonstrate its superiority to facts-then, indeed, we should see that beauty continues and perfects the office of utility, and is but a more subtle and spiritual influence to purify and ennoble the heart. There is, consequently, no antagonism between them, unless our pride and selfishness create it. Both are divine instruments; both appeal to us in a vast variety of forms, degrees, and connections; both dwell side by side in undisturbed harmony; and both find prompt and willing access to all such minds as comprehend the meaning of God's power and presence in the universe. How often are they The clouds of the

that of the perfect, courtly gentleman. It was only upon a closer inspection that you discovered the extraordinary combination of "fine points," so to speak, about his person. He had the hands, feet, and waist of a woman, though fully six feet in height. The delicate extremities did not seem disproportioned, however; his limbs appeared to taper regularly and naturally. A head as faultless in model as that of the old Hellenic Jove, and features of the pure Greek type, worthily completed the picture. In a physical point of view simply, and regarded apart from any mental endowment, Marquis Cotesbury was a magnificent "animal." His manners were such as set off this fine person wonderfully. He had the elegant and impressive affability of the old-school gentleman, in all its perfection. His father, Judge Cotesbury, had been a star of the ancient régime, and Marquis not only inherited the immense family wealth, beheld in closest union! and the prestige of the Judge's high social firmament water the earth, and yet their benefi-position-the old gentleman's royal suavity of cent service to field and flower does not abate the grace of their shapes nor the majesty of their movements. The dew-drop holds heaven in its bosom, but the pictured image detracts not from the refreshing of grass and herb. So may sense and sentiment, wisdom and beauty, goodness and taste, abide in unity within the mind of a cultivated woman, and qualify her for the full and complete occupancy of that sphere to which Providence has assigned her.

bearing descended also to his son. It was a courtesy and considerateness which amounted almost to humility. When Marquis bowed to a lady, it was such an inclination as a subject would make at the footstool of a queen; his smile conveyed a mingled veneration and devotion, worthy of a chevalier of the elder day. Such was Marquis in the presence of ladies, and it was only a modification of this manner which made him so conspicuous a figure with those of his own sex. Here his ceremonious air changed, but his ceaseless affability never. He seemed THE STORY OF FOUR YOUNG MEN. the perfection of good-nature. Never, save on I.-I VISIT MARQUIS COTESBURY. occasions of extraordinary provocation, did I see E had an uncommonly gay time in the his sweetness of manner disappear. When a good year eighteen hundred and blank! frown knit together those brows, generally so We turned night into day, and day into night. tranquil and smiling, the sight was almost terWe drank the sun to sleep, and when the morn-rible; you shrunk from it as from an aroused ing star began to fade we were drinking still. lion. But such moments as these were exOur life was one long revel, and we laughed at tremely rare with him. He was almost uni

WE

LOST.

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