and improvement of younger brothers and sisters —perusing aloud some valuable publication for the edification of the family circle--all will afford the purest satisfaction and enjoyment. In fine, let your recreations always be characterized by delicacy, discretion, and moderation, and beneficial results of a corresponding character, will be your reward.

CHAPTER IX.

MENTAL CULTIVATION.

That female education has heretofore been lamentably deficient, is a position which admits of not a doubt. In past ages woman has been kept in a state of almost entire ignorance, in regard to the most important branches of human attainment, and has been compelled, in a measure, to occupy her attention with the trivial matters of life. Without pretending to decide the controverted question, whether the gentler sex are capable of rivalling man in the highest walks of literature, still, I do not hesitate to say, that they are capable of making far greater advances in every branch of useful knowledge, than they have hitherto done; and also that they can equal the generality of men in mental attainments, when placed in circumstances equally favorable. Indeed in modern days, many ladies have appeared as shining lights in the literary world. And although they have not so generally grappled with the abstruse sciences, yet in the lighter grades 29* 341

of literature--in vivid descriptions of the gentlest, purest and noblest characteristics of human nature—in the bright pictures of the imagination— in chaste displays of taste and sentiment—in reproof, admonition and advice--they have not been surpassed by their male competitors. The names of More, Barbauld, Chapone, Aikin, Hamilton, Seward, De Stael, Landon, Porter, Hemans, Edgeworth and Martineau, in foreign lands, and of Sigourney, Leslie, Hale, Sedgwick, Stephens, Hentz, Gould, Ellet, Scott, Dodd, Edgarton, Broughton and Downer in our own country, will bear ample testimony to the high and beautiful capabilities of the female mind.

Although female education, within the last half century, has been greatly improved, still it has not arrived at the perfection that is desirable.-The poor are engaged in such constant drudgery, that they are able to pay but little attention to mental cultivation, while the wealthy are frequently led to neglect it, by attaching an undue importance to showy rather than useful accomplishments. Young ladies, as a class, are still too prone to attribute more consequence to the ́adorning of the outward person, than the cultivation of the moral and intellectual powers--are too liable to imagine that their success in life, depends more upon beauty and accomplishments of person, than of mind. This belief many acquire, no doubt, from that fulsome flattery which is too generally bestowed upon female personal

So general is this prac

beauty, by the other sex. tice, that men of otherwise good sense, will frequently lend their aid in perpetuating this idolatry to the fleeting charms of outward beauty, to the neglect of those qualities in woman that are truly valuable. This conduct leads females to overlook their mental capabilities, to deem it of little importance to obtain those qualifications of mind and of habit upon which their happiness and the enjoyments of those connected with them will so deeply depend through life, and induces them to turn their whole attention to those charms and accomplishments, which are as empty and useless as the floating bubble.

Young ladies should summon sufficient discrimination to perceive the origin of this adulation. They should understand that those who indulge in extreme flattery of their personal beauty, either possess such ignorant and shallow minds, as really to believe what they say, that nothing is so valuable as the charms of form and feature—or, knowing better, they hypocritically express their admiration, under the supposition that you are so vain and weak as to be pleased by their empty homage! In either case, they impugn your good sense, and are unworthy your confidence or respect. The attentions of the ignorant and of the hypocritical, should alike be discarded.

grant that personal beauty in a young lady, is an advantage: and when united with a sweet

disposition and well cultivated mind, you have attractions that can not but win esteem. But I insist that loveliness of person without these valuable qualifications, is a misfortune rather than a blessing. It will surround you by the utmost dangers—by fascinations and allurements, from which, owing to the weakness of your moral and mental powers, you will escape with difficulty, if at all. And suppose that by beauty of person alone, you succeed in obtaining a companion for life of what value can that man be, who has been attracted by your features of form, without deeming any other qualification worthy a thought? He connected himself with you for your beauty, and he loves your beauty only. And do you not perceive that when that beauty decays, as it inevitably must, under the influence of disease or age, his regard will wither with it, and that the after years of your life, must be spent amid vain regrets and unavailing repinings? "We can not help remembering that the ordinary period of life is set at seventy years. The empire of beauty seldom lasts more than ten or fifteen. What is to sustain the beauty who has no other possession, in the dreary interval, when her roses have vanished with her admirers, never to return?" If, then, you have been favored with personal beauty, add to it virtuous principles and the charms of a well cultivated mind, and you can then duly improve the advantages placed within your reach.