ter, to the situation, which they must, indeed, ought to hold in society, because it was evidently assigned them by their Creator. It was for these reasons I urged upon their consideration the importance of school-keeping.

I seek to promote the happiness and the best interest of my sex ; but I do not think that happiness, or those interests will be advanced by flattering women that they are angels, or that they have, as yet, much claim to a mental equality with men, if equality consist in the exertion of mind. We have reason, but we seldom use it; we might about as well be guided by instinct. We proceed day after day, and year after year in the same routine, without exhibiting one original idea. All new discoveries and inventions are made by the men ; even the chemical combinations in cookery, and their causes, are unknown to almost every female, to those who have cooked all their days. We do not think-there is the fault of our education-we are not taught by necessity,-the necessity that arises to men in their diversified pursuits, to reflect.'

22,

A WINTER IN THE COUNTRY.

My country, thou art free-the orient wave,
Albeit perfumed by India's spicy gales,

Floats round the land where dwells the crouching slave,
Where rapine prowls, and tyranny prevails-

But here, in Freedom's green and peaceful vales,
Man with his fellow mortal proudly copes;

No despot's will the peasant's home assails,

Nor stalks th' oppressor o'er its pastoral slopes,

Nor reaps the stranger's hand the harvest of his hopes.'

DID you ever live in the country? I don't mean a residence of some six or seven weeks, just to escape the burning, boiling, stifling atmosphere of the crowded city, when the thermometer stands at 93° in the shade, and clouds of dust render promenading through Washington Street almost as dangerous as would be a march through the desert, to explore the ruins of Palmyra. But there is the Mall. Oh! the Mall is unfashionable ;--and what lady, having a proper sense of her own dignity and delicacy, but would prefer suffocating at home, to the horror of a refreshing walk in an unfashionable place? They must resort to the country. But never should those ladies imagine their experience of pastoral life, makes them competent to decide on rural pleasures and rural characters; or gives them the right to bestow

those convenient epithets, dull, ignorant, plodding, on our country farmers, or uneducated, unfashionable, dowdyish, on their wives and daughters.

Summer and autumn are the seasons, during which our city people visit the country. In summer all who feel a sensibility for the beautiful, are charmed. The green woods, the flowery fields, the soft lulling waters and calm bright skies, are successively admired and eulogized. The sweet scenery is extolled, be-rhymed, sketched-left and forgotten. Autumn scenery makes a far deeper impression on the feelings. There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind. The person who can regard the changes in the forest foliage,-that can watch the slow circles of the dead leaf, as it falls from the bough of some lofty tree, till it mingles with the thousands already covering the ground beneath, and not moralize is-not a person that I would advise to retire to the country, in search of happiness. He or she had better stay in the city and be amused. Those who cannot think, have, in my opinion, a necessity (which goes very far towards creating a right) for

amusement.

But the season when the scenery of the country makes the most delightful impression on the traveller's senses, or awakens his mind to reflection, is not the time to form a correct estimate of the social pleasures and mental advantages, which the inhabitants in our interior towns enjoy. Labor, unceasing labor is, dur

ing summer and autumn, the lot of the farmer, and usually of all his family. The city lady or gentleman, who visits in the country, regards this industry as oppressive, almost slavish. And truly it is sometimes so;—but still there is a satisfaction to those industrious people, in seeing how much their hands have accomplished; and there is a positive pleasure in the rest that night allows, and above all, which the Sabbath brings, that persons ever occupied in amusements or busy about trifles, cannot comprehend, any better than a blind man could the effect of colors on the eye. I may be told, that such happiness only refers to animal sensations, that mind has no part in the bliss which mere respite from the plough allows the farmer, any more than to the repose it brings the cattle that assisted his labors. If mind had no influence to prompt his industry, this might be true; but our American yeomanry are lords of the soil they till,-they call no man master on earth,'-they are in fact, the acknowledged sovereigns of this vast country,--they are, in our republic, entitled to respect, from their station; and those who affect to look down upon the farmer and his family, to despise and ridicule the country people, exhibit a spirit which, if it be refined and delicate, is neither enlightened, liberal or patriotic. The truth is, such fastidious persons know little, if anything, about the country; not much more than did Owen Ashley, when he first entered as a partner in the store of Mr. Silsby, merchant in the village of

situated about thirty miles west

Owen Ashley was

of the Green Mountains. Boston born and educated; and was in truth, as fine a gentleman as could be found in the city. He was also endowed with very good abilities, and had he not indulged an over-weaning conceit of the privilege he enjoyed, in being a native of the metropolis of New England, he would have been a very sensible young man. His father had been reputed very rich, and his failure in 1813, was wholly ascribed to the pressure of the times. A time of calamity it undoubtedly was, to many of our citizens, but none seemed more conspicuously marked by misfortune, than the elder Mr. Ashley. His real losses were not so great as was reported. He had for many years lived beyond his income, and it therefore required but a slight shock of his mercantile credit to embarrass him; and when the downward course was once begun, he had no means of retarding the catastrophe. But I am not intending to sketch the old gentleman; only as his failure was the cause of inducing his son Owen, to emigrate to that 'unknown bourne' to most of the native Bostonians, the land of the Green Mountains, it was necessary to mention it. Such an unprecedented adventure required a reasonable motive for its justification, or I might be accused of giving the creations of fancy, rather than sketches of real characters.

'Is it true, Ashley, that you are intending to leave the city?' inquired Edward Paine, as he took the arm of the former on quitting the theatre.