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you arrive at that age when you shall be capable to judge for yourselves, and do not strangely alter my sentiments, I shall act toward you in a very different manner from what most parents do. My opinion bas always been, that when that period arrives the parental authority ceases.

I hope I shall always treat you with that affection and easy confidence which may dispose you to look on me as your friend. In that capacity alone I shall think myself entitled to give you my opinion; in the doing of which I should think myself highly criminal if I did not to the utmost of my power endeavor to divest myself of all personal vanity, and all prejudices in favor of my particular taste. If you did not choose to follow my advice, I should not on that account cease to love you as my children. Though my right to your obedience was expired, yet I should think nothing could release me from the ties of nature and humanity.

minds, and you do not obey its dictates, but marry from vulgar and mercenary views, you may never be able to eradicate it entirely, and then it will imbitter all your married days. Instead of meeting witn sense, delicacy, tenderness, a lover, a friend, an equal companion, in a husband, you may be tired with in sipidity and dulness; shocked with indelicacy, or mortified by indifference. You will find none to compassionate, or even understand your sufferings; for your husbands may not use you cruelly, and may give you as much money for your clothes, personal expense, and domestic necessaries, as is suitable to their fortunes. The world therefore would look on you as unreasonable women, who did not deserve to be happy, if you were not so. To avoid these complicated evils, if you are determined at all events to marry, I would advise you to make all your reading and amusements of such a kind, as do not affect the heart nor the imagination, except in the way of wit or

You may perhaps imagine that the reserved beha-humor. vior which I recommend to you, and your appearing I have no view by these advices to lead your tastes; seldom at public places, must cut off all opportunities I only want to persuade you of the necessity of knowof your being acquainted with gentlemen; I am very ing your own minds, which, though seemingly very far from intending this. I advise you to no reserve easy, is what your sex seldom attain on many impor but what will render you more respected and beloved tant occasions in life, but particularly on this of which by our sex. I do not think public places suited to I am speaking. There is not a quality I more anx make people acquainted together. They can only be iously wish you to possess, than that collected, deci distinguished there by their looks and external beha-sive spirit which rests on itself, which enables you to vior. But it is in private companies alone where you can expect easy and agreeable conversation, which I should never wish you to decline. If you do not al- || low gentlemen to become acquainted with you, you can never expect to marry with attachment on either side. Love is very seldom produced at first sight, at least it must have, in that case, a very unjustifiable foundation. True love is founded on esteem, in a correspondence of taste and sentiments, and steals on the heart imperceptibly.

There is one advice I shall leave you, to which I beg your particular attention; before your affections become in the least engaged to any man, examine your tempers, your tastes, and your hearts, very severely, and settle it in your own minds, what are the requisites to your happiness in a married state; and es it is almost impossible that you should get everything you wish, come to a steady determination what you are to consider as essential, and what may be sacrificed.

If you have hearts disposed by nature for love and friendship, and possess those feelings which enable

you to enter into all the refinements and delicacies of these attachments, consider well, for Heaven's sake, and as you value your future happiness, before you give them any indulgence. If you have the misfortime (for a very great misfortune it commonly is to your sex) to have such a temper and such sentiments deeply rooted in you, if you have spirit and resolution to resist the solicitations of vanity, the persecution of friends (for you will have lost the only friend that would never persecute you), and can support the prospect of the many inconveniences attending the state of an old maid, which I formerly pointed out, then you may indulge yourselves in that kind of sentimental reading and conversation, which is most correspondent to your feelings.

But if you find, on a strict self-examination, that marriage is absolutely essential to your happiness, keep the secret inviolable in your own bosoms, for the reason I formerly mentioned; but shun as you would the most fatal poison, all that species of reading and conversation which warms the imagination, which enBages and softens the heart, and raises the taste above the level of common life. If you do otherwise, conder the terrible conflict of passions this may afterward raise in your breasts.

If this refinement once takes deep root in your

see where your true happiness lies, and to pursue it with the most determined resolution. In matters of business, follow the advice of those who know them better than yourselves, and in whose integrity you can confide; but in matters of taste, that depend on you own feelings, consult no one friend whatever, but consult your own hearts.

If a gentleman makes his address to you, or gives you reason to believe he will do so, before you allow your affections to be engaged, endeavor in the most prudent and secret manner, to procure from your friends every necessary piece of information concern ing him; such as his character for sense, his morals, his temper, fortune, and fami); whether it is dis tinguished for parts and worth, or for folly, knavery, and loathsome hereditary diases. When your friends inform you of these, thew have fulfilled their duty. If they go further, they ve not that deference for you which a becoming gnity on your part would effectually command.

Whatever your views are in ying, take every possible precaution to prevent their ang disappointed If fortune, and the pleasures it brings are your aim, it is not sufficient that the settlements a jointure and children's provision be ample, and perly secured; it is necessary that you should enjoy we fortune during your own life. The principal security you can have for this will depend on your man ving a good natured, generous man, who despises xoney, and who will let you live where you can best enjoy that pleasure, that pomp and parade of life, for which you married him.

From what I have said you will easily see that I could never pretend to advise whom you sucu'a marry; but I can with great confidence advise whom you should not marry.

Avoid a companion that may entail any hereditary disease on your posterity, particularly (that most dreadful of all human calamities) maduess. It is the height of imprudence to run into such a danger, a in my opinion highly criminal.

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Do not marry a fool; he is the most intractable of all animals; he is led by his passions and caprices, and is incapable of hearing the voice of reason. may probably too hurt your vanity, to have husbands for whom you have reason to blush and tremble every time they open their lips in company. But the worst circumstance that attends a fool, is his constant jeal

ousy of his wife being thought to govern him. This renders it impossible to lead him, and he is continually doing absurd and disagreeable things, for no other reason but to show he dares do them.

A rake is always a suspicious husband, because he has only known the most worthless of your sex. He likewise entails the worst diseases on his wife and children, if he has the misfortune to have any.

If you have a sense of religion yourselves, do not think of husbands who have none. If they have tolerable understandings, they will be glad that you have religion, for their own sakes, and for the sake of their families; but it will sink you in their esteem. If they are weak inen, they will be continually teasing and shocking you about your principles. If you have children, you will suffer the most bitter distress, in seeing all your endeavors to form their minds to virtue and piety, all your endeavors to secure their present and eternal happiness, frustrated, and turned into ridicule.

As I look on your choice of a husband to be of the greatest consequence to your happiness, I hope you will make it with the utmost circumspection. Do not give way to a sudden sally of passion, and dignify it with the name of love. Genuine love is not founded in caprice; it is founded in nature, on honorable views, on virtue, on similarity of tastes and sympathy of souls.

If you have these sentiments, you will never marry any one when you are not in that situation in point of fortune, which is necessary to the happiness of either of you. What that competency may be, can only be determined by your own tastes. It would be ungenerous in you to take advantage of a lover's attachment to plunge him into distress; if he has any honor, no personal gratification will ever tempt him to enter into any connexion which will render you unhappy. If you have as much between you as to satisfy all your reasonable demands, it is sufficient.

I shall conclude with endeavoring to remove a difficulty which must naturally occur to any woman of reflection on the subject of marriage. What is to become of all these refinements of delicacy, that dignity of manners, which checked all familiarities, and

suspended desire in respectful and awful admiration? In answer to this I shall only observe, that if motives of interest or vanity have had any share in your rese lution to marry, none of these chimerical notions wil give you any pain, nay, they will very quickly appear as ridiculous in your own eyes as they probably »ways did in the eyes of your husbands. They have been sentiments which floated in your imaginations, but have never reached your hearts. But if these sentiments have been truly genuine, and if you have had the singular happy fate to attach those who un derstand them, you have no reason to be afraid.

Marriage, indeed, will at once dispel the enchant ment raised by external beauty; but the virtues and graces that first warmed the heart, that reserve and delicacy which always left the lover with something || further to wish, and often made him doubtful of your sensibility or attachment, may and ought ever to remain.

The tumult of passion will necessarily subside; but it will be succeeded by an endearment that affects the heart in a more equal, more sensible, and tender manner. But I must check myself, and not indulge in descriptions that may mislead you, and that too sensibly awake the remembrance of my happier || days, which, perhaps, it were better for me to forget for ever.

I have thus given you my opinion on some of the most important articles of your future life, chiefly calculated for that period when you are just entering the world. I have endeavored to avoid some peculiarities of opinion, which, from their contradiction to the general practice of the world I might reasonably have suspected were not so well founded. But is writing to you, I am afraid my heart has been too warmly interested to allow me to keep this resolution This may have produced some embarrassment, and some seeming contradictions. What I have written has been the amusement of some solitary hours, and has served to divert some melancholy reflections. I am conscious I undertook a task to which I was very unequal; but I have discharged a part of my duty You will at least be pleased with it, as the last mark of your father's love and attention.

TRIALS AND TEMPTATIONS OF WOMAN.

If it be true, that the sight of a great man manfully struggling against trouble is enough to make the gods shed tears, that of a virtuous woman bearing sorrow with patience and fortitude might well bring angels from heaven to cheer and comfort her.

Almost synonymous with suffering is the name of woman; for though the troubles which man and woman have to bear, may, if considered in the abstract, be much the same in amount, yet if reference be made to woman's sensibility, whether of mind or body, the suffering must fall much heavier upon her than upon man. She is so formed as not to be firm enough to withstand, or yet flexible enough to bend to the plast of affliction.

Man has indeed vast trials and troubles; but then he has both a mind and a body constitutionally fitted to grapple with them; whereas a woman has to bear the same amount of affliction with a temperament the very reverse. So fair, so fragile, as women are, are they to be exposed against the jarring winds which affliction lets loose, and which spread desolation and sorrow wheresoever they sweep? Are the sensibilies and the feelings which so adorn the female heart

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to be stung by grief, when they seem only fitted for gayety and joy?

Women are naturally buoyant and light-heartedthe eye beaming with brightness, and the cheek usually wearing a smile; but this must bring equally a sense of pain, for the heart most easily pleased is soonest saddened. If they were more indifferent to pleasure there would be a greater callousness to pain. It is this very sensitiveness of their nature which makes pain so much more easily felt, as the brightest mirror is the soonest sullied.

In every station she can occupy, is a woman exposed to trial and to trouble; and the more she is bound to others, the more is she exposed to sorrow in her own person.

The happiest and most endearing of all the terms which can be applied to woman, is undoubtedly that of mother. But who can tell a mother's trials-a mother's troubles, sorrows, or afflictions? Take a mother in her happiest moments; see her encircled by her children, with whom she is playing. she kisses upon its cheek, and clasps another to he bosom; one she sets upon her knee, and finds a seat

"One

and the heart be sorrowed, yet in the midst of all, by recognising in the affliction the hand of a father, the lips may breathe forth with perfect sincerity, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

But all the duties of a mother are so many trials, to watch and train her children, to guard the way wardness of youth, to teach, to adnionish, to instruct, to advise all are attended with hardships, and, therefore, all are trials. She will find so many things to try her own temper-she will have to maintain so strict a guard over herself, lest her own conduct disproving those things she teaches, that which she plants with one hand she may be plucking up with the other. And a severer trial than all these frequently assails a mother-for those are labors she delights in, and the pleasure she feels in performing them compensates for the difficulty of the tasks. But when a mother sees that all these instructions have been thrown away, and that a child is entering a path which conducts to ruin, then will her trial be most severe and poignant, and, in the bitterness of her grief, she would wish rather to have seen a sou coffined and buried, had he been virtuous, than that he should live to dishonor God, disgrace his parents, and ruin himself. And it will add considerably to her grief when she calls to mind how imperfect at best many of her instructions must have been; she will think that more might still have been done-though there was very much-to try to wean him from his attachment to bad companions, and to base and un

apon her foot for another." There is, then, to her,
oy unmingled with sorrow, and pleasure free from
pain. She has forgotten the anguish she suffered in
giving these children birth; she thinks not of the
many sleepless nights she passed while she was watch-
ing and guarding the helplessness of infancy. The
gay smile and the happy look she wears, attest the
pleasure she feels; but they also tell how deep would
be the suffering if aught of evil were to happen to
her offspring. And, ere long, it may be the sore
stroke comes, and one of her children is laid upon a
bed of sickness. And a very sore trial is this to a
mother; her fond pictures of the future are blasted
In an instant, and she has to attend upon the child,
pallid and pained by sickness, with whom she was so
fanely playing but a short period before. Who but
a mother can know a mother's feelings, when called
upon to discharge a duty like this? How much anx-
iety, how much watchfulness is displayed; how eager-
ly she notes the irregular and feverish breathings of
ber child! And often does it happen that sickness
not only comes to one child, but that it runs through
the whole group. Before many days the mother will
detect the hectic spot brightening on another fair
cheek-too surely presaging the increase of her trou-
bles, her anxieties, and her pains. But she relaxes
nothing of her solicitude or care. With her amount
of hardships appears to increase her power to over-
come them; and, amid this disease and these trials,
she maintains her usual calmness and serenity of
mind.
A brief time passes away, and the darkened win-worthy pursuits.
dows of that house proclaim that one of its inmates
is a corpse. It is the brightest and the fairest that
death hath laid low. Of the two that sickened, one ||
is fast returning to health and joy-the other lies cold
and dead.

And to the deep grief which is ever to be felt by the recklessness and immorality of a child, will be added the painful thoughts arising from the knowledge that though she taught and instructed to the best of her power, yet that if she had thought more While there remained life, hope still lingered; but deeply she might have followed a better method, and when the one went out the other fled. And now has that the ill success may be partly chargeable upon a mother to mourn over a departed child-this trial herself. And this is, perhaps, one of the sorest trials of trials, how shall a woman's heart bear up against a mother can have befall her; for she charges herself, so much as this? Oh! the mother will stand at the in all probability undeservedly, with having, through side of her pale child, and will fix a deep and pene- negligence or improper management, suffered evil trating look upon those calm and placid features, habits to obtain the ascendency in the mind of her which, ere mortality begins to settle them, look more child; so that over and above the pain which she ike marble than death; and she will impress a burn- || feels on account of him who manifests a proneness to ing kiss upon its cheek, too cold, alas! to be warmed evil, there will be added the pain derived from the by this fondest token. She may not speak; but her thought that much of this proneness is chargeable ears these, which form the most powerful of oraupon herself. And the nobler the mind, the more tory-these tell how the heart is wrung with anguish, will this feeling rise, for it is the invariable characterhow riven with grief. istic of great minds to think humbly of themselves.

These, then, are all so many causes of trial to a mother, and they are so numerous and manifest, that the history of a mother might be told in these few words: She is born to trouble."

Surrounded by those who are entirely dependant upon her, is she not tempted to manifest a degree of pride and arrogance, to treat her children as if with life they had derived everything else from her, so that her will was law, and no opinion tenable which she did not en tertain? And this is a temptation by which many, very many, mothers are overcome, so that their children seem at home to be complete ciphers, and only enjoy life when out of their mother's presence.

And not only does an affliction like this bring with It poignancy of grief and deepness of sorrow-how severe a trial is it also of temper! The hardest of all things is to bear affliction with a right mind; and many a secret thought is likely to arise in a mother's Nor are the temptations to which a mother is exmind when standing by the side of a dead child, sug-posed much less numerous than her trials. gesting the idea that God has dealt hardly and harshly in inflicting so severe a blow; and a murmur may arise that the even-handed justice of God has not been shown in her case, and that the dispensations of tis providence are not always right. It is a hard task, and therefore a very severe trial, to bear affliction || with patience and resignation; for the heart of a mother so bereaved feels that a severer, and as she thinks, a more unjust stroke, has been dealt upon her Chan upon others. She will call to mind the youth, the innocence of her departed child; and all these will seem to her so many reasons why death should have been kept away. But she will not think how nany mothers have been similarly bereaved, and how many scalding tears they have shed over children death has thus stricken for grief to all but a resigned ul patient temper is selfish. Under these trials, therefore, the heart should bend with patience to the will of God. And though the eye may still weep,

How much, too, is a mother tempted to a frequent display of anger! So many vexations and crosses are continually pressing upon her, that she must frequently be tempted to display pique and irritability Again, from the continued demand upon her attention, she is liable to lose patience, and hastily and hurriedly to perform a duty, or perhaps altogether to neglect it.

These are all so many temptations to the display of an unholy and namiable disposition to which a

mother is exposed. She should therefore keep a guard upon her actions, and set a watch upon her lips, lest she perform some action in a moment of anger, or utter some expression when her temper is excited, which will in calmer hours bring with it regret and repentance. Knowing how much depends upon her a mother should be careful in everything she says and does; and then will the trials she has undergone, and the temptations she has resisted, become bright jewels in her crown of immortality.

Equally to a wife is life a source of trial. The character and disposition of each inmate in her house may be a great source of trial; but it is a husband who brings it down upon her head in its poignancy and bitterness. It is on him that all her affections are centred; and when she finds that but little love is yielded her in return, then must she undergo a severe trial. If he should prove unkind and inconstant, requiring that she be solicitous for his comforts, though he may show but small concern for hers—if he indulge in habits of sensuality and debauchery,|| preferring the midnight revel, with its voluptuous pleasures, to the calm attractiveness of home-there will be a severe trial inflicted on a wife-a trial of patience, of temper, of virtue, and of love.

But if the reverse is the case, and a wife finds the husband of her love to be also the truest and dearest friend she has, she may still be exposed to trial and trouble. If they be so firmly linked to each other that one heart seems to beat in both breasts, then will every pain which befalls the one be equally a trial to the other. A wife will have to bear all a husband's pain-she will have to share all his troubles and all his sorrows; and the burden will fall heavier upon her, from her temper being so much more susceptible, for the mere seeing a husband's heart grieved will be a trial to her own. There can not then be a trial he has to undergo which is not equally a trial to her, nor can any of those numerous casualties which so often befall humanity happen to him without her participating in their perplexity and trouble. And thus, as the world is always presenting something of disappointment and care, will a wife be continually having many trials. But more than all these, and far heavier and harder, will be those to which she may be brought by sickness and death; these heir-looms of humanity, which no amount of prudence can guard against, bring with them the severest trials, and cause the greatest hardships to be undergone.

How hard is the trial inflicted upon a wife who has to minister to the wants of a husband when lying upon a bed of sickness! Sickness, like sorrow, makes the heart selfish, and many will be the peevish whims she may be called upon to gratify; many an unreasonable request is sure to be made by the invalid; and over and above these, the trial of seeing one she loves in pain: and thus she will have many things to try her temper, for her patience, her kiudness, and her love, are sure to be tasked to the utmost.

But alas! sickness is too often the stepping-stone to death, and perhaps before many days that loved husband may be numbered among the dead. This is the hardest of all trials. The midnight watchingsthe unremitting attention, the sick-chamber requires -the waut of sleep,-all these a wife could have borne with patience and resignation; but death—this has bereaved her of all that she held dearest-this has riven her heart, and the gushing tears which roll down her check proclaim how deeply flowed the stream of affection.

The most inconsolable of all things is the heart of a widow in the first days of her bereavement, and herefore is this affliction which brings so much grief the severest of all trials. It is vain to tell her that time will soften her grief, and that sorrow is unavailing, benefiting not the dead, and only injuring the liv

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ing; it is equally useless to say that sorrow will not bring back the dead to life. The heart of the widow would answer, in the words of the philosopher of old, It is for that very reason I am shedding tears.” For a time at least she will remain deaf to all consolation-nay, she will wish even that consolation should not be offered, for she will not for a moment entertain the thought that her departed husband can ever be forgotten, or that she shall regard at any time as less severe the blow which deprived her of that truest of her earthly friends. She will call to mind all the scenes and events in which they bore a part,-the joy ousness of youth-the deepness of their leves-the actions in which they both participated-the sorrows no less than the joys which they shared togetherand all these will be so many different voices to tell of the greatness of her bereavement declaring the hardness of the trial she is called upon to undergo.

And, under a trial like this, where shall the wid owed heart find comfort? Friends may gather around her, eager to show their sympathy, and striving to cheer her in these troublous hours. But the sympathy of friends is unsatisfactory at best, even when most kind; for it only tells of the greatness of the loss, and brings nothing to cheer or make resigned under the affliction. They may tell her that death is unavoidable-that time will mitigate the grief-that the retrospect of her conduct is such, that she can not charge herself with neglect to her husband-and that, therefore, she should not take his death so much to heart. But all such sympathy as this is unavail ing. It is like attempting to bring back the glories of the day after the sun has gone down, by exhibiting the blackness of night; and, in the one case as in the other, in place of being reconciled, the mind the more regrets the loss of former brightness.

And as affliction is hard to bear at all, so is it yet harder to meet it in a right and proper frame of mind. Many a murmur will be breathed-many a secret thought is likely to arise, on the inequality of God's dealings; and a comparison to be drawn between her self and others, who seem blessed with everything of health and happiness. It is only by and through a genuine practical religion that affliction can be borne patiently and resignedly; for religion teaches the ends and uses of affliction, and thus prepares the mind to encounter it with patience. It does not seek to wrap up the heart in the rigidity of stoicism-it does not forbid the shedding of tears, or the manifestation of sorrow; for tears are the balm to a wounded spirit, and Christians have an example they may follow, in that their Master wept. But while not forbiddingnay, even encouraging-the grief of the heart to flow in drops from the eyes, religion tells us that all afflic tions are sent for a good end, and that the heart should not repine or murmur when they come, for that it is the hand of a Father who deals the blow-not for the pleasure of giving pain, but because afflictive dispen sations are a means to lead the heart from earth to heaven-from the evanescent and perishable, to the eternal and everlasting.

It were easy to speak further of the trials which still attach themselves to the female heart, illustrating them by the tears which fall from the eyes of a daughter who stands over the grave where a loved pa rent sleeps, or by those shed by a sister over the ashes of a brother. But, without going further into detail upon these points, we may say with truth, that the amoun. of her suffering is of fearful extent and of bitter poignancy.

It is hardly too much to say that the life of a woman is a life of trial-so continual is the demand upon he energy and firmness, when constitutionally she is made yielding and submissive. How much of patience is woman called upon to endure! how many secret cares which the world knows not of, are locked up in her

preparation for death die with a bright hope of immortality.

breast and though the eye beams with brightness and the cheek may wear a smile, yet the heart is disqu'eted and troubled—grief, like a canker-worm, is It is the buoyancy of woman's nature which gives eating at the core, though the bud be still beautiful. yet greater keenness to the trials by which she is enIn all the duties of women, great trials are inflicted compassed. Possessing a mind naturally imaginative upon them-principally trials of the mind-those of and lively, and a disposition which makes her concenemper, of resolution, and of kindness; and all these trate all her energies upon every object which enhave to be encountered singly and silently-there is gages her attention, she thereby brings upon herself no applause to follow success-no mighty crowds sur- much trouble. A disposition which is constantly round them to stimulate to exertion, and to urge on || imagining, suffers troubles which perhaps have no to victory; but in the secret depths of their own existence, for the brightest cloud soon assumes the hearts the struggle is carried on; there is it that the blackness of night, and imagined trouble is often far strife takes place, and human eyes sce nothing of the harder to bear than real, and by every energy being conflict, nor is anything divulged of the difficulty of roused, disappointments are sure to have very fre the war. quently to be encountered, and from these causes commonly arise to woman many and severe trials.

How many trials are also inflicted by the unamiable dispositions, which, more or less, have a lodgment in The temptations to which women are exposed are every heart! What a fierce struggle with nature is it almost as numerous as their trials, especially during when any strive to conquer a disposition which they the season of youth, when the heart is most light and know to be wrong, but which has been so engrafted in the cheek wears its fairest teint. From the homage them as to have " grown with their growth and which the world pays to beauty, they are led to vanstrengthened with their strength!" Suppose the dis-ity, and tempted to pursuits which procure them flatposition which it is wished to conquer be passion-teries and homage. Hence they are induced to enwhat numberless battles wili have to be fought before victory is obtained! To such a disposition, at the mere utterance of a word, the heart takes fire, and, in an instant, the brow is wrapped in darkness, as in a thunder-cloud, and the eye flashes forth its lightning, and truly difficult is it to so have the heart under control under circumstances of sudden irritation, that the feelings shall be subdued and kept under. Suppose pride or vanity to be the characteristic feature of the disposition; but, sensible of the impropriety, an attempt is made to subdue it: what a revolution will have to be effected ere the proud mind can be brought to humility, or the vain to think others as good or better than themselves!

In these and in similar instances the trials are very difficult to be overcome, not only because the struggle is acquiring a mastery over nature-which of itself is sufficiently a trial-but also because, while the struggle is carried on, there will not be breathed, to cheer the combatant, a word of encouragement, of 4upport, or of commendation.

To woman, as to man, come sickness and death, and these both have their trials. What a demand apon patience and resignation is made when the body pained by sickness and enfeebled by disease! What a trial, when the prospect of dissolution is present to the view-when pain is severing the silken cords which bind soul to body, and the world is receding quickly from the view! It may have been a female's part to have tended the sick-bed of a relative, and to have cheered and comforted when the death-struggle came on; and in these she may have displayed the noblest and the best feelings which adorn human nature. But when she herself comes to the point of death, far different may be the feelings which agitate her breast. It is one thing to see sickness and death, but quite another to have to meet them.

It is of all things the most solemn and awful to die. A trial is then made of every principle which has been held by the mind-the world then begins to be regarded in its true light-actions are brought to their proper standard, and only those who have prepared for death can meet their last enemy with complacency; for, "as the production of the meal proveth the work of the alchymist, so is death the test of our jres, the essay which showeth the standard of all our

actions."

And this is a trial all have to submit to. In life it bappens that many afflictions descend upon one individual, whereas others scarcely know what trouble is but death is the appointed lot of all. It comes in a thousand forms and a thousand different ways, but it surely comes.. And only those who have lived in

list themselves in the companionship of those who think pleasure the greatest good, and its pursuit the noblest occupation. And if a woman yield to this first temptation, others quickly rise up around her. She will see that much which she had been accus tomed to consider high and noble is counted of no great worth by the world's votaries. Truth might have been regarded as a holy thing, and to speak anything false was like profanation to the lips; but in the world she will find that flatteries take the place of truth, and in order to stand well with others, and to have admirers around her, a young woman may soon exchange her love of truth for the sake of uttering things she does not feel-hollow flatteries and empty praise.

The female sex are exposed to many temptations, from their having but few objects of interest to engage their attention. From the period of leaving school to that of marriage, the life of a female is generally little more than a blank. She leaves school with expanded faculties, high hopes, beating expectations, and ardor of application, but not a suitable object upon which to expend them-and thus she wastes lofty thoughts, and brilliant purposes, and surprising powers, on the dull earth or the deaf air; she seems like some glorious temple, beautiful in architecture, costly in ornaments, rich in splendor, and radiant with light, but wanting a shrine upon which to burn incense, and

a God to adore.

At first fancy becomes busy, peopling the air with images, building up imaginary structures, and depicting events in which themselves act the part of a heroine; but, by degrees, this feeling cools down, or becomes overwrought, and then follows a state of inactivity which at last ends in complete ennui. Then are various remedies tried to restore the lost spirits, and the temptations with which they will be assailed with will be those which lead them to seek pleasure, perhaps, in these most unsatisfactory onesin the constantly spending the evenings at parties, in the ball-room, or at the theatre.

It is commonly said that women have but few temptations in common with the other sex. It may be true that they have not many from the great world without; but they have many, very many, from the little world within. Every thought which suggests the following the expedient in place of the right is a powerful temptation; every suggestion to the pride of display, or to the passion for flattery or applause, is a temptation; every secret longing after unpossess ed good-every desire to shine pre-eminent in beauty all are so many temptations which scatter roses before the feet, but bring ruin in their train.

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