Servants may torment us, but we do a great deal ourselves towards teaching them to do so. We expect all sorts of virtues and excellencies from them, with their limited education, that we should find it hard to practise ourselves. The

young ladies in a family should be ready not only to check accounts and make a pie or pudding, and give out the linen, and so forth, but they should be able to show a servant how to do every part of her work, to scrub a room, and clean a knife, if necessary. If you have not learned this, the sooner you do so the better. All these domestic duties are particularly incumbent on those who intend emigrating; and indeed to all who wish to be wives, mothers, and mistresses of families, this will be found the most valuable of all knowledge, Men cannot marry now-a-days, because a wife is really too expensive a luxury. A girl has no idea of either earning or saving. How, then, can a prudent man think of marrying ? Dickens' child-wife, Dora, is not, I fear, quite such a fancy sketch as she is supposed; but with the greater intelligence of the age larger views ought to be taken of these matters, and girls should be educated to meet the probable requirements of their position.

Home! sweet home! Cultivate a love of innocent pleasure, of the happiness that can be enjoyed without the accessories of an evening dress and a crowd of strangers. Let the hospitality exercised be rather frequent than magnificent. Rooms never used but for parties—a whole household disarranged for weeks for the sake of receiving, once a year, five hundred dear friends -close economy practised in private for the sake of ostentation in public--these are vulgarisms which are too often instigated by daughters, and always submitted to by parents from a kind though mistaken view to their interests. Show your parents that these are not the pleasures you covet; be occupied, and therefore happy, in your own family, and rely on it, that the world will be a fairer and better thing to you than to less sensible women.

“ Wouldst thou the purest pleasures know?

Above, around, beneath thee look!
E'en at thy very feet they grow,

And sparkle in the humblest brook.

There's not a green sequestered nook,

If decked with one sweet flower of spring, But nature, in her mighty book,

Hath marked it as a joyous thing. Old is the thought, the moral trite,

(But oh, how slighted and forgot!) That Nature's glories give delight

The glories of the world cannot. How much of beauty, grace, and joy

Lie clasped within a folded rose ! Nay, of delight that will not cloy

In the last trembling flower that blows. In love, in truth, in knowledge lie

Our noblest strength, our richest wealth : What painted gaud of art can vie

With Nature's rose of joy and health ? No pearl was e'er the diver's prize,

No gem the toiling miner's meed, Like the pure light from virtue's eyes,

Which God makes beautiful indeed!”

212

CHAP. XII.

FEMININE FOIBLES.

“ Since trifles make the sum of human things,

And half our misery from our 'fuibles' springs :
Since life's best joys consist of peace and ease,
And few can save, or serve, but all may please, -
Oh let th’ungentle spirit learn from hence
A small unkindness is a great offence.”

Miss H. MORE.

THERE are certain cant phrases in the world which have more influence on us than they ought to have, or than they would possess, were we coolly to investigate their signification. Amongst these stands that very equivocal sentence, “A proper pride.” To inculcate a sentiment of proper pride" in a young woman, seems so universal that we are almost tempted to suppose there existed an eleventh commandment that we should be proud. But the advice is bad or good just according to the sense in which we take the words. What is a proper

pride ? Is it that honourable self-respect which would forbid our doing anything contrary to our profession as Christian gentlewomen,which would prevent us from condescending to act or tell a falsehood, or in any way countenance deception ? which would forbid our prying into the secrets of others,—glancing over an open letter,-or putting a leading question to a dependant, or any one supposed to be in a secret? Is it that true courage which would induce us to own poverty and not be ashamed of it,—to confess that we cannot afford to join in some party of pleasure or scheme of amusement, because we are not so rich as our companions ?

-if this be our pride, it is an honourable feeling

But if our "proper pride,” on the contrary, leads us only to make use of all sorts of devices to keep up appearances, but tempts us into acts of meanness or extravagance, in order to appear well with the world ; or if it causes us to blush at being discovered in some homely domestic occupation, or endeavouring to add to the comforts of our parents by our labour, this feeling is