duty a privilege. If affliction serves to elicit the grateful devotion of our family, it is indeed but a blessing in disguise.

To return, however, to the subject with which our chapter is headed-Dependence or Independence? We will suppose that from any vicissitude of fortune a young lady finds herself under the necessity of earning her own living, or contributing her share to the general expenses of the family. The first earnest question naturally is, “What shall I do?" and the reply almost invariably, “I must become a governess." It may safely be assumed, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, that the career of a governess is the one chosen both by the débutante and her friends. Various reasons may be assigned for this predilection, but the principal are, first, the good education the young lady has received; and secondly, the prevalent idea that the position of a governess is superior in respectability to any other by which a woman can earn a livelihood. There is some truth, and a good deal of error in both these assumptions. A girl's education may have been very good, and her abilities may be equal to those of the generality of her young friends-nay, she may even possess very superior talents, and more than ordinary acquirements, and she may still be entirely unfit for the position of a governess. To know, and to be able to communicate knowledge, are two very different things, and by no means necessarily coexistent. It is very difficult, however, to convince a young girl of this truth. In her idea, to have learned and to be able to teach are synonymous. Hence, she always assumes that she is competent to undertake the duties of a governess, although it may happen that she never, in her life, gave a lesson, or bestowed one thought on education.

But the greatest reason why the career of a governess is selected is the idea that no other is open to a gentlewoman. To accept any other would be to lose caste; therefore, however unfit a girl may be for so trying a situation, however delicate her health, however unregulated her temper, however inferior her attainments, if she is to earn her bread at all, she must do so as a governess, because she and her family would be

degraded by her entering trade. In very many cases, indeed, parents will stint themselves and limit in every way their own comfort, to educate their daughters at an expensive boardingschool, with the view to their afterwards becoming governesses, in the hope of their improving their social position by mingling in society superior to that of their father's house, and forming connexions in a rank above their own.

This sort of reasoning sounds so well, yet has so little truth to justify it, that it reminds me exceedingly of the definition of a crab which was nearly inserted in the dictionary of the French Academy. It was described as “a red fish that walks backwards." An eminent naturalist to whose criticism it was submitted before going to press, observed, “Your description is admirable, it has only three trifling errors——it is not red, it is not a fish, and it does not walk backwards."

It is altogether an error to suppose that because a girl is a governess that therefore she is a gentlewoman, or that (though the title may be really her due) she is treated as one. It is not

because she is called Miss So-and-so, and has a seat at the table of her employers, or because she is introduced to society in the drawing-room, or even because her duties are among the most important in the world—because she stands, or ought to stand, as second only to the mother in her authority over her young charges, and because their happiness in life and that of all who love them depends much on the efficient or inefficient manner in which her duty is discharged, that the young governess is, generally speaking, considered as the equal and confidential friend she ought to be. The theory is beautiful, but the facts are against us. Nor can we greatly wonder at the false position which governesses hold when we consider how often they are induced by merely selfish and sordid motives to seek the employment which they ought to engage in only from a conviction of their fitness, mental and moral, for so important a post. If we would be respected, we must respect ourselves.

The calling of a governess is not unlike that of a clergyman; the duties of both are so ar

1

duous that no mere salary can ever adequately repay their faithful discharge. And as money cannot repay it, so mere money, or personal aggrandisement, should not be the only object in engaging in that career. Duty which is not undertaken from a higher motive will never be really well performed.

It is not, therefore, altogether the fault of employers that a governess does not command that consideration in a house which we think ought to be conceded to her. The candidates for

every situation are so numerous, and their deficiencies, frequently, so palpable, that the profession has sunk in the public esteem. Indeed, when parents, from good feeling or policy, treat the young governess with kindness and respect, her own conduct too frequently is such that she does not retain their regard,-her pride or petulance, or her ignorance, revolts them, and when she quits her situation they begin on a different system with her successor, being disgusted with the specimen they have had of a governess.

And thus, in a great measure, the position of a governess, instead of being really as honour

a