every brow. I seek to inspire you with a wish and a will to meet it with a womanly spirit. I seek to point you to its nobler meanings and its higher results. The tinsel with which your imagination has invested it will all fall off of itself, so soon as you shall fairly enter upon its experiences. Then if these ideas have no place in you, you will be obliged to acquire them slowly and painfully, or you will sink into a poor, selfish, discontented creature-and be, so far as others are concerned, either a nonentity, or a disagreeable hanger-on and looker-on. So I say, begin to take up life's duties now. Learn something of what life is, before you take upon yourself its graver responsibilities.

LETTER VIII.

The Beauty and Blessedness of Female Piety.

The cross, if rightly borne, shall be

No burden, but support to thee.

WHITTIER.

OUNG women, this is my last letter ad

Y dressed specially to you; and as I take your

hand, and give you my adieu, I wish to say a few words which shall be worth a great deal to you. It is my opinion that to a certain extent, in certain directions, God meant that you should be dependent upon men, and that in this dependence should exist some of your profoundest and sweetest attractions, and your noblest characteristics. Your bodies are smaller than those of men. You were not made to wrestle with the rough forces of nature. You were not made for war, nor commerce, nor agriculture. In all these departments, the iron wills and the iron muscles of man are alone at home. The bread you eat, and the fabrics you wear, are to be gathered from the earth by

men. You are to be protected by men. They build your houses; they guard your persons. It is entirely natural for you to rely upon them for much that you have. You give, or may give, great rewards for all this. It is not a menial relation, nor one which detracts from your dignity in the least. The circle of human duties is only complete by the union of those of man and woman. Man has his sphere-woman, hers. We cannot talk of superiority among spheres and duties that are alike essential. Suffice it that, in the degree in which you are dependent upon man for support and protection, does he owe support and protection to you. He is bound to do for you what you, through the peculiarities of your constitution, are unable to do for yourself. You are never to quarrel with this arrangement. You will only make yourself unhappy by it, because by quarrelling with God's plans, you essentially unsex yourself, and become a discord. Therefore, recognize your dependence gladly and gracefully. Be at home in it, for in it lies your power for influence and for good.

This advances us a step towards the point to which I wish to lead you. Now, if you will go with me into a circle of praying Christians, or if you will take up with me a list of the members of any church, I will show you a fact which I wish to connect with the facts stated in the preceding paragraph. You will find, I suppose, that at least two-thirds of the members of the prayer-meeting

are women, and that the church register will show a corresponding proportion of female names. Why is this? Is it because women are weaker than men, simply? Is it because women are subject to smaller temptations than men? Is it because their passions are less powerful than those of men? Not at all-or not in any important degree. It is because a feeling of dependence is native in the female heart. It is because the pride of independence has little or no place there. It is because the female mind has to undergo comparatively a small revolution to become religious. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that one, powerful barrier that stands before the path of every man in his approach to the valley of humiliation does not oppose the passage of the true woman. I suppose it is very rare that those who are denominated "strong-minded women become religious. The pride of personal independence is built before them by their own hands.

So sweet and so natural a thing is piety among women that men have come to regard a woman without it as strange, if not unhealthy. The coarsest and most godless men often select pious wives, because they see that piety softens, and deepens, and elevates every natural grace of person, and every accomplishment of mind. Now my opinion is that Heaven, seeing how important it is for you to be its own children, in profession and in spirit, has given special favors to your sex, through this simple fact or principle of depen

dence. It is your work to soften and refine men. Men living without you, by themselves, become savage and sinful. The purer you are, the more are they restrained, and the more are they elevated. It is your work to form the young mind,—to give it direction and instruction-to develop its love for the good and the true. It is your work to make home happy-to nourish all the virtues, and instil all the sentiments which build men up into good citizens. The foundation of our national character is laid by the mothers of the nation. I say that Heaven, seeing the importance to the world of piety in you, has so modified your relations to man that it shall be comparatively easy for you to descend into that valley, over which all must walk, before their feet can stand upon the heights of Christian experience, between which and Heaven's door the ascent is easy.

her. There is

I can see why

For my own part, I shrink with horror from a godless woman. There seems to be no light in her-no glory proceeding from something monstrous about her. men do not become religious. It is a hard thing—it is, at least, if experience and observation are to be relied on--for a man whose will has been made stern by encounters in the great battle of life, who is conscious of power and accustomed to have the minds around him bend to his, who possesses the pride of manhood and the self-esteem that springs naturally in the mind of one in his position, to become "as a little child." Woman