"My dear fellow," replied Mr. Otway, "do not profane the names of nature and good sense by identifying the one or the other with fashion. I would appeal to your understanding, and if that is not convinced of error, I would leave you to the prejudices which you have imbibed. Let us then now fairly meet each other. You ask, will women be made more beautiful, more lively, more attractive, by being more instructed? Perhaps I may encounter a laugh, if I answer yes; first, I always consider intelligence as the greatest beautifier of a face, which, if handsome, is lit up by an additional ray in every new exercise of the mental powers; and if ugly is at least prevented from being stupid by cultivation. But this will not satisfy you, because I assume the very thing that you deny; so I will ask you, have men _a right_ to consider women as objects merely of gratification to their eyes and ears? Are not women endowed with sense and feeling; with high powers of intellectual energy, and immortal spirits like men? Were these gifts, think you, conferred for nothing but to be employed in the arts of catching butterflies? No, no-- 'Domestic bliss, that like a harmless dove Can centre in a little nest, All that desire would fly for through the world,' is improved by all that gives variety and interest to the social union of two souls destined to find the principal portion of their happiness _at home_. The merely fashionable accomplishments can last only for a season, and that very season which least requires their aid, for youth and sprightliness are so full of elasticity and joy, that were music, painting, &c. banished from the world, there is a halcyon hour in the life of all, in which their aids would not be missed, because they are not wanted; but the summer-fly, which gaily flits in the warmth of a meridian beam, ought not to be our model. Life, like every four and twenty hours, has its morning and evening, then its night. Do not start, I am not going to give you a homily; I would only call an intelligent mind to a quiet investigation of truth, and farther ask, when time steals the bloom from beauty's cheek, and the song, which once charmed the ear has died away--when the fairy fingers have lost the ease, 'Which marks security to please?'