"You _next_ admit that the most valuable of all things here, because that which best secures peace on earth and happiness in heaven, it is _peculiarly_ the province of the female part of creation to protect with care, and distribute with zeal. Here is a high trust--here is a mighty office, and it would naturally follow from your acquiescence in reposing such confidence in a certain set of people, that you must admit the propriety of rendering them fit depositories for the sacred trust by some suitable preparation. Be assured, my young friend, that a fashionable education will not achieve this end. But you must not mistake me. I do not mean to assert that there is any necromancy in learning _this_ language or the other. I would only be understood to say that during the early years of childhood there is time enough for much more than is usually taught to girls from five to fifteen; and while the memory is retentive, the curiosity fresh, and all the faculties ready for action, it is a pity that food for the mind should not be provided of a more substantial kind than is generally supplied. In learning the dead, we attain the principles of living languages; we become able to trace our own mother tongue to its source; we enlarge the field of knowledge and of comparison; we search the Scriptures with effect, because we are enabled to search them minutely; and why should these advantages be denied to one half of the creation? Woman's empire is peculiarly to be found in her _Home_. Whatever adds dignity to her dominion, and variety to her pleasures in the scene of them, I must ever maintain to be the best safeguard of national virtue. Barbarism and excessive refinement are extremes of a widely-extended series, and like all other extremes come to meet at last. The selfishness of the former, exercises the pre-eminence of animal strength in compelling the weaker sex to endure the fatigue of cultivating the ground, and performing every servile occupation, in order that the stronger may enjoy, without interruption, the coarse and sensual gratifications which constitute their happiness; while the equally selfish, but more elegant sons of modern luxury, exert a tyranny not less despotic, in reducing the female mind to that dull level best suited to their own inglorious apathy and sloth. The matter can never rest here. Providence has formed the sexes for each other; and the mutual attraction is too powerful to be resisted. To regulate the nature of this attraction is all that moral improvement can effect; and I see with grief a mighty change in progress. Our young men are (I speak not of all) cold, careless, rude, and covetous; our youthful females are bred up as if for the stage, and as, with all 'the means and appliances to boot,' the opera and the theatre will always supply more finished specimens of singing, dancing, and acting, than can be found elsewhere. We accordingly see that many of our present generation of men are not ashamed of seeking