"A discreet woman," said Mr. Stanley, "adjusts her expenses to her revenues. Every thing knows its time, and every person his place. She will live within her income, be it large or small; if large, she will not be luxurious; if small, she will not be mean. Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test, both of integrity and judgment, than a well-proportioned expenditure. "Now the point to which I would bring all this verbiage," continued he, "is this--will a lady of a mean understanding, or a vulgar education, be likely to practice economy on this large scale? And is not such economy a field in which a woman of the best sense may honorably exercise her powers?" Miss Sparkes, who was always a stanch opposer in moral as well as in political debate, because she said it was the best side for the exertion of wit and talents, comforted herself that though she felt she was completely in the minority, yet she always thought that was rather a proof of being right than the contrary; for if it be true, that the generality are either weak or wicked, it follows that the inferior number is most likely to be neither. "Women," said Mr. Carlton, "in their course of action describe a smaller circle than men; but the perfection of a circle consists not in its dimensions but in its correctness. There may be," added he, carefully turning away his eyes from Miss Sparkes, "here and there a soaring female, who looks down with disdain on the party affairs of 'this dim speck called earth;' who despises order and regularity as indications of a groveling spirit. But a sound mind judges directly contrary. The larger the capacity, the wider is the sweep of duties it takes in. A sensible woman loves to imitate that order which is stamped on the whole creation of God. All the operations of nature are uniform even in their changes, and regular in their infinite variety. Nay, the great Author of Nature himself disdains not to be called the God of order." "I agree with you," said Sir John. "A philosophical lady may 'read Malebranche, Boyle, and Locke;' she may boast of her intellectual superiority; she may talk of abstract and concrete; of substantial forms and essences; complex ideas and mixed modes, of identity and relation; she may decorate all the logic of one sex with all the rhetoric of the other; yet if her affairs are _delabre_, if her house is disorderly, her servants irregular, her children neglected, and her table ill-arranged, she will indicate the want of the most valuable faculty of the human mind, a sound judgment."