Meantime what is to fill this vacuity? Nothing but the most frivolous and contemptible pursuits. In such a state of lassitude, a young woman abandons herself to pure idleness; and idleness, which may be termed a languor of the soul, is an inexhaustible source of weariness and discontent. She sleeps one-third more than is necessary to preserve her health: this protracted slumber serves only to enervate and render her more delicate; more exposed to the turbulency of passion; whereas moderate sleep, accompanied with regular exercise, produces that cheerfulness, vigour, and elasticity of spirits, which form, perhaps, the true criterion of bodily and mental perfection. This weariness and idleness, united with ignorance, beget a pernicious eagerness for public diversions; hence arises a spirit of curiosity, as indiscreet as it is insatiable. Those who are instructed and busied in serious employments, have, in general, but a moderate curiosity. What they know gives them an indifference for many things of which they are ignorant; and convinces them of the inutility and absurdity of those things, with which narrow minds, that know nothing, and have nothing to exercise themselves upon, are extremely desirous of becoming acquainted. On the contrary, young women, without instruction and application, have always a roving imagination. In want of substantial employment, their curiosity hurries them on to vain and dangerous pursuits. Those who have somewhat more vivacity, pique themselves on a superior knowledge, and read, with avidity, every book which flatters their vanity: they become enamoured of novels, plays, and "Tales of Wonder," in which love and licentiousness predominate: they fill their minds with visionary notions, by accustoming themselves to the splendid sentiments of heroes of romance, and hence are rendered unfit for the common intercourse of society; for all these fine airy sentiments, these generous passions, these adventures, which the authors of romance have invented for mere amusement, have no connexion with the real motives which agitate mankind, and direct the affairs of the world; nor with those disappointments which usually accompany us in almost every thing we undertake. A poor girl, full of the tender and the marvellous, which have delighted her in her reading, is astonished not to find in the world real personages, resembling the heroes she has read of--fain would she live like those imaginary princesses, whom fiction has described as always charming, always adored, and always beyond the reach of want. What disgust must she feel on descending from such a state of heroism, to the lowest offices of housewifery!