From the Spaniards we may learn, by the warning of a proud race, what it is to sink into the scorn of other countries through smoking and debt. From the Dutch we may learn cleanliness, from the Swiss simplicity, and from the Italians to foster our patriotism. Our American cousins are part of our own family; they only differ from us in having carried our virtues and some of our follies into the superlative. We should endeavour to be natural in all our doings: to be ourselves, and not always acting a part, and that generally the part of a person of rank, or a millionaire. Let whatever we do be openly done, though not obtrusively nor boastfully; and this whether it is ornamental or only useful. To be truly ornamental it must combine utility. Is not the flower as useful as the leaf? As an example of what I mean, I will give two opposite instances. A young lady was making the bodice of a dress when a visitor called; she quickly pushed the work under a sofa pillow, and caught up a gold-braided smoking-cap, half worked at the shop, which had lasted a long time as a piece of show-needlework. The other case is that of a lady who set up for an example to her sex, and always displayed, as a manifestation of superiority, a basket full of gentlemen's stockings, which she seemed to be ever mending. Both of these ladies were acting a part. Good taste has no false shame; so we need not add the vexations of concealment to the accumulation of cares we have heaped upon our houses, till they are so encumbered with _impedimenta_ of all kinds that our whole strength is taken to keep them in order, and the household machine has to move through such a mass of difficulties that it is like a loaded carriage lumbering through a Turkish road. Why should we add these things to life? We are daily bringing mechanism to greater perfection, and it is our own fault that we do not make it perform for our houses what Manchester has made it do for our looms, and render ourselves mistresses in reality, instead of merely in name, of our own households. If we had to go back to the old flint-and-tinderbox days, when it was an hour's hard work in the dark to strike a light, when gas was unknown, when water was not laid on, when all bread must be made at home, all stockings knitted; when there was no such thing as a ready made shirt, much less gowns and polonaises; no perambulators, nor washing machines;--we should not heap upon ourselves superfluous work in the thoughtless way we do at present, and then leave all to the attention of the most careless and irresponsible members of the community. In a small family there is less work to be done; in a large one there are more hands to do the work, and many hands make light labour. We would have no mistress of a family a household drudge, while her daughters lounge over fancy-work or a novel; but we would ease her hands, and uphold her in her true position of administratrix, mainspring, guiding star of the home.