Wherefore should there be so glaring a difference between the sexes in this matter? Why should men think of nothing beyond mere cleanliness, as regards dress, and women make it a never ending study? Men strutting along the promenade, dressed off in the height of fashion, and engrossed with the elegance of their _tout ensemble_, are scorned as fools and fops. But women decorated with gold lace, jewels, diamonds, magenta and solferino ribbons, may be seen floating along the pavement, the admired of all observers. If it be unworthy of a man to be so impressed with mere outside attire, it is proportionately so of a woman. Dames who sail along the street in silk and purple which is not their own, have no right in any respect to the honour which belongs to women who work with their hands and pay their own way. We plead for no monotonous uniformity, but warn you of the fact, that love of dress has often proved a snare both to young men and young women; and that to the latter it has frequently been among the first steps that led to their ruin. The love of praise was planted in your nature, not that you might be the slave of vanity, affectation, and ceremoniousness; but that you might seek after goodness, shed new light upon the world, and point the way to a Divine life. Seek therefore to deserve the approbation of the wise and good, rather than to gain general approbation. Seek to possess the approbation of your own conscience; to commend yourselves to God; to receive at last the plaudits of your Saviour and Judge. _TENACITY OF PURPOSE._ How seldom does a woman give up an object which she has resolved to attain, and how rarely does she fail in obtaining her end. Obstacles which would completely overwhelm the other sex, only quicken her zeal and double her diligence. The inexorable determination of Lady Macbeth absolutely makes us shrink with a terror in which interest and admiration are strangely blended. “I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it were smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn, as you Have done to this.” If it be objected that Lady Macbeth is only a fiction—the sternly magnificent creation of the poet; we reply, that in the whole compass of Shakespeare’s works, there is not one character untrue to nature. True it is, no women in these civilized times murder sleeping kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? No women who mock at air-drawn daggers; in sarcastic mood let fall the word coward; and disdain the visionary terrors that haunt their vacillating husbands? There are, and many of them too—unlike Lady Macbeth—full of virtue and integrity.