It is in the fashionable world that studious women are rarely found, and that they are obliged to hide their worth. Strange tyranny of fortune! It gives women leisure, and deprives them of the right to use it for the development of intellect. It is to you, fashionable women, that industry must be preached. Women less wealthy do not generally need the exhortation. In modest careers, where toil is the necessary condition of domestic well-being, cultivated women are numerous. It is in the homes of artists, scholars, physicians, lawyers, judges, professors, that we most frequently find clever and studious women, conversant with matters of art, possessed of real talent, highly educated, but nicknamed by no one _femmes savantes_, because they are the pride and treasure of home, and ensure by their intelligence, domestic ease and comfort, nay, even a certain delicate luxury that has nothing to do with riches, and can be purchased only by feminine taste. The furniture is pretty in form, and gracefully arranged; engravings recall favorite works of art, and reveal the tastes and preferences of the household. Flowers, pictures, books, music, and pretty work, all show the home to be one much lived in, seldom left, where happiness is to be found. These are not empty and magnificent establishments whose masters are always absent, pursuing pleasure with a feverish activity, and flying from the ennui of their _home_ except when the excitement of refurnishing it attracts them, only to be driven away again when the gilded ottomans are all in place. In these _modest_ lodgings on the third story the mother is surrounded by her children. She brings them up herself. Thank God! she must do so, and great is her reward. She reigns over her children, and they understand her merits and sacrifices, and love their mother tenderly. They soon know the blessing of being born in a rank of life where mothers cannot afford to pay servants, governesses, and tutors to usurp their place. {215} What a difference there is between the two systems of education! The sons rank first at college and at school; the daughters receive superior educations that I would gladly propose as a model to fashionable young ladies. They wish to equal the mother who studies with them, directing and following their work with sympathizing interest. The law of labor weighs more stringently upon a mother than upon any other creature; the soul of her children is the field that she must till by the sweat of her brow; no other persons have received graces to enable them to take her place, and if the most complete educations are to be found in modest households such as I have described, it is owing to maternal industry. How many young people acquire a coarse taste for horses and dogs from the mercenaries who educate them! A mother, in teaching her children, inculcates other tastes and ambitions. Sometimes anxiety takes possession of her soul as she