THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN.--How often have I seen a company of men, who were disposed to be riotous, checked all at once into decency by the accidental entrance of an amiable woman; while her good sense and obliging deportment charmed them into at least a temporary conviction that there is nothing so beautiful as female excellence, nothing so delightful as female conversation. To form the manners of men, nothing contributes so much as the cast of the women they converse with. Those who are most associated with women of virtue and understanding will always be found the most amiable characters. Such society, beyond everything else, rubs off the protrusions that give to many an ungracious roughness; it produces a polish more perfect and pleasing than that which is received by a general commerce with the world. This last is often specious, but commonly superficial; the other is the result of gentler feelings, and a more elegant humanity: the heart itself is moulded, and habits of undissembled courtesy are formed.--_Fordyce._ * * * * * OUR ATTACHMENT TO LIFE.--The young man, till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and if needs were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now--shall I confess a truth? I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers’ farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away “like a weaver’s shuttle.” Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity, and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth--the face of town and country--the unspeakable rural solitudes--and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived--to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave! Any alteration on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a terribly fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun and sky, and breeze and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and jests and irony--do not these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt