agreeable and estimable women are to be found among those who have seen most of the world. But are these most likely to be happy in the retirement of that domestic life, which is the destiny of ninety nine women in a hundred? _If they are not_, then far too much has been sacrificed for “elegant manners.” _If they are_, should we not see many more of them to unsettle our faith in the truth of the general rule, that all who are destined to spend the longest portion of their existence in private life, should necessarily be so educated, as to acquire a decided preference for it, or we do them a great and irreparable injury by giving them a different taste? That such education is altogether incompatible with that which requires much going into company, as one of its essential parts, seems to me as clear as the light of a meridian sun in a cloudless day. It is scarcely in human nature for young ladies who have reigned as the belles of society, as idols in public, to become exemplary, happy matrons in private life. The two characters are so entirely unlike, their tastes, their highest gratifications so entirely dissimilar, that the same persons can rarely, if ever, fill both characters. _When they do they are moral wonders._ The natural modesty of the sex, which always inclines them to shun rather than to seek general admiration; and consequently to prefer home, with all its tranquil pleasures, and rational enjoyments, to the bustle, the notoriety and highly exciting gratifications of the world, will not be altogether subdued in every case, by what is called a fashionable education; but assuredly, there is nothing in any part of the whole process calculated to give this greatest charm of the female character its proper culture and highest embellishment. This embellishment is _piety_ towards God, and active benevolence towards the whole human race. Let me not be misunderstood—let me never be deemed so illiberal, so inexperienced, as to believe that no ladies fashionably educated, can be pious or benevolent, or happy in private life; _no, far from it;_ but I do assert that the whole tendency of fashionable education is to prevent their being either. It is, in truth, as little suited to the things of time, as to those of eternity. A very brief argument, I think, will prove this assertion to be true.