Nor is this all; the employments of our sex lead us of necessity away from the fireside. Were they ever so favorable to quiet excellence, we should be compelled, for the livelihood of our families, to absent ourselves, a large proportion of our lives, from this sphere of duty. But woman passes her days within the walls of domestic retirement. That is her accustomed scene of toil. In the temptations that befall her relatives abroad, she is not present. But where thoughtfulness comes, where good resolutions are formed, where the tears of penitence are shed, in that sacred retreat where man finds his only refuge for prayer, for self-examination, and for the culture of the spiritual life, there woman habitually dwells. From this circumstance, joined to her native susceptibilities, she is pre-eminently qualified to preside over and foster the fireside virtues. Who has not seen the unbelieving husband sanctified, made serious and holy, by the believing wife? Where a free intercourse on the subject of religion exists between them, it can hardly be that man is not softened, his thoughts withdrawn at times from the world, and the concerns of the soul, infinite and eternal considerations, brought home to his heart by the power of his nearest earthly friend. Sometimes, alas! she, whose whole nature and whose entire condition seem but one lesson to awaken piety, has given her influence against it. By a worldly disposition, by a neglect of the means of religion, or by indifference to the most solemn themes, and an habitual levity of character and speech, the wife has been known to check the best aspirations of her husband, and reduce his spirit to the same low, earthly level with her own. She has fastened the more firmly around him, that chain, which the love of riches, or a thirst for fame, had already drawn till it corroded his immortal part. And when God has spoken to his conscience, and rebuked him for his iniquity, what better plea was at hand than this, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat"?