Educate yourself at home and in private. By fireside fidelity the soul is expanded and our being lifted toward God. View your relative connections as each a Heaven-sent teacher. Incline your ear to them, as if through their lips an oracle uttered its decrees in your hearing. By your Reading, much may be accomplished toward correcting your taste, enlarging your intellectual vision, and sanctifying your spirit. Form now the habit of daily reading some volume with reference to your personal improvement. Let no engagement seriously interrupt this practice. Read the writings of your own sex. Woman takes up her pen, usually, from the promptings of sympathy and affection. The temple she builds to literature, may have an altar consecrated to reason, or to imagination; but it is love, a high and holy love, which she inscribes on its portals. Her works thus not only elevate the taste but amend the heart. Woman is addicted to the eager perusal of works of fiction. I regard this fact as an indication of a want of her nature. Not, therefore, to eradicate but to control, and direct, and restrain, this propensity, would I make an endeavor. In the words of the afflicted Lady Russell, used on the anniversary of her husband's execution, I would say, "I do not contend with nature, but keep her as innocent as I can." Select only such writings of this class as some judicious friend has recommended. Read poetry. If it be true poetry, it is the twin-sister of religion. It will exalt and ennoble your soul. Study history. From that you will draw unfailing draughts of knowledge and wisdom. Be familiar with good biography. Above all, make the Word of God your constant study. So will you be educated for every stage of your existence, and ripe clusters of virtues will adorn your life. But louder than those of books are the praises of Meditation. Reflect on your reading. Let each line raise a rivulet on the bosom of your being; let there be in it no stagnant waters. Be active in mind; meditate on your daily experience, your prospects, your deficiencies, your progress, your hopes. Wouldst thou have peace in this world, "From the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth; And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and powerful voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds, the life and element." Wouldst thou enjoy peace in the interminable future, "lay these things to thy heart." Then shall thy inward beauties shine with a fadeless refulgence. All true power shall be given thee. Thou shalt be "a lady," not indeed of an earthly kingdom, but of that high realm, boundless as thy desires, and enduring as God. Chapter IV. HOME.