economy; she is no more to him than a housekeeper, a being fit to take the orders of the master, and to be reckoned with the servants.

Ah! to be obliged to descend from the throne, to be treated as a despised woman, after having been treated as an idolised mistress!

Sad day, which sooner or later arrives without having been foreseen. Then supervene bitterness, hatred, vengeance, contempt, adultery. Adultery, which brings in its train scandal and dishonour. The wife separates herself from her husband, or she deceives him. The heart requires love. Youth will seize again its lost emotions; one seeks that other half of oneself of which one has dreamt, and the depravation commenced by the husband is completed in the arms of a lover.

its name.

After a similar picture, is it necessary to say that it is not the woman who should be instructed by means of the husband, it is the husband who should be regenerated by means of the wife. What, then, is to be done? Restore women to the complete sense of their dignity, and teach them to distinguish true love from the fury which usurps The first point is that they should be loved and respected; that they should on no account consent to the deplorable part imposed upon them by our brutal passions; that they should learn how degrading is the homage which would transform them into instruments of caprice and of pleasure. I will dare to say it, there is no possible progress for civilization so long as women have not made us blush at those gross assimilations which even good company thus enumerates :-Wine, dinners, women, horses -sad catalogue of the pleasures of the brute by which man blasts the very bosom which bore him.

But how can they make us blush at such things, if they do not blush themselves? Let the most exquisite delicacy

be, then, in a young girl, the light of her modesty,-as in a young woman it is the evidence of her dignity. It is not the grimaces of prudery, it is virtue that I require. In rendering seduction more difficult, I would render love purer and more ideal; I would leave it the illusions, which charm our youth, and introduce it for the first time into the world of the beautiful and the infinite.

Thus should be accomplished the education of girls; and as to the education of the husband, we need not be under any apprehension-it will form itself simply and naturally from the virtues of the wife.

CHAPTER IX.

OF SOME MODIFICATIONS

NECESSARY IN THE EDUCA

TION OF GIRLS.

"On doit inculquer a chaque moment dans la tête d'une jeune fille, qu'elle est destinée a faire le bonheur d'un homme: son genre d'education doit être de lui en inspirer le gout en y attachant sa gloire."

MADAME BERNIER, Discours sur l'Education des Femmes.

MARRIAGE is accused of all the evils which I have sketched an unjust accusation; marriage is good; it is our methods of education which are bad. Whatever, therefore, would amend these methods would render the state of marriage more happy. What is required? only a very simple thing, but which has not yet been tried; viz. to accustom us from our childhood to all the thoughts and

sentiments which are to fill up our lives. I would wish above all to fix the attention of young girls on the choice of their husbands; educate them for this choice: impress deeply in their souls the characters of true love, in order that they may not be deceived by whatever has only its appearance.

Are they not made for loving? Should not this happiness extend itself throughout their whole life? Is it not at the same time their supremacy, their power, and their destiny? And yet the old conventual prejudices which abhor love still subsist in families. Mothers forget, in the presence of their children, the perils with which this narrow education surrounds them, the illusions to which their ignorance gives birth, and the weaknesses which follow these illusions. To open the soul of young girls to true love is to arm them against the corrupting passions which usurp its name; and here the advantage is two-fold, for by exalting the loving faculties of the soul, you in some measure paralyse the tumultuous passions of the senses.

Examine the first choice of a young girl. Amongst all the qualities which please her in a lover, there is perhaps not one which would be suitable in a husband; and, in fact, she frequently sees little else of him she loves than the beauty of his form, or perhaps the elegance of his dress. Is not this, then, the most complete condemnation of our systems of education? From an apprehension of too strongly affecting the heart, we conceal from women all that is worthy of love; we allow the sense of the beautiful which exists in them to be lost among futilities; the outside pleases them; what is within is unknown. When, therefore, after having been united for six months, they look for the delightful young man whose presence charmed them, they are often very much surprised to find in his place only an impertinent fellow or a fool. Yet this is

what is commonly termed in the world a marriage of inclination.

It is true, that in the present state of our manners, young girls are seldom called upon to make their choice; their imagination is occupied, not with the husband, but with marriage. Whence it results that most girls have marriage for their object, without thinking much about the husband. On their part, the parents seek to match the fortunes; their aim, say they, is to secure the futurity of their children, and, absorbed with this idea, they treat of marriage as of an affair of commerce-as of a thing which gives a position in the world-forgetting that it is likewise a thing which causes happiness or unhappiness. Thus our foolish wisdom has succeeded in detaching love from marriage: we have made a bargain by which girls purchase the power of regulating the expenses of their household, of going out alone, and of seeking in the circle around them that half of their soul, that ideal being which youth dreams of, and will possess.

For, how much soever our educations may succeed in suppressing our inclinations, they cannot destroy them; man and woman are the same being, whom nature unconquerably tends to unite by love.

The actual system is then but a deception; it removes the danger from the paternal roof, to transport it to that of the husband. Singular education! the chief aim of which is to throw upon another the heavy load of our want of foresight.

Thus, in the present state of matters, young girls are unable to make a proper choice for want of experience, and the choice of parents is almost always bad for want of the recollection of what is required in youth. We are placed between two evils, without any chance of good.

In order to extricate ourselves from such a deplorable

position, there is but one means, which consists of giving at the same time to girls more freedom and more enlightenment. I would imprint in their souls an ideal model of all human perfections, and teach them to subject their inclinations to the guidance of this model. While destroying their state of half-slavery, I would accustom them to rely upon their own powers, which is of more importance as regards the stability of their virtues than is generally supposed; by developing in them the innate sense of moral beauty, I would accustom them to seek for it everywhere, and to prefer it before all. Love need then, no longer be feared; this flame, which consumes, would then be no more than the flame which enlightens and vivifies.

We shall examine farther on, how the sense of the beautiful, this powerful spring of moral education, is to be developed : I say developed, for the sentiment exists within us; it is this which colours the anticipations and desires of youth, and which leads us in our youthful games and friendships to imagine things of which we never see the reality. It is this which causes the poet and the painter to seize nature in her brightest, her most touching, and lively impressions. It is this, in fine, which, on reading Plutarch, transports the child into the regions of heroic life, when, having scarcely left his mother's lap, he despises the crimes by which thrones are acquired, and worships the virtue which leads to death.