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health would be destroyed, your minds would run waste, you would grow up slothful, selfish, a trouble to others, and burdensome to yourselves.

8. Submit, then, cheerfully, to your parents. Have you not experienced their goodness long enough to know that they. wish to make you happy, even when their commands are most severe? Prove, then, your sense of their goodness, by doing cheerfully what they require. When they oppose your wishes, do not think that you have more knowledge than they. Do not receive their commands with a sour, angry, sullen look, which says, louder than words, that you obey only because you dare not rebel. If they deny your requests, do not persist in urging them; but consider how many requests they have already granted you. Consider that you have no claim upon them, and that it will be base and ungrateful for you, after all their tenderness, to murmur and complain.

9. Fourthly, you must further express your respect, affection, and gratitude, by doing all in your power to assist and oblige your parents. Children can very soon make return for the kindness they receive. Every day, you can render your parents some little service, and often save them many cares, and sometimes not a little expense. There have been children, who in early life, have been great supports to their sick, poor and helpless parents. This is the most honorable way in which you can be employed. You must never think too highly of yourselves, to be unwilling to do anything for those who have done so much for you. You should never let your amusements take such a hold of your minds, as to make you slothful, backward and unwilling, when you are called to serve your parents.

10. Fifthly, you should express your respect for your par ents, and your sense of their kindness and superior wisdom, by placing unreserved confidence in them. This is a very important duty. Children should learn to be honest, sincere, and upen-hearted to their parents. An artful, hypocritical child is one of the most unpromising characters in the world. You should have no secrets which you are unwilling to disclose to your parents. If you have done wrong, you should openly

confess it, and ask that forgiveness which a parent's heart is ready to bestow.

11. If you wish to undertake anything, ask their consent. Never begin anything in the hope that you can conceal your design. If you once strive to impose on your parents, you will be led on from one step to another, to invent falsehoods, to practice artifice, till you will become contemptible and hateful. You will soon be detected, and then none will trust you.

12. Lastly, you must prove your respect and gratitude to your parents by attending seriously to their instructions and admonitions, and by improving the advantages they afford you for becoming wise, useful, good and happy forever. You must prove your gratitude to them and to God, by listening respectfully and attentively to what they say; by shunning the temptations of which they warn you, and by walking in the paths they mark out before you. You must labor to answer their hopes and wishes, by improving in knowledge; by being industrious at school; by living peaceably with your companions; by avoiding all profane and wicked language; by fleeing bad company; by treating all persons with respect; by being kind, and generous, and honest; and by loving and serving your Father in Heaven.

13. My young friends, I have now set before you your duties. Let me once more beseech you to honor your father and mother. Ever cling to them with confidence and love. Be to them an honor, an ornament, a solace and a support. Be more than they expect, and if possible, be all that they desire. To you they are now looking with an affection which trembles for your safety. So live, that their eyes may ever fix on you with beams of hope and joy. So live, that the recollection of you may soothe their last hours. May you now walk by their side, in the steps of the Holy Savior; and through his grace, may you meet again in a better and happier world.

LESSON XCV.

FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

HANNAH MORE.

1. A YOUNG lady may excel in speaking French and Italian ; may repeat a few passages from a volume of extracts; play like a professor, and sing like a syren; have her dressing-room decorated with her own drawings, tables, stands, flower-pots, screens, and cabinets; and yet we shall insist that she may have been very badly educated.

2. I am far from meaning to set no value whatever on any or all of these qualifications; they are all of them elegant, and many of them properly tend to the perfecting of a polite education. These things, in their measure and degree, may be done; but there are others which should not be left undone. Many things are becoming, but "one thing is needful." Besides, as the world seems to be fully apprized of the value of whatever tends to embellish life, there is less occasion here to insist on its importance.

3. But, though a well bred young lady may lawfully learn most of the fashionable arts; yet, let me ask, does it seem to be the true end of education, to make women of fashion, singers, players, painters, actresses, sculptors, gilders, varnishers, engravers, and embroiderers?

4. Most men are commonly destined to some profession, and their minds are consequently turned, each to its respective object. Would it not be strange, if they were called out to exercise their profession, or to set up their trade, with only a little general knowledge of the trades and professions of all other men, and without any previous definite application to their own peculiar calling?

5. The profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned, is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families. They should be, therefore, trained with a view to these several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas, and principles, and qualifications, and habits,

ready to be applied and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to each of these respective situations.

6. For though the arts which merely embellish life must claim admiration; yet, when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and sing, and draw, and dress; it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who can reason, and reflect, and feel, and judge, and dis course, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, soothe his sorrows, purify his joys, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.

LESSON XCVI.

FEMALE EDUCATION.

STORY.

1. IF Christianity may be said to have given a permanent elevation to woman, as an intellectual and moral being, it is as true that the present age, above all others, has given play to her genius, and taught us to reverence its influence. It was the fashion of other times to treat the literary acquirements of the sex as starched pedantry, or vain pretension; to stigmatize them as inconsistent with those domestic affections and virtues which constitute the charm of society.

2. We had abundant homilies read upon their amiable weaknesses and sentimental delicacy, upon their timid gentleness and submissive dependence; as if to taste the fruit of knowledge were a deadly sin, and ignorance were the sole guardian of innocence. Most women had no character at all, beyond that of purity and devotion to their families.

3. Admirable as are these qualities, it seemed an abuse of the gifts of Providence to deny to mothers the power of instructing their children, to wives the privilege of sharing the intellectual pursuits of their husbands, to sisters and daughters the delight of ministering knowledge in the fireside circle, to

youth and beauty the charm of refined sense, to age and in firmity the consolation of studies which elevate the soul and gladden the listless hours of despondency.

4. These things have, in a great measure, passed away. The prejudices which dishonored the sex have yielded to the influence of truth. By slow but sure advances, education has extended itself through all ranks of female society. There is no longer any dread, lest the culture of science should foster that masculine boldness and restless independence, which alarms by its sallies, or wounds by its inconsistencies.

5. We have seen that here, as everywhere else, knowledge is favorable to human virtue and human happiness; that the refinement of literature adds luster to the devotion of piety; that true learning, like true taste, is modest and unostentatious; that grace of manners receives a higher polish from the discipline of the schools; that cultivated genius sheds a cheering light over domestic duties, and its very sparkles, like those of the diamond, attest at once its power and its purity.

6. There is not a rank of female society, however high, which does not now pay homage to literature, or that would not blush. even at the suspicion of that ignorance, which, a half century ago, was neither uncommon nor discreditable. There is not a parent, whose pride may not glow at the thought, that his daughter's happiness is in a great measure within her own command, whether she keeps the cool, sequestered vale of life, or visits the busy walks of fashion.

". A new path is thus opened for female exertion, to alleviate the pressure of misfortune, without any supposed sacri fice of dignity or modesty. Man no longer aspires to an exclusive dominion in authorship. He has rivals or allies in almost every department of knowledge; and they are to be found among those whose elegance of manners and blamelessness of life command his respect, as much as their talents excite his admiration.

8. Who is there that does not contemplate with enthusiasm the precious fragments of Elizabeth Smith, the venerable

• Elizabeth Smith; an English poetess of rare classical attainments.

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