clear point of view the absurdity of endeavouring to impose upon the world, by practising a cheat too familiar to deceive an idiot, deserve commendation.

Nor are the evils consequent on a life of dissipation the only dangers that young ladies may now dread. In retirement, they are haunted by another species of enemies, no less alarming to their understandings, to their morals, and to their repose. The species of reading, prepared to relieve the toils of dissipation, is faithful to its interests, and is either intended to mislead or to gratify. Under the former description may be ranked all those systems of ethics, and treatises on edu. cation, which are founded on the false doctrine of human perfectibility, and consequently reject the necessity of divine revelation and supernatural agency. Many

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Many elementary works on the sciences come under this description; and by these the young student may learn that she is a free independent being, endowed with energies which she may exert at will, and restrained by no considerations but those which her own judgment may think it expedient to obey. She is taught, that the nature she inherits was originally perfect; that its present disordered state did not arise from an hereditary taint, the consequence of primeval rebellion, but from wretched systems of worldly policy, ill conceived laws, and illiberal restraints; which if happily removed, the human mindwould at once start forth in a rapid pursuit of that perfection which it is fully able to attain. She will hear much praise bestowed on generosity, greatness of soul, liberality, benevolence, and this cast of virtues; but as

their offices and properties would not be clearly defined, and as all reference to the preventing and assisting grace of God, or to the clear explanations which accompany Christian ethics, are systematically excluded from these compositions, it will not be wonderful if the bewildered reader should bestow these titles on the actions of pride, pertinacity, indiscretion, and extravagance. We have seen the effects of these theories on the vacant impetuous mind of uninstructed youth, sufficiently to determine, that, like the pagan corrupters of old times, who "changed the glory of the invisible God into an image made like unto corruptible man," they, while "professing themselves to be wise, have become fools."

But we will suppose a young woman happily free from the metaphysical mania, and influenced by no inordinate C 2 desire

desire to distinguish herself among her companions by the disgusting affectation of superior knowledge; I mean by this, a common character, who is willing to slide with the world; who reads to kill time; who adopts the opinions that she hears, and suffers the passing scene to flit by her without much anxiety, or much reflection. Unengaging as this character is, I confess that I greatly prefer it to the petticoat philosophist, who seeks for eminence and distinction in infidelity and scepticism, or in the equally monstrous extravagancies of German morality. Women of ordinary abilities were in former times confined to their samplers or their confectionary; and surely they were as well employed in picking out the seeds of currants, or in stitching the "tale of Troy divine," as now, when they are dependant on

the

the circulating library for means to overcome the tedium of a disengaged day. Novels, plays, and perhaps a little poetry, are the limits of their literary researches. Shall we inquire what impressions romantic adventures, high-wrought scenes of passion, and all the turmoil of intrigue, incident, extravagant attachment, and improbable vicissitudes of fortune, must make upon a vacant mind, whose judgment has not been exercised either by real information, or the conclusions of experience and observation? The inferences that we must draw are selfevident.

Let us introduce a third possibility, and suppose a young woman well-isposed, and possessed of such a superficial knowledge of religion as the fashion of the present day, and the time allotted to the acquisition of po