cery was authorized to decree a divorce a mensa, on the complaint of the husband, and that provision is deemed to be in force, notwithstanding the general provision in the Revised Laws confining that remedy to the wife." Again he remarks, "these qualified divorces are regarded as rather hazardous to the morals of the parties. In the language of the English courts, it is throwing the parties back upon society, in the undefined and dangerous characters of a wife without a husband, and a hus. band without a wife. The ecclesiastical law has manifested great solicitude on this subject, by requiring in every decree of separation, an express monition to the parties,' to live chastely and continently, and not, during each other's life, contract matrimony with any other person,' and security was formerly required from the party suing for the divorce to obey the mandate. The statute allows the husband, on such a bill by the wife, for ill conduct, to show, in his defence, and in bar of the suit, a just provocation in the ill behaviour of the wife, and this would have been a good defence, even without the aid of the statute. And on these separations from bed and board, the courts intrusted with the jurisdiction of the subject, will make suitable provision for the support of the wife and children, out of the husband's estate, and enforce the decree by sequestration; and the Chancellor, in New York, may exercise his discretion in the disposition of the infant children, and vary or annul the same from time to time as circumstances may require."

EDUCATION OF AMERICAN FEMALES.

So much has been written of late on the subject of female edu. cation, that it is with great reluctance that we venture to offer a few considerations, suggested by considerable observation and an acquaintance with the methods of study pursued in our female boarding schools.

We suppose that it will be admitted, that the object of education is, or ought to be, to prepare for the future duties of life; and making this the standard, if we do not find that our mothers and grandmothers were better educated than females of the present day, we shall at least discover, that our present system is much

of it based in error; for so far from preparing girls for the duties of active life, it often actually unfits them for such duties. We are hardly old enough to look back half a century; but we are old enough, at least, to remember our good old grandmother, and a few of her honoured associates; and we cannot but contrast their sterling qualities and substantial virtues, with the tinsel glitter, and superficial accomplishments of the modern victim of boarding-school instruction. A lady of the old school was cheerful and affable; easy, yet dignified in her manners; pious, without superstition, enthusiasm, or ostentation; patient to endure hardships and privations; meek and resigned under affliction; frank and open-hearted; kind to the poor; hospitable to all; her chief aim and end of living seemed to be, to make all around her happy and contented; smiles of benevolence, and soft words of kindness, made her an object of affection to all, even when old age had silvered her head, and clothed her face with wrinkles; she never out-lived the love and esteem of her family and friends, for she never survived her good nature and her amiability; in short, she was educated for her station; with learning enough to instruct her children, and render her society agreeable ; she was what she seemed, and she seemed what she was. To her husband, she was truly a help-meet, aiding him by her advice and counsel, (for she had common sense) soothing him under misfortune; encouraging him under difficulties; rejoicing with him in success; nothing could conquer her fortitude; though gentle as the zephyr in times of peace and security, yet when dangers threatened and thickened around, she showed the greatness of her soul by standing unmoved and unnerved, even in the times "that tried men's souls," and she sent forth her husband and her sons to fight for her altars and her hearth; and when peace came, "she loved them for the dangers they had passed," and they loved her, for the noble sacrifices she had made, and the cheerful patience she had manifested. Such were our Puritan grandmothers,—such the mothers of the Revolution.

The fashionable lady of the present day!—what is her charac. ter? Too often a compound of pride, vanity, affectation, and selfishness. She has had "advantages," and been taught the whole circle of accomplishments; she has had her governess, till old enough to enter a boarding-school, and there she has learned

music perhaps, without an ear, and singing without a voice; been taught to speak bad French, and worse Italian; to trace Chinese figures, and sketch butterflies in Indian fashion; to gild, enamel, varnish, draw, embroider, and paint in every style; to waltz, go through a quadrille, or dance a fandango; to ogle, faint, and languish; to affect sentiment, though too heartless to feel it; to feign sensibility, though her whole soul is absorbed by selfishness. She is educated! She has been conducted through the whole cyclopædia of the arts and sciences, and gained a superficial smattering of all; but she has not learned how to think; she has perhaps skill for the piano and the harp; a memory for words; a taste for display; but she has a soul which sleeps. For literature, she has no fondness; for knowledge, no love; for improvement, no desire; her mind is a blank. Lessons have been considered the end of her education: for principles of conduct, and rules of action, there has been no place. Master has succeeded to master, class to class. Her mind has been overgorged. Is it strange there should have been no digestion? But she has had facilities, and the road to learning has been smoothed and made easy. Grammar was found too dry, and was therefore, perhaps superseded; the dictionary was irksome, so the interlinear translation was substituted; the classic author was obscure, so recourse was had to a lucid paraphrase, or the elegant abridgment. "Be the nut ever so hard," says Mrs. Sandford, "the kernel is extracted. Our very babies may suck the sweets of Froissart, Robertson, and Hume, and follow with infantile curiosity, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand." With a love of pleasure, an ignorance of the world, a conceited opinion of her talents and accomplishments, a desire to love, and be loved, she goes into society, and here perhaps she soon experiences, to her sorrow, the truth of the maxim of Lady Blessington, "The whole system of female education tends more to instruct women to allure, than to repel; yet how infinitely more essential is the latter art! As rationally might the military disciplinarian limit his tuition to the mode of assault, leaving his soldiery in entire ignorance of the tactics of defence." How to regulate her heart and her affections, where to bestow her love, alas! these have constituted no part of her education, and now she needs such knowlege. She shines perhaps as a

linguist, a pianist, a danseuse, an artiste; she attracts; she fascinates; she is admired. For this she was educated; for this much money and time have been expended; for this her health has been sacrificed. But the means have been mistaken for the end; she has acquired the power to dazzle and to charm; but she knows not where to bestow her affections, where to give her hand in marriage, nor how to perform the duties consequent on that relation. She is about to undertake duties only to neglect them; to incur responsibilities of whose existence she never before thought, and therefore with an utter inability to meet them.

But even this superficial medley is not acquired without great physical suffering, and in a large majority of cases, bodily deformity. In consequence of want of exercise, and tight-lacing, debility of the body ensues; the spine becomes crooked, with one shoulder higher than the other, and a general languor of all the animal and vital functions follows. We have examined some boarding schools in reference to this subject, and found but very few, where the inmates for a year, were not generally more or less deformed. Some had scrofula, some head-ache, some indigestion, some palpitation; nearly all were pale, of lax fibre, had crooked backs and were very nervous. The study and recita. tion rooms and sleeping apartments, are in general badly ventilated, and the consequences of breathing impure air, are felt through life. Here is laid the foundation, in bodily debility, of such frequent cases of consumption, and deaths in child bed, among our educated females. "A dress-maker," says Miss Sedg

wick in her excellent little work, Means and Ends, " in extensive business in the City of New York, once said to me, 'can you tell me the reason why every young lady that comes to me to have a dress made, is deformed?' "Deformed." 'Yes, one shoulder blade projects more than the other. My children are not so, nor the children of other poor people.'" Boys are not thus deformed; but then boys are not shut up for months or years, and allowed no exercise, but a formal funeral procession once a day or once a week. But the means resorted to, for the cure of spinal distortions and deformities, are as absurd, irrational and cruel, as the discipline and confinement, by which they were incurred. The poor girl is sent, perhaps, into the country, to some noted spine-doctor, who has taken up his abode in the vicinity

of some celebrated boarding school, knowing that to such an institution, he must look for his patients, if he gets any. There she finds stocks for her hands and her feet; pulleys for her head and neck; screws, weights, engines, inclined planes, steel-bars, and iron corsets, for her body and her limbs. She is deprived of what little power of motion she had before; and by pulling, stretching, compressing and padding, her muscles lose all their contractile properties; her organs, their natural functions; and in all probability she is tortured into consumption, or made a cripple for life. Such is the frequent result, of city boarding school instruction. But to return-let us follow a little farther the modern, fashionable young lady.

She selects a lover; but of all his qualities, there is not one which would be valuable in a husband. He is gay, and polished in his manners, dashing and bold in his deportment, lavish in expenditure, fond of pleasure, of routs, assemblies, theatres, horseracing, gambling, (not for money,) in short, he is a handsome, fashionable, young man, and exceedingly well adapted for the husband of a fashionable young lady. They have come together, by a sort of natural magnetism; happy will it be, if the poles be not changed, and repulsion succeed attraction. The eye is captivated, and the exterior pleases; that is enough. The result is, that six month's acquaintance transforms the beau-ideal into a fool or coxcomb; and the happy couple, to use an expression of Lady Blessington's, have to "pay for a month of honey, with a life of vinegar." They live but to regret the past, com. plain of the present, and indulge false hopes for the future.

It has been suggested, with great justice, that these injudicious and unhappy matches arise from the entire banishment of all thoughts of love from education, and that it is therefore the duty of the teacher, to endeavour to engrave on the soul, a model of virtue and excellence, and to teach young females to regulate their affections by an approximation to this model. That young ladies of great worth and beauty, often become the victims of fancied perfections, by their own blindness and ignorance, is a fact of every day observation; but would this be the case, were they taught to appreciate only what is intrinsically excellent in human character, and to view with repugnance a union not founded on such a basis?