are not able to discriminate sufficiently between vice and folly. There is nothing a woman can less tolerate in a man than slowness. Now, it is impossible to be fast and good! Ah! if the big whiskers, and the all-rounders, and the peg-tops, and the shiny boots, and the empty pate, and the foolish talk, were all ! But it is not all. I want you, interesting, beautiful, romantic young ladies, to reflect at what a price this swashing outside, these manly virtues, comprised in that significant phrase 'knowledge of the world,' are bought; at what a cost of valuable time, of health, and the engrafting of habits and tastes which may never be eradicated, all those amusing slang words, which even you are not ashamed to use at second-hand, after brother Tom and cousin Edward, were picked up.

A young lady, in her own unsophisticated innocence, before she has been out too many seasons, paints a model husband, and endows him with the most incongruous and antagonistic qualities. He is to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove. The small talk which he lavishes on her is the intuition of his genius, under the inspiration of her beauty. He never talks like this to other women. He is to be brave as a lion, "sudden and quick in quarrel;" but he was never in any midnight rows he never "floored" a policeman, nor slept in the station-house! In short, to all the knowledge of "a man about town" he is to unite the ideal purity, the correct principles and guileless nature of a well-trained maiden. Truly a delightful monster! And what a splendid husband he will make! He will come home from his office or his counting-house, after a hard day's work, never tired or in bad humour; he will never wish to put on his slippers or stay at home unless his wife is that way inclined. On the contrary, he will be eager to take her in search of excitement to the ball or opera,

or some pleasant tea-party, where two-thirds of the company are unmarried ladies who have passed their "first youth."

Many good people will be shocked at the statement, but it is no less a fact, that vast numbers of young men periodically embrace dissipation as a matter of course, and so become habituated to, and hardened in vice, before they are old enough to conceive its moral enormity.

Why should this be so? Allowing for all the ebullition of youthful energy-allowing for all the prejudices of the world respecting the sowing of wild oats-allowing for all the temptations to which youth is subjected, I still think that much of this great evil might be prevented if more pains were taken to make home happier, and the domestic circle more cheerful. Especially ought women to try and remove that gulf which appears to open between the male and female mind; which intellectual disunion I am now about to examine more in detail.

CHAPTER II.

EDUCATION OF MEN FAR SUPERIOR TO THAT OF WOMEN.

IN ascribing the errors of men in a certain degree to the want of sympathy from their female relatives, I do not in reality reproach women: I simply reflect upon and call the attention of my readers to a faulty system of education which appears to aim at rendering the mental capacity and intellectual pursuits of men and women as diverse and incompatible as possible, instead of seconding nature. We constantly repeat that women were intended to be companions for men, capable of sharing their best and most elevated thoughts; yet we educate as if they were merely to be playthings in moments of leisure. it is true, as many people suppose, that the mental capacities of women are inferior to those of men, that would be no authority for the remarkable diversity of training.

If

"That there is a difference," says Sydney Smith, "in the understanding of men and women we every day meet with, everybody we suppose must perceive; but there is none which may not be accounted for by the difference of circumstances in which they have been placed, without referring to any conjectural differences of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one half of these creatures and train them to a particular set of actions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understand

ings will differ as one or other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into deeper or more abstract reasoning in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon."

The truth of these remarks may be proved by observing brothers and sisters while still within the precincts of the nursery. If there is any intellectual difference discernible at that tender age, it is in the superior quickness of the girl compared with the boy. The superiority of the female intellect in youth has been asserted by some to be incontestable evidence of the inferior mental capacity of women, since the mind comes to maturity so much earlier, in the same manner as the sapling grows quicker than the oak. It may, however, be partly ascribed to the effect of education; as girls are kept more at home, and associate more with their elders, there is a tendency to an earlier elaboration of thought than in boys.

On the commencement of school-days, a great and decisive change begins. The superiority of the instruction allotted to the boy is soon apparent; and as year after year adds to his judgment, and his power of acquiring and appreciating the classics and the various branches of natural philosophy-as his ambition awakens and whispers to him what great things genius and perseverance may accomplishthe grand privilege of being born a man-child becomes apparent. The birthright of sex opens to him a thousand avenues to the true enjoyment of life and fulfilment of duties. He may leap over the barriers of prejudice, soar above the social distinctions of caste and rank; while to woman is only granted a comparative sufferance of the position in which she finds herself—a lot broadly divisible into splendid and mischievous idleness, cruel and debasing toil.

The boy leaves home. What words can adequately picture the blessed influence exerted over the young spirit by the fireside circle that little domestic community over which presides gentle, benign woman-where female society has its purest and most profound effect, making the words mother, sister, beloved names for ever? What man has not oft wandered back in memory from the busy occupations of active life, to that diminutive paradisethat bright oasis in the desert, with all its sweet associations-where were born those principles of humanity, love, beauty, religion, which enable the heart to defy all the rude and defiling contact of the world?

That calm, family life, with all its gorgeous poetic colourings, its heavenward aspirations, its spiritual pinings-its enrapturing visions, entrancing hopesits beautiful illusions, its serene joys, its disinterested affection, its affecting faith in the world and virtue, its ignorance of evil-finds no rival experience upon earth, with one only exception-the dream of first love. These two are shadowy types of

Heaven.

Well did Wordsworth write

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy; Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy."

How often does the youth of intelligence return home to meet a barrier placed between him and the sympathy he craves; the joyful anticipations of finding in his mother and sisters, still the guides, associates, intellectual companions, and partakers of his best and most earnest thoughts, subject to bitter disappointment! Can he talk to them of his studies, tell them of his original ideas, speak from the fulness of his heart, pour out the treasures with