CHAP. V.

IN Dr. Gregory's Legacy to his Daughters, he says, "the love of dress is natural to you, and therefore it is proper and reasonable." Is the first part of this sentence true, and if so, is the conclusion just? We inherit many things from nature, which, so far from being either reasonable or proper, need to be checked and suppressed. I have already said that a little girl of three years old has no more vanity than a boy of the same age; that he has quite as much as she has, and that it is taught to both, wherever it exists, for vanity is not an inherent fault. Except some gaudy colour which attracts the eye, a child knows no difference between

into slovenliness, and carelessness of appearance of the two evils, I scarcely know which is the greatest; still. I think it is the former." They are both evils, and both should be avoided. Slovenliness and negligence of attire involve so many things utterly destructive of domestic happiness, that positive vice cannot do more mischief; indeed, it is a positive vice, as involving what must be called such. Personal negligence in a woman leads to negligence in household affairs, and this may bring ruin on herself and her family. On the contrary, at tention to personal neatness leads to a love of domestic order, and domestic order is the spring of order in the world at large. Here again we are reminded how much is placed in the hands and in the power of WOman. Though the saying be homely, there is truth in it, that "cleanliness is next to godliness." Neatness and cleanliness should not exist in outward shew merely; they should reign through every thing. We pay a sorry compliment to those we live with, when we

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dress to receive strangers, and are utterly regardless of our appearance with them. Affection and respect are kept alive by attention to matters of apparently inferior import. Slatternly wives have been the subjects of many a satire, and of many a serious remonstrance: they deserve every odium that can be poured upon them. We do not want a Dean Swift to disgust us with the filthy pictures of an imagination delighting in nastiness; but if women are called to the exercise of domestic virtues, they are called to the unremitting observance of cleanliness and neatness: these keep alive affection, virtue, and happiness; attention to them should form a material branch in the education of young females. In giving instruction, the aid of example should be added. A writer on Education, speaking of a governess (and it is equally suitable to a mother), says of her appearance to her pupils, "she should never be seen in their company until she is dressed for the day; and no matter how plain, so as it is decent:

and good sense will point out the reasons for this part of her conduct, namely, to prevent in her pupils that slovenly practice so common among young women, of not appearing to the best advantage in the morning, a species of idleness which, if contracted in youth, seldom wears off in advanced years." No: as the spring is, so will be the other seasons: if it be without buds, the summer will have no beauty; there will be no abundance in autumn, no provision for winter. Train up a young girl to habits of simplicity, cleanliness, neatness and order, and in her advanced life she will not depart from them.

Young women have been represented as vain of personal charms; but this, too, they learn from the folly of instructors and those around them. Beauty exists merely in the ideas that people form of it; and there is a diversity of opinion on the subject, among all the nations of mankind. Beauty is an attraction; but let young women be instructed

that it ceases to charm when unaccompanied by grace and virtue: where there is a fairexterior, let it be the study, instead of giving birth to vanity, that it may enclose as fair a mind. Where the features are plain, let virtue adorn them with a beauty that shall never fade. A gentleman in France walking through a gallery of portraits, stopped before that of a most beautiful woman; he was struck with its loveliness, but said at the same time, "lovely as that countenance is, there is an expression in it which gives me a feeling of horror." On enquiry, he found it was that of the celebrated Madame Brinvilliers, who was executed for the murder of her husband, and who, before her death, confessed crimes innumerable and dreadful. I have seen a beautiful face so disfigured with evil passions, that not a trace of beauty remained in it; and the most homely face that I ever saw, is one which I always contemplate with pleasure, from the mind which shines through it. Dr. Fordyce, in his Sermons to Young Women,