virtue formed? He must necessarily return a mere coxcomb, and an infidel of the most profligate kind. There has been a difference of opinion with respect to the countries which a traveller should visit. Now

if I meant to form a philosopher, he should study chiefly among the uncivilized parts of mankind, where he would have an opportunity of seeing more of nature; but the citizen and statesman should spend the greatest part of his time in the civilized parts of Europe; and after seeing Holland, Germany, France, and Italy, he should, if it were equally easy and expeditious, see China also. Priestley.

CHAPTER XXV.

Dress.

IN your clothes avoid too much gaudy; do not value yourself upon an embroidered gown; and remember that a reasonable word or an obliging look will gain you more respect than all your fine trappings. This is not said to restrain you from a decent compliance with the world, provided you take the wiser, and not the foolisher part of your sex for your sex for your pattern. Some. distinctions are to be allowed whilst they are well-suited to your quality and fortune; and in the distribution of the expense, it seemeth to me that a full attendance and well-chosen ornaments for your house will make you a better figure than too much glittering in what you wear,

which may with more ease be imitated by those that are below you. Yet this must not tempt you to starve every thing but your own apartments, or in order to more abundance there, give just cause to the least servant you have, to complain of the want of what is necessary. Above all fix it in your thoughts as an unchangeable maxim, that nothing is truly fine but what is FIT, and that just so much as is proper for your circumstances, of their several kinds, is much finer than all you can add to it. When you once break through these bounds, you launch into a wide sea of extravagance. Every thing will become necessary because you have a mind to it; and you have a mind to it, not because it is fit for you, but because somebody else hath it.-Marq. Halifax's Advice.

Teach your daughters not to hazard their own souls and those of others, by their foolish vanity. Inspire them with an aversion for naked bosoms and all immodesty in dress; for though they may adopt these fashions without any bad intentions, yet their complying with them at all shows too great love of admiration. Can vanity justify before God or man a conduct so scandalous, so indelicate, and so prejudicial to others? When women endeavour to please by these means, do they not wish to excite the passions of the other sex, and after such behaviour can they expect to be able to check the impertinence and freedom of the men? Should they not take the consequences to themselves, and are not the passions generally ungovernable when once awakened? Thus they prepare a sub

tile and mortal poison, which they administer indiscriminately to every spectator, and yet fancy them. selves free from guilt.

Enforce your advice by pointing out the difference between those women whose modesty has made them respectable, and those whose immodesty has caused their ruin. Above all, do not permit your daughters to dress above their station: tell them to what dangers it will expose them, and how much it will make them despised by all respectable and sensible people.

Fenelon.

There is a certain dress suitable to every station, which to neglect would be sinking into meanness, and be a disrespect to those we live among: that then should be regarded, and that alone; for all above should be made indifferent to us. Happiness is in the mind, and to improve the mind is the way to reach it. Happiness does not consist in enlarging our possessions, but in contracting our desires. Nothing therefore can be more dangerous in the education of children, than the cherishing in them a passion for dress, especially the raising them above their abilities.

It is a general observation, that ordinary people dress their children finer than people of fashion; but parents are not aware how destructive this false pride, this vain mistaken fondness is to their children; and the first effect it has on them is to make them ashamed of their parents, those very people who thus mislead them. Can people who take these steps wonder their children are not good, wonder they are proud, vain,

and untoward, when they themselves have made them so?-Nelson.

I freely acknowledge that I love to see a woman genteelly habited, if her situation admit of it; but splendour without gentility, as well in this as in every other article where ornament is concerned, will ever seem poor and insipid to all but untaught and vulgar spirits; whereas on the other side it is certain, that the latter may very well subsist without the former; nor is its effect ever felt more strongly or more happily, than when it receives no assistance from the other, but results solely from our perceptions of elegant simplicity, an object which appears to me deserving of more attention than is commonly paid to it.

In the article of dress young women should let their judgment be seen, by joining frugality and simplicity together, in being never fond of finery, in carefully distinguishing between what is glaring and what is genteel, in preserving elegance with the plainest habit, in wearing costly array but seldom, and always with ease; a point that may be attained by her, who has learned not to think more highly of herself for the richest raiment she can put on. Be assured it is thus you will captivate most and please longest. By pursuing this plan you will preserve an equality in that great indispensable article of neatness. You will be clean, and you will be easy; nor will you be in danger of appearing butterflies one day, and slatterns the next. You will be always ready to receive your friends without seeming to be caught, or being at all disconcerted

on account of your dress. How seldom is that the case amongst the flatterers of the age! I wish we could say amongst them only. For young ladies of more sobriety to be found so often slovenly, I might have said downright squalid and nasty, when no visitors are expected, is most particularly shameful.

Were a young woman now-a-days, from a peculiar sense of the sacredness and refinement of female virtue, to appear with any very singular severity in her dress, she would hardly, I fear, escape the charge of affectation; a charge which every prudent woman will avoid as much as possible.

But let the licence of the age be what it will, I must needs think that, according to every rule of duty and decorum, there ought ever to be a manifest difference between the attire of a virtuous woman and that of one who has renounced every title to that honourable name. It were indelicate, it is unnecessary to explain this difference. In some respects it is sufficiently discerned by the eye of the public, though I am sorry to say not sufficiently attended to by the generality of women themselves. If in other respects it be not seen or do not strike, the cause I apprehend must be that declension from the strictness of morals, which was hinted at a moment before; a declension that would have shocked pagans themselves in the purest state of ancient manners, when prostitutes were compelled to wear a particular garb, by which they were distinguished from women of virtue.-Fordyce.