“Understanding." From them will result benefits innumerable; this among the rest: they will prevent I know not what affectations, by which many a pretty fool of your sex is daily exposed.

But why be at all this pains? On these points you are under no kind of apprehension; confident that, wherever you appear, you cannot fail of commanding regard, sure that, whenever you are pleased to open those lips, which you have heard so frequently praised, every ear will be attentive, and every heart allured. Indeed? Are ye very confident, very sure?-Take care you be not disappointed. It is my duty to tell you, whether you will believe it or no, that I have known many a man, who, in the company of women, has applauded that which he inwardly despised; and with hypocritical rapture listened to nonsense, where the speaker was handsome. Obsequiousness and adulation will attend on youth and beauty. But can you be contented with an incense so cheap; an incense offered to a face or to a shape alone; an incense that does not rise from the altar of the heart; an incense, in fine, that is lavished, with an undistinguishing hand, on every insignificant image that happens to be cast in a regular mould, and coloured with a mixture of white and red? Where, alas! is your delicacy? Have you no ingenuous pride? Are you so vain, (pride and vanity are different things,) so very ignorant, after all the admonitions you have received, as still to construe flattery into approbation, and smiles into attachment? But, I intreat you, reflect. When beauty and youth are gone, and go they will-what then? Why, then, all this adulation and obsequiousness will vanish with them; and if you be not adorned with

attractions more substantial and durable, into what neglected things will you have the mortification to sink!

An accomplished woman never can become an object of neglect: she must always remain an object of distinction amongst her acquaintance. When she was young, she might please more; but as even then she pleased chiefly by her mind, she will therefore continue to please still. The discerning few at least will discover in her, beauties which neither the inroads of age, nor the ravages of sickness, can deface. When "declined into "the vale of years," she will still, from the superiority of her character, stand forth an exalted figure. Sense and capacity, joined to worth and sweetness, are exempted from the condition of all things else; which is to lose their influence when they lose their novelty. "The ornament of grace "which Wisdom shall give to thy head," will not appear with less real lustre, when infirmity shall cause that head to shake. "The crown of glory "which she shall deliver to thee," will in Reason's eye receive new dignity from gray hairs: or rather, according to our inspired author, those "6 gray hairs are" themselves " a crown of glory, "being found in the way of righteousness."

Do ye know a woman far advanced in life, but yet farther in virtue and understanding, who with mild insinuation employs them to render wise and happy those about her, especially the young; who for such in particular makes every kind allowance, not forgetting those early days, when she too stood in need of indulgence; who, when her health will permit, takes pleasure in seeing herself surrounded by a circle of youth innocently gay, condescending even to mix in their little sports, and

by a graceful complacency of look, and pleasing remainder of ancient humour, to encourage and promote their harmless amusement? Do you know such a woman? Then speak your opinion freely. Will this youthful circle be in any danger of despising her, because she is old? On the contrary, will they not contend with one another, who shall pay her most veneration, who shall stand highest in her affection? Can you conceive a character more respectable, and at the same time more amiable? What is there good or excellent, to which she will not have it in her power to win them?

And now think of a decayed beauty, who in the height of her bloom, and the career of her conquests, trusted solely to that bloom, and never dreamt of securing those conquests, such as they were, by any thing more solid and abiding. Inexpressibly mortified that both are at an end, she would fain, if possible, keep up the appearance of them still. How? By a constrained vivacity, by a juvenile dress, by that affectation of allurement and importance, which we so readily pardon to the prime of life, but which in its decline is universally condemned as awkward and unnatural. Place her in the young assembly we have just supposed. There let her endeavour to sparkle, as in the days of old; there let her lay traps for admiration amidst the wrinkles of age. How ludicrous, and how melancholy at the same moment! What girl, or what boy of them all, will not be struck with the impropriety? Every mark of decay, every symptom of change, will be traced and examined with acuteness. No part of her figure will be overlooked, not a single slip in her behaviour forgiven: whereas, if warned by the effects of time, she, prudently gave up to her juniors all competition of looks and

show, and studied only to make herself agreeable by her conversation and manners; there is scarcely one of those little critics that would ever reflect upon her years, or that would not be delighted with her good sense and obliging deportment.-No, my young friends, nothing can save you from contempt at that period, if during this you be not at pains to improve your minds. She who is shall, in one sense, and that the best, be always young.

If she should continue single, and her situation, or her choice, should lead her to cultivate but few acquaintance, amongst them she must ever be

loved and valued. If she should be niarried; and to a man of tolerable judgment, with tolerable temper, he will count himself happy in such an associate; he will even be proud of those talents in her which do honour to his election. I have always remarked, that women of capacity and elegance have possessed the hearts of their husbands in a degree which is not common: I mean, where those husbands had any worth or discernment. You will easily imagine, that I suppose the women in question too wise, and too excellent, to affect superiority: or not to give their partners all the credit and consequence possible, on every occasion. tween men and women there is seldom any rivalships in what relates merely to intellect ; nor are the former ever much hurt by any conscious inferiority in that respect, where the latter do not show themselves, especially before company, arrogant or pretending.

Be

I must not forget to subjoin how much the Mental Improvements, now enforced, will contribute to acorn and animate the companion, to direct and dignify the mistress, to accomplish the mother and the friend, to spread a charm over the whole matri

monial state, and to relieve those duller hours that are apt to steal on the most delightful condition of humanity.

Nor can I dismiss this part of the argument, without mentioning what has often appeared to me one very remarkable instance, amongst many that history records, of the transcendant power to captivate and preserve esteem, which Intellectual Accomplishments, worthily exerted, confer upon a woman. It is that of Madam Maintenon, the celebrated favourite and wife of Lewis the Fourteenth.

This monarch, born with strong propensities to pleasure, bred in its very lap, indulged from the beginning in all his passions, early possessed of unlimited power, constantly accustomed to the most exquisite flattery, formerly drunk with success and glory, always courted by the female sex with every art that beauty, wit, or ambition could employ, in his intercourse with them still addicted to novelty and change this very monarch, not yet arrived at the age of fifty, in full health, environed with all the splendour of a most brilliant court, read in little else beside comedies and novels, finds in the conversation of that lady, whose origin was not high, whose fortunes had been always low, and who was now older than himself by several yearsfinds, I say, in her conversation such innocence, such sweetness, such unequalled charms of taste and intelligence, as induce him to break off every engagement of a voluptuous kind, and to enter with her into the most honourable of all connexions, in which he appears to have maintained his fidelity to the last. Madam Maintenon had from her youth. improved herself by reading and the best company, whom her beauty and talents drew about her, in a country where the society of the women is much more