tears--the affections which belonged to the friendships of our early youth?

I am far from asserting that we may not have friends-true and zealous friends--friends who would protect our reputation as their own, through every stage of life; but they are for the most part such, as having lost their enthusiasm, are become keenly observant of our faults, and strict to correct them, rather than tender and faithful confiders in our virtue such as, wearied with our peculiarities, vainly endeavour to make us submit to the common rule, and finding their endeavours ineffectual, grown niggardly in their charitable allowance for our deviations; not such as looked kindly on our foibles, because they made a part of us, and felt if we were better, that they could not love us more: such as freely enter into our views and feelings, when in full accordance with their own established notions of what is praiseworthy and prudent; not such as are the last to step forward and tell us we have been in error, purely because they would be the last to give us pain. Such friends as these we should do wisely to keep along with us even to the end of life--they are in fact the only true friends, because they are true to our best interests: but, oh! they are not like the friends who loved us in our early youth!

To return to woman in her girlish days. How beautifully has our own fair poetess, whose lays, mournful as they are musical, remind us of the fabled melody of the dying swan, described the particular yearning of the heart with which the experienced observer regards the tender years of woman.

"Her lot is on you-silent tears to weep,

And patient smiles to wear through suffering's hour,
And sumless riches, from affection's deep,
To pour on broken reeds-a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship-therefore pray!

"Her lot is on you!-to be found untir'd,
Watching the stars out by the bed of pain,
With a pale cheek, and yet a brow inspir'd

With a true heart of hope, though hope be vain !
Meekly to bear with wrong, to cheer decay,

And, Ŏh! to love through all things-therefore pray!"

Trace her experience to the next stage of her existence, and woman is more poetical still; because so long as her youth and beauty inspire admiration--so long as there is anything to be gained by her favour, she is subjected to the deceitful flatteries of man, whom she is naturally desirous to please, not only as her superior, guide, and friend, but as he holds the reins of government, and can therefore deprive her of all or most of her pleasures. As a girl, she was deceived. only by her own heart, she is now deceived by the general aspect of society. Way is made for her to walk forth as a queen, and when suppliants bow before her, no wonder that she should assume the dignity of one, and learn to love the sceptre placed for a moment of mockery in her feeble hand. Trusting and sincere herself, she dreams not of falsehood, and when told that she is beautiful, she looks in the mirror and believes it true. Finding that beauty is the only sure title to the admiration of that sex which it is her wish and her interest to please, she values her personal charms as her richest dower; and if she smiles not from the fulness of a glad heart, but because smiles are lovely, frowns to produce effect, or sighs to excite a momentary interest, it is because she has learned in her intercourse with society that she must be personally, lovely to be beloved, and personally interesting to avoid contempt.

When we think of the falsehood practised towards women, at that season of life when their minds are most capable of receiving impressions, and when their intellectual powers, just arriving at maturity, are most liable to serious and important bias, we can only wonder

that there should be any substantial virtue found amongst them. But as there is a time to sleep, and a time to awake, so there comes to almost all women, a time when their eyes are opened to the truth-when their beauty charms not, and their step is heard without a welcome-when they tune the harp without an audience, and speak unanswered-when they smile without imparting happiness, and frown without exciting alarm-when others step forward to receive the adulation once offered to them, while they are thrust down from their imaginary thrones, by the very hands which supported them in their ascent. Compelled to descend, though sometimes gradually, from the state of ideal exaltation to which she has been raised, woman —weak woman, catches at every slender hold that may break her fall. To the last voice that speaks flatteringly, she listens with an avidity which subjects her to the ridicule of the world; while to the last kind hand that is held out to her, she clings with a despairing energy, an ardent gratitude, which permit her not to perceive its unworthiness. Hence follow the absurdities for which she is more blamed than pitied, and the rash sacrifice of herself, for which she meets with little mercy from the world. But the censor of woman should be a woman herself, to know what it is to have lived in that vortex of falsehood, flattery, and dissipation, which surrounds a young and beautiful female; and then to pass away into the sullen calm of neglect -to have basked in the warm and genial atmosphere of real or pretended affection; and then to "bide the pelting of the pitiless storm," with which envy never fails to assail her whose capability of loving has outlived her charms-to have listened to the voice of adulation, breathing her praises like a perpetual concert all around her; and then to hear nothing but the cold dull language of truth, exaggerated into harshness, or sharpened into reproof-to have lived a charmed life, under the fascination of man's love, in the very centre of all

that constitutes ideal happiness, ministered to on every hand, and feeding, like the butterfly, upon the flowers of life, without a wish ungratified, a thought untold, or a tear unpitied; and then upon the world's bleak desert to stand alone! I repeat, that the censor of woman should be a woman herself-a woman who has been admired, and then neglected.

We have here spoken only of women whose personal charms recommend them to general admiration, because it is of these alone that the poet delights to sing; yet such is the influence of personal admiration in checking the growth of moral and intellectual beauty, and engendering selfishness and vanity, that we are inclined to believe the deep pathos of the feminine heart is to be found in the greatest perfection concealed behind the countenance that has seldom attracted the public gaze. It is in such hearts, whose best offerings are rarely estimated according to their real value, that disinterested affection, in all its natural warmth, lives and burns for the benefit of the suffering or the beloved; that enthusiasm and zeal, tempered down by humility, are ever ready for the performance of the arduous duties of life; and that ambition, if it exists at all, is directed to the attainment and diffusion of more lasting happiness than mere beauty can afford.

In the capacity of a wife we next observe the character of woman, and it is here, if ever, that she learns the truth-learns what is in her own heart, and what are her duties to herself and others. Not that she learns all this through the gentle instrumentality of affection, but by the moral process of experience, which if less congenial to her taste, is more forcible in its convictions, and more lasting in its effects. In assuming this new title, woman is generally removed to a new, and often to a distant sphere, where she has to take her stand in society upon common ground. None within the circle to which she is at once admitted, know precisely what she has been, and therefore every

eye is open to see what she is. All the little caprices, and peculiarities, nurtured up with her bodily growth in the bosom of her own family, not only forgiven there, but indulged from the fond consideration that "it was always her way," or, "that she was always thus," now stand forth for the full discussion, and impartial inspection of the many, who, seeing no just reason why such should have been her way, and no plausible pretext for her being always thus, soon contrive means to convince her, if not by personal information, by the unanimous opinion of society, that the more entirely she lays aside such peculiarities of character, the more she will be respected and valued. Nor is this all. She has perhaps a stronger corrective within her own household. Her husband begins to see with the eyes of the world. His vision no longer dazzled by her beauty, or his judgment cheated by her caresses, he involuntarily, and often without sufficient delicacy, points out faults which he neither saw, nor believed her capable of possessing before. "Why did I marry?" is the question which every woman, not previously disciplined, asks of herself under such circumstances, "why did I marry, if not to be loved and cherished as I was in my father's house?" Such are her words, for she has not yet learned to understand her own heart; but she means in fact, "why did I marry, if not to be flattered and admired as in the days of courtship, when the competition for my favour excited unremitting assiduity in all who sought to win it, and who, because they knew my vanity and weakness, sought to win it by these means alone?" The answer is an obvious one-because it is not good for us to go deluded to our graves, and therefore merciful means have been designed, as various as appropriate to compel us to open our reluctant eyes upon the truth; and woman as a wife, does open her eyes at last, from the dream in which her senses have been lulled, while with the tide of conviction, as it rushes in upon her newly-awakened