This may be called an unfortunate circumstance, for fashion in this country will make its way, and helplessness, joined to defective education, and a strong desire to get from our own places, and have our own business to be performed by others, who in their turn find it as irksome as ourselves, has made sad havoc in the ranks below us.

Domestic duties are incompatible with helplessness: but the accomplished in this perfection were all candidates for the situation of wives, mothers, and mistresses of families; and many have succeeded, and have performed their parts as might be expected.

As the system that has been pursued is not best calculated to promote health, many become invalids; but as they are probably selected for those qualifications with which vigour of body or mind have nothing to do, husbands have no cause for disappointment. It takes a considerable period, perhaps, to open their eyes to the misery and inconvenience of possessing a sick and helpless wife. The same means, too generally, are adopted for the purpose of making her well, which contributed to make her ill.

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Idleness, inactive employments, late hours, luxury, and indulgence. From the Mama you learn that her dear girl is extremely delicate, and sadly plagued with her servants; and while the husband hears, and consoles and congratulates himself in having an interesting accomplished wife, he puts up with the inconveniences of an ill-arranged domicile, and duly appreciates those acquirements, which, however, sickness or languor or idleness, or all combined, prevent him from enjoying. This is no uncommon or exaggerated picture of married happiness: it is, like other things built upon a false foundation, unsound and insecure.

The system, however, proceeds: a fresh generation succeeds, and they are also to be elegant and refined, accomplished and useless.

But the effects of the system are more than beginning to be felt; it has already extended to ranks and degrees of life, where it has produced misery. Poverty, combined with those pursuits which have for some years past occupied the time and the attention of the female world, must produce any thing but comfort; the arts that produced this, and other advantages, where

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wealth did not abound, are almost lost amongst

us; and while many have discovered that helplessness does not promote happiness, they are ignorant of the means to procure comfort, and at a loss to find any who can instruct them.

While a desire for distinction, and an unbounded cultivation of the intellectual powers, and still more of the arts and relaxations of life, has been pursued with a degree of anxious zeal, which has known no limits, our domestic qualities have been reduced in worldly estimation so considerably as to be ranked rather as vulgar appendages, cultivated only by such as had no claims to talent or refinement.

The business of female life, for some years past, has consisted of a cultivation of those resources which were formerly considered as its amusements. But the influence of such as have been educated according to this conception of the appropriation of time, and this exercise of human faculties and human responsibility, is now directing us.

Many of those thousands of women are long since become wives, mothers, mistresses of families, directors of establishments, selectors of

their own society, disposers of their own time and of a large portion of their fortunes; and while their influence acts in various degrees with regard to their equals in society, it is in no case immaterial to those who immediately follow them.

It is with failing to use this influence with such a portion of wisdom and discretion as would have kept society altogether from the confusion and disorder which it now exhibits, that I charge my countrywomen.

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CHAP. IV.

FEMININE DUTIES.

It would be too arduous and too difficult a task to attempt any thing like a description of the duties which we are required to perform; they must vary considerably with situation, with fortune, and with circumstances. They are also so interwoven and so connected, each one resulting from another, that it is only possible to offer some general remarks, and those on such duties as are applicable to all, as women and as christians.

The merely accidental circumstances of the possession of wealth or consequence cannot release us from these, though they may increase our responsibility. The power and influence which accompany these gifts is an awfully responsible trust; and so far from emancipating us from our share in the task of contributing to the good or evil of society, they add in due proportion to the necessity of our exertions for this purpose.