Infelice

cted, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and

man who, having been interrupted in some favourite study to take cognizance of an unexpected, unwelcome, and altogether

s more precocious, more mature, than many girls are at sixteen; and you seem to forget that, having always associated with grown people, she has imbibed their ideas and caught their expressions, instead of the more juvenile forms of thought and speech usual in children who live among children. She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have tops and kites, and has no more relish for fair

is very tender, and very verdant?" asked Mr. Lindsay

s of hers, that are as solemn as if they belonged to the Judges of Israel. If a child is raised in a carpenter's shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred? You and Douglass imagine she is dreaming about the number of elves that dance on the greensward on moonlight nights, or the spangles on their lace wings; or that she is studying the latitude and longitude of the capital of the last territory which Congress elevated to the uncertain and tormenting dignity of nominal self-government, that once (vide 'obsolete civil hallucinations') inhered in an American State; or perhaps you believe the child is longing for a pot of sugar candy? Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose,

e as usual, jesting?"

shed facts, that you may thoroughly understand into what fertile soil your scattered grains

idote the metempsychosis poison?" asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not for

erly worn-out doctrine of transmigration, how do you suppose she met me? With the information that far from being a worn-out doctrine, learned and scientific men now living were reviving it as the truth; and that whereas Christianity was only eighteen hundred years old, that metempsychosis had been believed for twenty-nine centuries, and at this day numbers more followers, by millions, than any other religion in the world. I inquired how she learned all this foolish fustian, and with a

nder for a moment. Since my sight has become so impaired and feeble, I have several times called on her to read some articles which certainly are not healthful pabul

le for eliminating the false from the true. Does the contemplation of physical monstrosities engender a predilection or affection for deformity? Does it not rather by contrast with symmetry and perfect proportion heighten the power a

e annually exposed in China, in order that our people should properly appreciate the superiority of sound limbs, and the value of the five senses; and healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to learn the nature of their

n the air with a hurricane of chips and splinters. Like all ladies who attempt to argue,

ns of that difference. We women no more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined

itly avoiding a tweak of the ear, by throwing

e you accumulated your knowledge relative to the education of girls? Present us a chart of your experience. You talk of h

y are expected to come the reserve magazines of piety, of religious fervour, on the certainly powerful principle that 'ignorance is the mother of

ertainly agrees with you, 'that girls are trained too delicately to allow the mind to expand.' Illuminated and expanded by 'philosophy' and 'social progress' she and Madame Dudev

ebon locks on

in her coffin, shrouded

he days of Damo, or the abstruse mystical diction that doomed Hypatia to the mercy of the monks. After all, why scare up a blue-stockinged ogre, which may have no intention of depredating upon our peace; for to be really learned is no holiday amusement in this cumulative age, and offers little temptation to a young girl. Not long since, I found a sentence bearing upon this subject, which impressed itself upon my mind, as both strong a

ther when you both make up your minds to present me, one a sister, the other a daughter, you will select your wives from among quaint Evelyn's almost obsolete type, or whether you will commit your name, affections, wardrobe, larder, pantry and poultry to a strong-minded female 'scientist,' who will neglect your socks and buttons, to ascertain exactly how many Vibriones and Bacteria float in a drop of fluid, and when you come home tired and very hungry, will comfort you, and nobly atone for the injury of an ill-cooked and worse-served dinner, by regaling your weary ears with her own ingenious and brilliant interpretation and translation of ?lia L?lia Crispis! Here is my old-fashioned English damsel, meek as a violet, fresh as a dewy daisy, and sweet as a bed of thyme and marjoram. 'The style and method of life are quite changed, as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors, simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical virtues then in reputation.

ntrance into the library heralded by the perfume of moly, or of basil and sage, tolerable only as the familiars of a dish

come back, she will have been conscripted into the staid army of matrons, and transmogrified into stout Mrs. Ptolemy Thomson, or lean and careworn Mrs. Simon Smith, or worse than all, erudite Mrs. Professor

ing keenly at her son's countenance she detected the change that

sed to follow the advice of Joubert in making their matrimonial selection: 'We should choose for a wife only the woman we should ch

hority than Joubert, and the Talmud says, so I am told: 'Descen

be able and 'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted, 'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist pounds into dust the ido

into the depths of her stocking

e of Janus

e prerogative of men, and that it proves as dangerous in a wo

f Eden more effectually, than did her light touch upon an outside branch of the tree of k

, Elise. You are skirmishing with

despotic barbarism, a fungoid

wed to ask if you are

you thoroughly educate women, you unfit them for the holy duties of daughter, wif

am not a 'Della-Cruscan.' I only

. You break the thr

ld the ponderous propositions he inten

sess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers? Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma! Have not you boxed my ears, because, when stumbling through the 'An

inclined his head; but though a tear certainly glist

ry? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am incorruptible

by the custom of placing a slate or tablet of marble on a woman's grave, while on that of men a pen or penholder is laid, to indicate that female hearts are mere tablets, on which man writes whatever pleases him best. In sociology, as well as physics and dynamics,-the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence,-the psychologic rebound is ever in proportion to the mental pressure; one extreme invariably impinges upon the opposite,-and when the pendulum has reached one end of the arc, it must of necessity swing bac

ge attention. I see that one of the ablest and strongest thinkers of the day has handled this matter in a masterly way, and with your permission I should like to read a passage: 'In these times the educational tree seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in the ground; and I confess I should very much like to turn it upside down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit of literature and of art. No educational system can have a claim to permanence, unless it recognizes the truth that education has two great ends, to which everything else must be subordinated. One of these is t

ivisection, they can go no further than the whirring of the Potter's wheel, and the Potter is nowhere revealed. The moulding Creative hand and the plastic clay are still as distinct, as when the gauntlet was first flung down by proud ambitious constructive science. Animal and vegetable organisms have been analyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the masses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? The 'Physical basis of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last, and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws of 'Protein'? Hatred of certain phrases is more bitter than of the principles they express, and beca

age only improved educational systems will enable men an

t excel the glory of Phil?, Athens, P?stum, and Agra? Are wars less bloody, or is crime less rampant? Our arrogant assumption of superiority is sometimes mournfully rebuked. For instance, one of the most eminent and popular scientists of England emphasised his views on the necessity of 'improving natural knowledge,' by ascribing the great plague of 1664, and the great fire of 1666-which in point of population and of houses, nearly swept London from the face of the globe-to ignorance and neglect of sanitary laws, and to the failure to provide suitable organizations for the suppression of conflagrations. He proudly asserted that the recurrence of such catastrophes is now prohibited by scientific arrangements 'that never allow even a street to burn down,' and that 'it is the improvement of our own natural knowledge which keeps back the plague.' I think I am warranted in the assumption that our American Fire Departments, Insurance Companies, and Boards of Health

i roi, Par le culte syst

lling madrigals in some hawthorn thicket or myrtle grove. I see plainly I might as well carry my dear old Evelyn-fragrant with mint and marjoram-back upstairs, and wrap it up in ancient camphor-scented linen, and put it away tenderly to sleep its last sleep in the venerable cedar chest, where my grandfather's huge knee-buckles, and my great-grandmother's yellow brocaded silk-dress, with its waist the length of my little finger, and the sleeves as wide as a balloon. Gentlemen, permit me one parting paragraph, before I write

under their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches of a liberal and classical education, including domestic economy, until they were at least twenty, how much misery w

She has been gathering raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her white dress! Dear l

her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat near his un

esus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the pigeons,

? If I were a sculptor I would chisel a sta

in his mother's face, a

entitle her to be