, that he had, more than once, known a right-minded girl, who seemed to have been first taught of heaven, and afterward supported in her Christian course under almost every human disadvantage; who boldly, but meekly, maintained her own principles, under all the hourly temptations and oppositions of a worldly and irreligious family, and who had given the best evidence of her piety toward God, by her patient forbearance toward her erring friends. Such women had made admirable wives when they were afterward transplanted into families where their virtues were understood, and their piety cherished. While, on the other hand, he had known others, who, accustomed from childhood to the sober habits of family religion, under pious but injudicious parents, had fallen in mechanically with the domestic practices, without having ever been instructed in Christian principles, or having ever manifested any religious tendencies. The implantation of a new principle never having been inculcated, the religious habit has degenerated into a mere form, the parents acting as if they thought that religion must come by nature or infection in a religious family. These girls, having never had their own hearts impressed, nor their own characters distinctly considered, nor individually cultivated, but being taken out as a portion from the mass, have afterward taken the cast and color of any society into which they have happened to be thrown; and they who before had lived religiously with the religious, have afterward assimilated with the gay and dissipated, when thus thrown into their company, as cordially as if they had never been habituated to better things.

At dinner there appeared two pretty-looking young ladies, daughters of my friend, who had been some time a widower. I placed myself between them for the purpose of prying a little into their minds, while the rest of the company were conversing on indifferent subjects. Having formerly heard this gentleman's deceased wife extolled as the mirror of managers, and the arrangements of his table highly commended, I was surprised to see it so ill-appointed, and every thing wearing marks of palpable inelegance. Though no epicure, I could not forbear observing that many of the dishes were out of season, ill-chosen, and ill-dressed.

While I was puzzling my head for a solution, I recollected that I had lately read in a most respectable periodical work, a paper (composed, I believe, however, by a raw recruit of that well-disciplined corps) which insisted that nothing tended to make ladies so useless and inefficient in the ménage as the study of the dead languages. I jumped to the conclusion, and