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LESSON CLXIII.

Fashionable Follies.-FLINT'S WESTERN REVIEW.

'HERE are in the United States one hundred thousand ng ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of tland, "the prettiest lassies in a' the world," who know ner to toil nor spin, who are yet clothed like the lilies of valley, who thrum the piano, and, a few of the more ty, the harp,—who walk, as the Bible says, softly,—who e read romances, and some of them seen the interior of tres,-who have been admired at the examination of their school,-who have wrought algebraic solutions on the k board,-who are, in short, the very roses of the gar, the attar of life,-who yet,-horresco referens,--can er expect to be married, or, if married, to live without mall I speak, or forbear?-putting their own lily hands omestic drudgery.

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We go into the interior villages of our recent wooden ntry. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we sure, never prepared a dinner, nor made a garment her robustious brothers. We traverse the streets of our city, and the wires of the piano are thrummed in our from every considerable house. In cities and villages, none extremity of the Union to the other, wherever there good house, and the doors and windows betoken the sence of the mild months, the ringing of the piano wires Imost as universal a sound, as the domestic hum of life ain.

We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and reed to a questionable class of entomology, dinging at the es, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of n music, amusement and a husband. Look at her taper cream-colored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the one, when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, retty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as eguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst

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and straight forward letter of business? Thou , I remember, at the examination; canst come, and afterwards boil, or bake, a good pudding? one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of n? In short, tell us thy use in existence, extemplated, as a pretty picture? And how long be amused with the view of a picture, after wed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a e may emphatically add, the perennial value of

and lamentable truth, after all the incessant heard of the march of mind, and the intermies, inculcations and eulogies of education, that s an age of unbounded desire of display and nokhaustless and unquenchably burning ambition; age of calm, contented, ripe and useful knowlsacred privacy of the parlor. Display, notoriety, splendor,-these are the first aims of the mothers; expect that the daughters will drink into a better play, sing, dress, glide down the dance, and get s the lesson; not to be qualified to render his well-ordered and happy.

rious, that there will soon be no intermediate en those who toil and spin, and those whose ladies is founded on their being incapable of any lity. At present, we know of none, except the of martyrs, yclept school-mistresses, and the still os of editorial and active blue-stockings. If it y lot to transmigrate back to earth, in the form man, my first homages in search of a wife would he thoughtful and pale-faced fair one, surrounded , noisy, refractory subjects, drilling her soul to d learning to drink of the cup of earthly discimore impressively than by a thousand sermons, bi terness of our probationary course, in teaching idea how to shoot. Except, as aforesaid, schoolan blues, we believe, that all other damsels, hin the purview of the term lady, estimate the f their title precisely in the ratio of their useless

low a young lady to have any hand in the adjustment of me components of her dress, each of which has a contour ch only the fleeting fashion of the moment can settle; her time to receive morning visitants, and prepare for noon appointments and evening parties, and what time the dear one to spare, to be useful and do good? To ! Heaven forefend the use of the horrid term! The le state of the case is this. There is somewhere, in all an enormous miscalculation, an infinite mischief—an as we shall attempt to show, not of transitory or minor ortance, but fraught with misery and ruin, not only to the ones themselves, but to society and the age.

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e have not, we admit, the elements on which to base calculation; but we may assume, as we have, that there n the United States a hundred thousand young ladies ght up to do nothing, except dress, and pursue amuseAnother hundred thousand learn music, dancing, what are called the fashionable accomplishments. It been said that "revolutions never move backwards." It qually true of emulation of the fashion. The few opuwho can afford to be good for nothing, precede. ther class presses as closely as they can upon their steps; the contagious mischief spreads downward, till the fond r, who lays every thing under contribution, to furnish neans for purchasing a piano, and hiring a music-master is daughters, instead of being served, when he comes om the plough, by the ruined favorites for whom he has ficed so much, finds that a servant must be hired for oung ladies.

ere is not the end of the mischief. Every one knows mothers and daughters give the tone, and laws—more erable than those of the Medes and Persians-to so

Here is the root of the matter, the spring of bitter rs. Here is the origin of the complaint of hard times ruptcies, greediness, avarice, and the horse-leech cry, ve, give!" Here is the reason why every man lives up s income, and so many beyond it. Here is the reason the young trader, starting on credit, and calling himsel rchant, hires and furnishes such a house as if he really one, fails, and gives to his creditors a beggarly account

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s and misapplied sales. He has married a ity and extravagance are fathomless, and his

ed. Hence the general and prevalent evil of mes, extravagance-conscious shame of the ng industrious and useful. Hence the conO many thousand young ladies, (who have not ed by the extreme of modern degeneracy, and onally apply their hands to domestic employe, their good deeds, with as much care as if es. Every body is ashamed not to be expennable; and every one seems equally ashamed stry.

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nceive, that mere idlers, male or female, can enough for themselves to be comfortable. I e, that they should not carry about with them usness of being a blank in existence, as would their forehead, in the shrinking humiliation of at the public eye had weighed them in the found them wanting. Novels and romances or that about their ethereal beauties, their fine out to slaughter my lord A., and play Cupid's dandy B., and despatch Amarylis C. to his ave no conception of a beautiful woman, or a whose eye, in whose port, in whose whole exsentiment does not stand imbodied:-" I am Creator to duties; I have employment on the rner, but more enduring pleasures are in disduties."

he sedate expression of this sentiment in the of man or woman, when it is known to e index of character and the fact, with the audiness of a simple, good for nothing belle,

usefulness and employment, whose empire n, and whose subjects dandies, as silly and as self. Who, of the two, has most attractions for se? The one a help-mate, a fortune in herself, to procure one, if the husband has it not; who im under the loss of it, and, what is more, aid 1 it; and the other a painted butterfly, for ornaaring the vernal and sunny months of prosperity;

then not becoming a chrysalis, an inert moth in adversity, t a croaking, repining, ill-tempered termagant, who can y recur to the days of her short-lived triumph, to imbitter misery, and poverty, and hopelessness of a husband, who, e herself, knows not to dig, and is ashamed to beg. We are obliged to avail of severe language in application a deep-rooted malady. We want words of power. We ed energetic and stern applications. No country ever -ged more rapidly towards extravagance and expense. In oung republic, like ours, it is ominous of any thing but od. Men of thought, and virtue, and example, are called on to look to this evil. Ye patrician families, that croak, d complain, and forebode the downfall of the republic, here the origin of your evils. Instead of training your son to ste his time, as an idle young gentleman at large, instead inculcating on your daughter, that the incessant tinkling a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make her y in life,—if you can find no better employment for them, ch him the use of the grubbing hoe, and her to make up ments for your servants. Train your son and daughter an employment, to frugality, to hold the high front, and to k the fearless step of independence, and sufficiency to mselves in any fortunes, any country, or any state of ngs. By arts like these, the early Romans thrived. en your children have these possessions, you may go vn to the grave in peace, as regards their temporal

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LESSON CLXIV.

Lochiel's Warning-CAMPBELL.

Wizard. LOCHIEL! Lochiel, beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight:

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