so. Such a boast is equally disgraceful to both parties. The will too, often bears an inverse proportion to the other powers of the mind. And you sometimes find women who seem to be little else than the incarnation of a fierce and indomitable will. Such women will have their way, it is true, because a wise man will sacrifice much for peace. But it is no more government than it is when a mob gets the mastery of a town. They govern, it is true, because all government is suspended. A woman has her husband's fortunes in her power, because she may, or she may not, as she pleases, conform to his circumstances. This is her first duty, and it ought to be her pride. No passion for luxury or display ought for a moment to tempt her to deviate in the least degree from this line of conduct. She will find her happiness and her respectability in it. Any other course is wretchedness itself, and inevitably leads to ruin. Nothing can be more miserable than the struggle to keep up an appearance. If it could succeed, it would cost more than it is worth, and as it never can, its failure involves the deepest mortification. Some of the sublimest exhibitions of human virtue have been made by women, who

have been precipitated suddenly from wealth and splendor to absolute want. It costs perhaps the mightiest struggle which the mind can make to conform at once and without a murmur to altered circumstances; but when it is over, it brings its own rich reward. There is no other way but to submit, and begin to spin the web of hope and endeavor

anew.

Then a man's fortunes are in a manner in the hands of his wife, inasmuch as his own power of exertion depends on her. His moral strength is inconceivably increased by her sympathy, her counsel, her aid. She can aid him immensely by relieving him of every care which she is capable of taking upon herself. His own employments are usually such to require his whole time, and his whole mind. A good wife will never suffer her husband's attention to be distracted by details, to which her own time and talents are adequate. If she be prompted by true affection and good sense, she will perceive when his spirit is borne down and overwhelmed. She of all human beings can best minister to its needs. For the sick soul her nursing is quite as sovereign, as it is for corporeal ills. If it be

weary, in her assiduity it finds repose and refreshment. If it be harassed and worn to a morbid irritability, her gentle tones steal over it with a soothing more potent than the most exquisite music. If every enterprise be dead, and hope itself almost extinguished, her patience and fortitude have the power to rekindle them in the heart, and he again goes forth to renew his encounter with the toils and troubles of life.

A woman has it in her power to add greatly to a man's respectability in the world, and to determine his social position. Indeed his pleasant relations with society depend mainly on her wisdom, her prudence, her kind and conciliatory manners. She cannot make herself odious and contemptible without reflecting i will and disgrace upon him. She cannot indulge in a meddlesome, censorious, bitter, vindictive disposition, without subjecting him to continual mortification, and involving him in perpetual difficulty and embarrassment.

We come in the next place to speak of woman in the most important and responsible relation which she sustains, as the mother. In this relation Providence fully makes up to her the inferiority of her physical powers, the

narrowness of her sphere of action, and the alleged inferiority of her intellectual endowments. In the influence she has in forming the character of the young, and training up each rising generation as it comes forward, and assumes the control of the destinies of the world, she has her full share in that power which sways and governs mankind, which makes nations, families, individuals great, prosperous, virtuous, happy,-or mean, degraded, vicious and wretched. Woman is mistress of the fortunes of the world, by holding in her plastic hand the minds and hearts of those who are to mould the coming age, at that decisive period when the character is determined and fixed in good, or irrecoverably bent on vice and mischief. She governs the world in the capacity of mother, because in the forming period of life, the cords of love and gentleness are stronger and more prevailing than all the chains which mere force has ever forged. She sways the world, because her influence is on the whole paramount in the primary element of all society, the domestic circle. Men go forth to act their parts on the great stage of life, the most gifted to exert vast influence over its affairs, but it

is only to act out the character that has been formed at home. Woman then, whose control over the character is almost absolute, presides at the very fountain head of power.

"What is wanting," said Napoleon one day to Mad. Campan, "in order that the youth of France may be well educated?" "Good mothers," was her reply. There could not have been more wisdom condensed into so few words. The greatest treasure a nation can possess is good mothers. Their aggregate influence is greater than all the rest which operate to form the character of a people. Man's task is abroad. He must elaborate his sustenance from the soil, under the heats and the rains of heaven, or tempt the waves of the boisterous ocean, or wind the labyrinths of trade, or seclude himself in the retirementof his study. He cannot know much of his children in their earlier years. The responsibility, of course, is thrown almost entirely on the mother. If she abandons her trust, then are the children lost indeed. While the father is consuming his days and nights in toil, that his children may begin life on the vantage ground of wealth and education, his children, through the negligence or bad man