the playfulness, all the vivacity that youth and happiness can produce, be discovered among familiar friends; let no unreasonable check be given to this; we have hardly enough of it, either for the health of mind or body; but let us beware of inducing our young girls to an ostentation of gayety in public, or attempting to usurp supremacy in a ball-room. It leads them too immediately under the dominion of the giddy, or the corrosive passions; it makes them the victims of vanity or envy.

No one can be insensible of the invaluable blessings which arise from a state of society, where young girls can be thus protected; and where even many of those who have fluttered the gayest in the circles of fashion, renounce every amusement as soon as they are married, to devote themselves wholly to the duties and solicitude of domestic life. No one can wish to see our girls shut up in convents, or kept under severe restraint; our married women become coquettes, and our young men cavalieri servente. But there are many intermediate stages. Married women too readily renounce all exertion in society, which is apt to become insipid to them, when they are once engaged in the serious cares of life. Yet these need not be neglected, though social intercourse be maintained; the habit of the latter, on the contrary, will alleviate the burden of the former. To engage in both, however, requires exertion; and, perhaps, there may be some foundation for the reproach of indolence, where either is disregarded.

The pleasures of society are certainly lessened, even if no other injury results to those who partake of it; when they, whose characters are formed, and whose standing is fixed, recede too soon, or too much, from giving a direction to conversation and amusement. If they abandon this almost wholly to girls, the general characteristics of every gay circle must become more light and frivolous. Girls can neither have the experience nor the confidence to sustain any general conversation, that takes other topics than the merest trifles; and the happy propensity of their time of life, to mere frolic and playfulness, renders it necessary to introduce suitable companions. Boys are then brought forward, prematurely, and where they are intruded, there is an end of all etiquette, of that deference and courtesy, which form the charm of large parties. There are some who think that our fashionable assemblies have deteriorated in this way.

I have already dilated on the advantages which your sex enjoy in education here. There are few villages to be seen, where there are not several men who have received a collegiate education. Their conversation, their books, and their instruction, have had an influence on the education of females. A facility afforded to those who wanted to go a little beyond what they were taught at school, and the difficulty of procuring masters for polite accomplishments, has given them more leisure for reading, and made them endeavour to compensate for

any deficiency in lighter attainments, by more solid information.

This state of things is very unlike what exists in the middle states, where the institutions for education were in former times too much neglected, and where the sons even of wealthy people, received little more than the commonest school education. The perverse fanaticism of the Quakers, who had formerly a preponderating influence, and who, on a system of sobriety, industry, integrity and neatness, taught only the great art of thriving in the world, and proscribed all other kinds of knowledge; in the endeavour to give the same drab or russet hue to their minds, which they had done to their garments, produced an unfortunate neglect of all intellectual cultivation. If the boys were only taught to read, write, and cipher, the girls must be content with a lower degree of instruction in these accomplishments. In short, if the latter could read their Bibles, and calculate a domestic bargain, their mental instruction was completed.

Fortunately this state of education has been improved of late years; even the Quakers begin tò find that learning is not sinful; and that their sect must either keep pace with the spirit of the age, or sink into insignificance ;-as there is an end of persecution, they have no other mode of maintaining their corps, or attaching any high respectability to themselves. While the mind was thus neglected, the personal appearance was improved, and graceful manners widely diffused. The influence of the

Quakers was here partially useful. Those females of their sect, who did not feel the importance of that part of religion, which consisted in wearing an ill-shaped, ugly coloured gown, or a queer little bonnet, preposterously prim, chose a more becoming and less affected costume. Their former habits, and a wish to avoid too glaring a departure from their friends, still inclined them to the Quaker simplicity,-only, instead of its uncomeliness, substituting elegance. The influence of a large city was also felt; and as Philadelphia acquired a distinguished society while it was the seat of government, which it has never wholly lost; an air of gracefulness, and the tone of fashionable life, was given to their principal circles, and which, like every thing else in this country, was readily imitated, and widely diffused. The same advantages were wanting here, and a less uniform turn, less appearance of the fashionable drill, more of a militia character of dress and movement, were prevalent. In short, you will sometimes meet there, under a very fashionable dress and manner, a most composing degree of ignorance: you will often find here much mental acquirement, under an exterior of consummate awkwardness and timidity.

I am afraid I have tired you; but you encountered this risk when you gave me permission to write. I could still linger near this subject, if my letter was not growing to a volume. It is one, on which, though a constant observer, I am but an indifferent critic. You know the reason,-the

allegiance and fast fealty

Which I do owe unto all woman kynd.”

Would that they had an abler champion-they cannot have a more respectful admirer.

P. S. You speak of your enemies.'-I think you must be mistaken. I cannot conceive that you should have any. If, however, it be So, I will repeat the laconic prayer of a zealous clergyman, during the war; "may they be soon brought to reason, or to ruin."

LETTER IX.

AGRICULTURE.

I KNOW of nothing, my dear Sir, that is a subject for more real congratulation than the attention recently given to agriculture, and the spirit for improving it, that is pervading every district in the Union. It was indeed quite time for this disposition to show itself. The truth will be less painful now, since we have begun to amend; but certainly there was no country, where greater ignorance, or