world, yet, in a free and opulent country like our own, where education cannot be made a public concern, and where any particular edicts of a prince would be esteemed a gross infringe. ment on the liberty of the subject, it is only in the power of parents or guardians to remove or palliate so malignant an evil. If there be a specific, it is a better and a more rational education of women; and, if that education is to be better and more rational, it must not be left to a vain, a superficial, or mercenary governess, but planned by the wisdom, and executed by the zeal and affection of those mothers, who, under Providence, have given them existence.

In estimating the talents and natural endowments of women, we may incur the censure of their superficial adorers and panegyrists; but these observations are founded on nature and experience. Among the inferior animals, the males are observed to possess greater strength, courage, vigour, and enterprize; females superior beauty of form and proportion, more delicacy and softness, but withal a higher degree of timidity and weakness. The same analogy prevails in the human race. Vivacity, fancy, sensibility, are found among women; the high exertions of genius and intellect belong to the other sex. But female influence and power is founded on this constitution of nature. That quickness of apprehension, and inquietude of imagination, which debar women from the higher attainments of science and learning, compose the life and essence of their graces. They are the very medium by which they please. If they were constituted with masculine firmness and vigour, they would want their native and strongest attractions. They would cease to be women, and they would cease to charm.

But let not the sex suppose us their accuser or their foe. If we have not wholly mistaken the method, we mean to be their advocate and friend. We have left them the seeds of every thing that pleases and captivates in woman. Their brows were not intended to be ploughed with wrinkles, nor their innocent gaiety damped by abstraction. They were formed perpetually to please, and perpetually to enliven. If we were to plan the edifice, they were to furnish the embellishments. If we were to lay out and cultivate the garden, they were beautifully to fringe its borders with flowers, and fill it with perfume. If we were destined to superintend the management of kingdoms, they were to be the fairest ornaments of those kingdoms, the embellishers of society, and the sweeteners of life.

If we consult scripture, we shall discover that such was the original intention of Heaven in the formation of the sexes. The

sentence of subordination obviously implies that man should have the pre-eminence on subjects that require extensive knowledge, courage, strength, activity, talents, or laborious application. Women were not formed for political eminence, or literary refinement. The softness of their nature, the delicacy of their frame, the timidity of their disposition, and the modesty of their sex, absolutely disqualify them for such difficulties and exertions. Their destiny of bearing and nursing children; the necessity of superintending domestic concerns; and the peculiar diseases to which they are liable; leave them little time for such public undertakings, whilst the humble offices in which they are engaged, confer a blessing and a benefit upon society, that are infinitely beyond the coldness of knowledge, and the apathy of speculation. The wife, the mother, and the economist of a family would unfortunately be lost in the literary pedant; the order of nature would be totally reversed, and the population of the globe preposterously sacrificed to the cold, forbidding pride of a studious virginity. The woman of the cloister would want the graces of a citizen of the world. In that ardour of understanding which rouses emulation, she would lose that soothing manner which conciliates and endears. The world would be deprived of its fairest ornaments, life of its highest zest, and man of that gentle bosom, on which he can recline amidst the toils of labour, and the agonies of disappointment.

So far as the qualities of the heart are concerned (and this has sometimes formed a part of the question) we think the sexes will not bear a comparison. Women, in this respect, have every claim to a marked superiority. If their retired, domestic life did not of itself lead to more innocence and contemplation, their natural dispositions are certainly more favourable to piety and virtue. Their strong sense of weakness prompts them to supplicate the protection and assistance of a superior, invisible power; whilst their exquisite sensibility powerfully disposes them for all the energy and ardours of devotion.

SONNET.

Oh! hast thou sate on the sea-shore, at e'en,
And view'd the feathery surges as they creep,
Like softly-whisp'ring lovers from the deep,
Kissing the fair white sand? and hast thou seen

The far-off ocean, vested rich in green,

Gold-tinted by the moon; and lull'd in sleep,
Like some huge giant whom a fay doth keep,
Beneath the influence of night's magic queen?

'Tis this, and such-like scenes, that cause the mind
To swell with high ideas, beyond controul:
"Tis then we feel those things that lie enshrin'd
Unutterable there-and undefin'd;

Yet filling with delight the ravish'd whole,
The true and real poetry of the soul.

W. B.

They tell me I should take the wreath

Of roses from my brow,

And deck the clusters of my hair
With cypress branches now.
Why should I fling the roses by,
The cypress wreath to wear?
I would not others should be sad,
Whatever I may bear.

They are the roses that I love,
I pluck them from the tree,
From which my gentle mother oft
Has cull'd a wreath for me;
And some moment of her love,
In ev'ry leaf I find,

That never in my beating heart
Can cease to be enshrined.

They tell me I should weep, because
My parents are not here,

Who never yet would see me sad,
Nor let me shed a tear.

But oh! they chide me wrongfully,
Who thus my heart condemn,
I never shall have cause to weep,
While I remember them.

THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH.

NINETEEN years had rolled over my head, when I left the paternal roof to learn the humanities in the village of Withycombe. Why, 1 was thus old, before I was inducted into the verbs in mi, is nobody's business; and if it were, I would not tell them. My wise and worthy father little knew all I was to learn; or, I fancy, he never would have sent me. I learned to conjugate amo in more ways than one. How that could be done, I need not say; because, to those who have learned, it is a tale already told; to those who have not, it is a sweet and beautiful mystery. To me, it is still a well of gushing waters in a desert of wasted years.

The village where I was placed was lively and beautiful, even among the pleasant towns of Somerset's county. It lay upon the margin, between a ridge of cultivated hills, and a stream wending its way through woods and meadows. The town consisted of one long street; and for more than a mile you would pass, at proper distances, house after house with the same neat and quiet aspect-the same white front and picket fence rising in succession. But the dwellings were not all of equal size and cost. Some were stately mansions; and the Corinthian pillars here and there raised their gorgeous capitals above the diminutive pilastres of a neighbouring domicile. During my residence there, I became well acquainted with all its precincts, and do not remember to have met with either idleness or its results, indigence or intemperance. Every thing was thrift and happiness. Yet this town (village if you will) contained many of what some folks, simple souls indeed, are pleased to call aristocracy. There were families there, who by the industry of preceding generations and their own vigorous talents, had accumulated wealth and intelligence, which gave them a commanding influence over the town; and there were barriers in the social circle, which could not be broken through. In such society, I learned to respect that species of aristocracy, if so it may be called, which is based on virtue, talent and industry.

"Long may it nobly self-dependent stand,
A wall of fire round our much loved land!"

Levelling cannot destroy it, till, like a second expulsion from Eden, all that is ennobling in the ruined constitution of man is extinguished for ever.

Well, into this locale I came, to study under one of those excellent men, whom Edinburgh College has established all along shore, as a sort of exterior department to itself. He was a ripe scholar and a good man, and moreover, a deacon of the church. He was tall and aquiline, and in the prime of manhood; yet his countenance was as grave as the young lady of old, who was turned into a magpie from her great propensity for incessant clacking-for so Ovid tells us. He wore a broadbrimmed hat, pepper-and-salt-coloured suit of broad-cloth, and a coarse thick jacket. In this apparel he came to breakfast one morning, heard me recite some passages from the Bible, at 9 A. M., Cicero's orations at 2 P. M., and drove the cows home at night; for, let me inform ye, readers, my worthy tutor was a sturdy farmer, possessed many quadrupeds, and was withal, deeply versed in the breeds and crosses. Now, the manner in which he drove the cows home, was curious. He lived at the upper end of the town, and the cows spent their days at the lower end; and when the sun went down behind the woods of the hill-top, and cast its last beams upon the green meadows and sparkling waters of the vale beneath, deacon H. with a sturdy cudgel, took up his line of march for the herd's headquarters. By and by, the feminine cattle were seen wending their way up the street, with the deacon trudging on behind. Immediately, the intellectual part of the master would triumph over his corporeal tabernacle, and he would become deeply immersed in the doctrines of Calvin, or the Commentaries on Longinus. Then the cows, who have not a small propensity for grass, would wander off-one through Colonel G.'s broad avenue, another on the church green, and a third down the river's side.

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Why! Mr. H.," says a boy, see where your critturs are runnin to!"

Why-holloa Sukey-yes-what-run after'em, good boy!" And down went the boy to the river, and off went the deacon to the common, and out came Colonel G. to drive the offender from his premises; and soon were the unruly cows in the order of march again. Thus glided the days along; I studying the humanities, and the deacon studying agriculture. Under his administration I learned some Greek, more Latin, how to talk to the girls, and how to play cards. I loved to dwell on

Tully's voice,

And Virgil's lay, and Livy's pictured page.'

But more I loved to gaze upon the beaming eye of frolic-loving