al
blanket to a sick old woman, will suffice to implant a worthy conception
of the aims of life. At this moment, some mothers are, perhaps,
believing that the dull virtue of the country will in a few days redress
the balance which had been too much discomposed by the rush and whirl of
the town. As if one strong set of silly interests and emotions could be
effaced at will by simple change of scene, without substitution of new
interests and emotions. Excess of frivolous excitement is not repaired
or undone by excess of mere blankness and nothingness. The dreariness of
the virtue of the _villeggiatura_ is as noxious as the whirl of the
mercenary and little virtuous period of the season. Teach young women
from their childhood upwards that marriage is their single career, and
it is inevitable that they should look upon every hour which is not
spent in promoting this sublime end and aim as so much subtracted from
life. Penetrated with unwholesome excitement in one part of their
existence, they are penetrated with killing _ennui_ in the next.

If mothers would only add to their account of marriage as the end of a
woman's existence--which may be right or it may not--a definition of
marriage as an association with a reasonable and reflective being, they
would speedily effect a revolution in the present miserable system. To
the business of finding a husband a young lady would then add the not
less important business of making herself a rational person, instead of
a more or less tastefully decorated doll with a passion for a great
deal of money. She might awaken to the fact, which would at first
startle her very much no doubt, that there is a great portion of a
universe outside her own circle and her own mind. This simple discovery
would of itself effect a revolution that might transform her from being
an insipid idiot into a tolerably rational being. As it is, the universe
to her is only a collection of rich bachelors in search of wives, and of
odious rivals who are contending with her for one or more of these too
wary prizes. All high social aims, fine broad humanizing ways of
surveying life, are unknown to her, or else appear in her eyes as the
worship of Mumbo Jumbo appears in the eyes of the philosopher. She
thinks of nothing except her private affairs. She is indifferent to
politics, to literature--in a word, to anything that requires thought.
She reads novels of a kind, because novels are all about love, and love
had once s