uired. We cannot all become fine musical performers,
but if the mind is well developed, with a healthy sensibility of feeling
and culture of imagination, we can get all the influence and enjoyment
of art from the works of thoroughly educated and creative artists, and
we shall do so with more relish, without the weary remembrance of
mechanical practicing uninspired by active interest.

Music leads the way to a world of the greater danger from over-stimulus
of feeling and sentiment, than of intellectual work. Few physicians
allow enough for the immediate effect of spiritual causes upon the
physical health. Cheerful influences, sunny surroundings, happy
relations, will save one through heavy tasks of work or privation; but
any blight of the affections, any misunderstanding, or treachery of
friends, the lowering of one's ideal of life and humanity, will depress
the nervous system and ruin the health far more surely than even
overwork of the purely intellectual faculties. Often intellectual labor
is the true antidote and corrective of this state of feeling.

Theodore Parker once recommended a course of metaphysical study to a
young lady, who, from physical weakness and other causes, had become
morbidly nervous and introspective.

I have spoken of the importance of thorough healthful training of body
and mind in view of the natural conditions of marriage and maternity,
which may be the lot of every woman. It is not possible to overstate the
importance or the sanctity of these relations, but it is possible to
look so much at the mere outside facts of marriage as to ignore its real
meaning.

The woman, falsely or carelessly mated, is far less married than she who
keeps her ideal high and true and remains single; not because she values
marriage too little, but because she has too great reverence to enter
into it lightly or falsely. And the mother has far more need to fit her
daughter to meet nobly the possibilities of unwedded life, than even the
duties of marriage. Marriage is so perfectly natural a state, that it
reveals its own laws; and a simple, healthful, happy, trusting love,
will guide woman more wisely than much precept.

But in our present social state, the probability for any girl is by no
means small that she may be called on to live out her life without
entering upon this blessed relation. If she has been taught that woman's
sphere is marriage and marriage alone, that only by that means can she
hope for a life