ven in the simplest and purest cases of attachment. The
sordidness is infused from the earliest years; the taint is in the mind
before the attachment begins, before the objects meet; and the evil
effects upon the marriage state are incalculable.

All this--the sentiment of society with regard to Woman and to Marriage,
the social condition of Woman, and the consequent tendency and aim of
her education,--the traveller must carefully observe. Each civilized
society claims for itself the superiority in its treatment of woman. In
one, she is indulged with religious shows, and with masquerades, or
Punch, as an occasional variety. In another, she is left in honourable
and undisputed possession of the housekeeping department. In a third,
she is allowed to meddle, behind the scenes, with the business which is
confided to her husband's management. In a fourth, she is satisfied in
being the cherished domestic companion, unaware of the injury of being
doomed to the narrowness of mind which is the portion of those who are
always confined to the domestic circle. In a fifth, she is flattered at
being guarded and indulged as a being requiring incessant fostering, and
too feeble to take care of herself. In a sixth society, there may be
found expanding means of independent occupation, of responsible
employment for women; and here, other circumstances being equal, is the
best promise of domestic fidelity and enjoyment.

It is a matter of course that women who are furnished with but one
object,--marriage,--must be as unfit for anything when their aim is
accomplished as if they had never had any object at all. They are no
more equal to the task of education than to that of governing the state;
and, if any unexpected turn of adversity befals them, they have no
resource but a convent, or some other charitable provision. Where, on
the other hand, women are brought up capable of maintaining an
independent existence, other objects remain when the grand one is
accomplished. Their independence of mind places them beyond the reach of
the spoiler; and their cultivated faculty of reason renders them worthy
guardians of the rational beings whose weal or woe is lodged in their
hands. There is yet, as may be seen by a mere glance over society, only
a very imperfect provision made anywhere for doing justice to the next
generation by qualifying their mothers; but the observer of morals may
profit by marking the degrees in which this imperfection approache