the mouths of the young and the fair,--or at least, if not in their
mouths, in their actions. To sacrifice affection to interest is a
praiseworthy thing. It is fearful to hear the withering sneer with which
that folly, love, is spoken of by young and innocent lips--a sneer of
conscious superiority, too! It is a superiority not to be envied, and
which makes them objects of greater pity than those whom they affect to
despise. There is no subject so sacred that it has not a side open to
ridicule, and all the most pure and noble attributes of our nature may
be converted into subjects for a jest, by minds in which no lofty idea
can find an echo. All notions of unworldly and unselfish attachment are
branded with the name of romantic follies, unworthy of sensible persons;
and the idealities of love, like all other idealities, are fast
disappearing beneath the leaden mantle of expediency.

The reform must begin here, as in all great moral questions, with the
arbiters of morals--those from whom morals take their tone--women. That
we have no right to expect it to begin with the other sex, may be
proved even by a vulgar aphorism. It is often triumphantly said, that "a
man may marry when he will--a woman must marry when she can." How keen a
satire upon both sexes is couched in this homely proverb! and how long
will they consent not only patiently to acquiesce in its truth, but to
prove it by their actions? That women may be able thus to reform
society, it is of importance that conscience be educated on this subject
as on every other; educated, too, before the tinsel of false romance
deceive the eye, or the frost of worldly-mindedness congeal the heart of
youth. It seems to me that this object would best be effected, not by
avoiding the subject of love, but by treating it, when it arises, with
seriousness and simplicity, as a feeling which the young may one day be
called upon to excite and to return, but which can have no existence in
the lofty in soul and pure in heart, except when called forth by
corresponding qualities in another. Such training as this would be a far
more effectual preventive of foolish passions, than cramping the
intellect in narrow ignorance, and excluding all knowledge of what life
is--in order to prepare people for entering upon it: a plan about as
wise in itself, and as successful as to results, as the bolts, bars, and
duennas of a Spanish play. Outward, substituted for inward, restraints
are sure to act upo