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extricated; yet from which it is neceffary that she should be extricated, if fhe is to lead a life useful to others, ultimately comfortable to herself, and calculated to obtain the approbation of Heaven.

The risk to which a young woman is expofed of contracting a habit of exceffive fondness for amufements, depends not only on the particular propenfities of her mind, but also on the place and fituation in which she principally refides. To the daughter of a country gentleman, the paternal mansion, infulated in its park, or admitting no contiguous habitations except the neighbouring hamlet, feldom furnishes the opportunity of accefs to a perpetual circle of amusements. Visitors are not always to be found in the drawing-room; the card-table cannot always be filled up; the county town affords a ball but once in a month; and domeftic circumftances perverfely arise to obstruct regularity of attendance. Suppose then a young woman thus fituated to labour

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under the heavy disadvantage of not having had her mind directed by education to proper objects. Finding herself obliged to procure, by her own efforts, the entertainment which she is frequently without the means of obtaining from others, she is excited to fome degree of useful exertion. Family converfation, needle-work, a book, even a book that is not a novel, in a word, any occupation is found preferable to the tediousness of a constant want of employment. Thus the foundation of fome domeftic habits is laid: or, if the habits were previously in existence, they are ftrengthened, or, at least, are preserved from being obliterated. She who is fixed in a country town, where fociety is always within reach, and fomething in the way of petty amufement is ever going forward, or may easily be set on foot, may, with greater facility, contract a habit of flying from a companion, who, if infipid and unpleafing to her, will be, of all companions, the most infipid and unpleafing, herself. But it is in the metro

CHAP. X.

ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

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To occupy the mind with useful employments is among the best methods of guarding it from furrendering itself to diffipation. To occupy it with fuch employments regularly, is among the beft methods of leading it to love them. Young women fometimes complain, and more frequently the complaint is made for them, that they have nothing to do. Yet few complaints are urged with lefs foundation. To prescribe to a young perfon of the female sex the precife occupations to which she should devote her time, is impoffible. It would be to attempt to limit, by inapplicable rules, what must vary according to circumstances which cannot previously be ascertained. Differences in point of health, of intellect, of taste, and a thousand nameless particularities of family occurrences and local fitu

ation, claim, in each individual cafe, to be taken into the account. Some general reflections, however, may be offered.

I advert not yet to the occupations which flow from the duties of matrimonial life. When, to the rational employments. open to all women, the entire fuperintendence of domeftic œconomy is added; when parental cares and duties prefs forward to affume the high rank in a mother's breaft to which they are entitled; to complain of the difficulty of finding proper methods of occupying time, would be a lamentation which nothing but politenefs could preferve from being received by the auditor with a fmile. But in what manner, I hear it replied, are they, who are not wives and mothers, to bufy themselves? Even at present young women in general, notwithstanding all their efforts to quicken and enliven the flowpaced hours, appear, if we may judge from their countenances and their language, not unfrequently to feel themselves unfuccefsful. If drefs then, and what is called diffipation,

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are not to be allowed to fill fo large a fpace in the courfe of female life as they now overspread; and your defire to curtail them in the exercise of this branch of their eftablished prerogative is, by no means, equivocal; how are well-bred women to fup port themfelves in the single state through the difmal vacuity that feems to await them? This queftion it may be fufficient to anfwer by another. If young and well-bred women are not accustomed, in their fingle ftate, regularly to affign a large proportion of their hours to ferious and inftructive óccupations; what profpect, what hope is there, that, when married, they will affume habits to which they have ever been ftrangers, and exchange idleness and volatility for fteadiness and exertion?

To every woman, whether fingle or married, the habit of regularly allotting to improving books a portion of each day, and, as far as may be practicable, at stated hours, cannot be too ftrongly recommended. I use the term improving in a large fenfe;

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