confulted, the demands of duty fulfilled, and the dictates of benevolence obeyed, there will yet be hours remaining unoccupied; hours for which no fpecific employment has yet been provided. For fuch hours it is not the intention of these pages to prescribe any specific employment. What if some space be affigned to the useful and elegant arts of female industry? But is induftry to poffefs them all? Let the innocent amusements which home furnishes claim their fhare. It is a claim which fhall cheerfully be allowed. Do amufements abroad offer their pretenfions? Neither fhall they, on proper occafions, be unheard. A wellregulated life will never know a vacuum fufficient to require an immoderate share of public amufements to fill it.

CHAP. XI.

CONSIDERATIONS ANTECEDENT TO

MARRIAGE.

I

N the preceding pages, which have had an evident and primary reference to the fituation of unmarried women, I have been under the neceffity of fpeaking largely concerning various duties, which appertain equally to those who are no longer fingle. I have therefore to entreat the reader, if ..of the latter defcription, ftill to regard the foregoing part of this treatife as addreffed alfo to herself; if of the former, to believe herself, even at prefent, concerned in many of the fubfequent obfervations, though they should seem to refer solely to a condition of life into which fhe has not yet entered.

1

It will be proper, however, before the duties of a married woman are particularifed,

larifed, to be explicit concerning fome points, on attention to which the probability of happiness in matrimonial life radically depends.

The profpect of paffing a single month with an acquaintance, whose society we know to be unpleafing, is a profpect from which every mind recoils. Were the time of intercourse antecedently fixed to extend to a year, or to a longer period, our repugnance would be proportionally great. Were the term to reach to the death of one of the parties, the evil would appear in forefight scarcely to be endured. But further; let it be fuppofed, not only that the parties were to be bound during their joint lives to the society of each other; but that their interefts were to be infeparably blended together in all circumftances. And, in the next place, let it also be supposed that the two parties were not to engage in this affociation on terms of perfect equality; but that one of them was neceffarily to be placed as to various

!

particulars, in a ftate of fubordination to the other. What caution would be requi fite in each of the parties, what especial caution would be requifite in the party destined to fubordination, antecedently to fuch an engagement! How diverfified, how strict, how perfevering fhould be the inquiries of each refpecting the other, and especially of the latter respecting the former! Unless the difpofitions, the temper, the habits, the genuine character, and inmoft principles were mutually known; what rational hope, what tolerable chance of happiness could fubfift? And if happiness should not be the lot of the two affociates, would not their disquietudes be proportionate to the clofeness of their union? Let this reasoning be transferred to the cafe of marriage.

Whether marriage establishes between the husband and the wife a perfect equality of rights, or conveys to the former a certain degree of fuperiority over the latter, is a point not left among Chriftians to be de

cided by fpeculative arguments. The intimation of the divine will, communicated to the first woman immediately after the fall, is corroborated by various injunctions delivered in the New Teftament. "Let the "wife fee that fhe reverence her husband."

Wives, fubmit yourfelves unto your own "husbands as unto the Lord; for the huf"band is the head of the wife, even as "Chrift is the head of the church;-there"fore as the church is fubject unto Chrift, "fo let the wives be to their own husbands "in every thing (o)." The command in the second of these paffages is fo explicit, and illuftrated by a comparifon fo impreffive, that it is needlefs to recite other texts of a fimilar import. The obedience, however, which is here enjoined by the Apostle, is not unlimited obedience. Were a husband prefumptuously to require his wife to infringe the property or other rights

(0) Ephef. v. 33.-22. 24.-See alfo Coloff. iii. 18.— 1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35.-1 Tim. ii. 11. 15.-Titus, ii. 5.1 Peter, iii. 1.