ducation, the most effectual means to direct them into, and
secure their progress in, the ways of virtue."

A French writer criticised the Englishmen of the day for their failure
to avail themselves of the refining influence of women, in whose
graces, he affirmed, there could be found constant charm and a certain
sweetness peculiar to the sex. He said that the conversation of the
women would polish and soften the manners of the men and enable them
to contract a manner and tone which would be agreeable to both sexes;
and he ascribed the bluntness of the English character to this lack of
the refining influence of female society.

As women were left so largely to their own devices, falling the
comradeship of men, they gave themselves over to the needle as the
chief resource for idle hours. The _Female Spectator_ protested
against this excessive needlework on the part of women: "Nor can I by
any means approve of your compelling young ladies of fortune to make
so much use of the needle, as they did in former days, and some few
continue to do.... It always makes me smile when I hear the mother
of fine daughters say: 'I always keep my girls at their needle;' one,
perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third
engaged to make a whole dozen shirts for her father. And then, when
she had carried you into the nursery and shown you them all, add: 'It
is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing
to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not,'" With such
a narrow circle of interest, it was not strange that women who had
leisure should have wasted it in frivolity.

Gambling among women of fashion was more a result of too much leisure
and too little intellectual stimulus than an indication of vicious
propensities. _The Female Spectator_, from which we have quoted, in an
article in 1745, relating an account of the visit of a country lady to
a London friend, furnishes an illustration of the extent and effects
of the vice. The article recites that after knocking a considerable
time at the door of her friend's house,--the hour was between eleven
and twelve o'clock in the day,--a footman, with his nightcap on and
a general appearance of having risen from the dead, responded to her
inquiry for her friend, in the interim of his yawns: "We had a racquet
here last night, and my lady cannot possibly be stirring these three
hours." The surprised visitor refrained from asking any questio