bly find it heavenly, as well as worldly wisdom, to "go
down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man's love." You
will tell me that many happy and useful lives are now open to women, and
that they need not be dependent on marriage for happiness,--and I shall
quite agree with you; you may go on to say that marriage can now be to a
woman a mere choice amongst many professions, a mere accident, as it is to
a man,--and there I shall totally disagree with you. It is quite possible
that Happiness may lie in the narrower, more self-willed work of the
single woman, but Blessedness, which is higher and more enduring than
happiness, can only be known to the married woman whose whole nature is
developed, and _fully_ known only to the "Queen of Marriage: a most
perfect wife."

Are you, then, to spend your lives making nets, or, following Swift's wise
caution, even in making cages, waiting, like Lydia Languish, for a hero of
romance, and beguiling the interval with reading "The Delicate Distress,"
and "The Mistakes of the Heart"? Not at all! The best way to prepare for
marriage is to prepare yourself to be like Bridget Elia, "an incomparable
old maid."

"The soul, that goodness like to this adorns
Holdeth it not concealed;
But, from her first espousal to the frame,
Shows it, till death, revealed.
Obedient, sweet, and full of seemly shame,
She, in the primal age,
The person decks with beauty; moulding it
Fitly through every part.
In riper manhood, temperate, firm of heart,
With love replenished, and with courteous praise,
In loyal deeds alone she hath delight.
And, in her elder days,
For prudence and just largeness is she known;
Rejoicing with herself,
That wisdom in her staid discourse be shown.
Then, in life's fourth division, at the last
She weds with God again,
Contemplating the end she shall attain;
And looketh back, and blesseth the time past."--_Dante_.

[Footnote 6: James Martineau.]

[Footnote 7: Channing.]

A Good Time.

We sometimes hear people lamenting the dangers of this age as regards
unsettled views in religion, while others lament that girls neglect home
duties for outside work.

I am not at all sure that our greatest danger does not lurk in that most
modern invention, "a good time," which, as a disturbing element, is
closely related to that other modern institution "week-ends."

Fifteen or twenty years