ely--that loveliness which fades
not with time, nor is marred or alienated by disease, but which neither
chance nor change can in any way despoil.

9. SILKEN ENTICEMENTS OF THE STRANGER.--We urge you, gentle maiden, to
beware of the silken enticements of the stranger, until your love is
confirmed by protracted acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers
overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent--the scoffer of hallowed things;
and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a
high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do
not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place,
irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in
silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather,
until your own character and that of him who would woo you, is more fully
developed. Surely, if this "first love" cannot endure a short probation,
fortified by "the {29} pleasures of hope," how can it be expected to
survive years of intimacy, scenes of trial, distracting cares, wasting
sickness, and all the homely routine of practical life? Yet it is these
that constitute life, and the love that cannot abide them is false and must
die.

* * * * *

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Influence of Female Character.

[Illustration: ROMAN LADIES.]

1. MORAL EFFECT.--It is in its moral effect on the mind and the heart of
man, that the influence of woman is most powerful and important. In the
diversity of tastes, habits, inclinations, and pursuits of the two sexes,
is found a most beneficent provision for controlling the force and
extravagance of human passion. The objects which most strongly seize and
stimulate the mind of man, rarely act at the same time and with equal power
on the mind of woman. She is naturally better, purer, and more chaste in
thought and language.

2. FEMALE CHARACTER.--But the influence of female character on the virtue
of men, is not seen merely in restraining and softening the violence of
human passion. To her is mainly committed the task of pouring into the
opening mind of infancy its first impressions of duty, and of stamping on
its susceptible heart the first image of its God. Who will not confess the
influence of a mother in forming the heart of a child? What man is there
who can not trace the origin of many of the best maxims of his life to the
lips of her who gave him birth? How wide, how lasting, how s