heir intrinsic worth. Their education is conducted
mainly with the view of pleasing and attracting the admiration of
others, rather than of improving and developing their qualities of mind
and heart. They are imbued with notions of exclusiveness, fashion, and
gentility. A respectable position in society is held up to them as the
mark to be aimed at. To be criminal or vicious is virtually represented
to them as far less horrible than to be "vulgar." Immured within the
bastile of exclusivism, woman is held captive to all the paltry shifts
and expediencies of convention, fashion, gentility, and so forth. The
genuine benevolence of her nature is perverted; her heart becomes
contracted; and the very highest sources of happiness--those which
consist in a kindly sympathy with humanity in all ranks of life--are as
a well shut up and a fountain sealed.

Is it not a fact, that in what is called "fashionable society," a fine
outside appearance is regarded almost in the light of a virtue?--that to
be rich, or to have the appearance of riches, is esteemed as a merit of
a high order;--whereas, to be poor, or to seem so, ranks as something
like an unpardonable offence? Nay, such is the heartlessness of this
class spirit, that a young woman, belonging to the better class, who, by
misfortune or family reverses, has been thrown upon her own resources,
and who endeavours, by her own honest hands, to earn her honest bread,
immediately loses caste, and is virtually expelled from "respectable"
society. The resolution to be independent--the most invigorating
resolution which can take possession of the human mind--is scouted in
such circles as a degrading thing; and those who have been brought up
within the influence of fashion, will submit to the most severe
privations, rather than submit to the loss of their class and caste
respectability!

Thus brought up, it is no wonder that woman has been the co-partner with
man in upholding the general extravagance of the age. There never was
such a rage for dress and finery amongst English women as there is now.
It rivals the corrupt and debauched age of Louis XV. of France. A
delirium of fashion exists. Women are ranked by what they wear, not by
what they are. Extravagance of dress, and almost indecency of dress, has
taken the place of simple womanly beauty. Wordsworth once described the
"perfect woman nobly planned." Where will you find the perfect woman
now? Not in the parti-coloured, over-dressed