Almost any thing looks well on a noble woman. The
plainest Dress becomes agreeable when worn by a person of grand purpose
and good-doing life. Real life when unadorned is most adorned. Noble
womanhood is always beautiful. The world always has and always will
admire it. The richest Dress is always worn on the soul. The adornments
that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart
through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dress
the soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a
beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of
her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked
mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would
listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her
idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of
womanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and my
feelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation in
the moral and intellectual scale of life. You may not see the mental or
moral nakedness of the mass of our young women as I do; you may not hear
the pleading voice of religion as I do; but I trust you do see your need
of higher purposes in life, and more active usefulness; I trust you do
see that you have souls to dress and hearts to adorn, and will attend to
this, your highest duty.

Lecture Four.

FASHION.

Fashion made Superior to Health--Fashionable Religion--Unfashionable
Ministers--Votaries of Fashion Despise it--Fashionable Women
Short-lived--Mothers of Great Men Unfashionable--Woman's Greatness
shown in Offspring--Example of Women of Fashion--Apostrophe to
Fashion--Appeal to American Women--Nature in Freedom's
Temple--Fashion Is Monotonous--Woman needs more Freedom.

Woman is accused of being the dupe of Fashion. Her fashionable follies
are paraded in every public print; her dry-goods propensities are talked
of in every circle where she is not truly respected, and in many where
she is; her Parisian proclivities are made the butt of very general
ridicule, and the dignity of her character is not a little lowered by
her too great intimacy with fashion plates and dandy shops. Though,
perhaps, man is as much to blame for this as woman--for she seeks to
please him, and courts his smiles more than the smiles of all the gods
of Fashion--still she must bear her part of the bl