, and
cordially assented to the truths of the gospel, though the constraining
love of Christ was yet wanting; and both she and her husband were
intimate friends of one whose path had ever been since they had known
it, "the path of the just, like the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day:" and that one was Ernest Maltby, now vicar of
Crossbourne.

So Dr Prosser had chosen his wife well. And yet he was disappointed in
her; and why? Just because he had made the mistake--and how common a
mistake it is in these days--of supposing that accomplishments acquired
and a highly cultivated mind make the model woman, wife, and mother.
Surely the mistake is a sad and fatal one--fatal to woman's highest
happiness and truest usefulness; fatal to her due fulfilment of the part
which her loving Creator designed her to fulfil in this world!

There are two concentric circles in which we all move, an inner or
domestic circle, an outer or social circle. We are too often educating
our women merely for the outer circle. We crowd the mind and memory
with knowledge of all sorts, that they may shine in society: we forget
to teach them first and foremost how to make home happy. It was so with
Mrs Prosser. She had overstrained her mind with the burden of a
multitude of acquirements and accomplishments, which had not, after all,
made her truly accomplished. One or two things for which she had real
taste and ability thoroughly mastered would have been a far greater
source of delight to her husband, and of satisfaction to herself, than
the mere handful of unripe fruit which she had gathered from a dozen
different branches of the tree of knowledge, and in the collecting of
which she had, in a measure, impaired the elasticity of her mind and her
bodily strength, and found no time for making herself mistress of a
thousand little undemonstrative acquirements which tend to keep a steady
light of joy and peace burning daily and hourly in the home.

What wonder, then, that, when a little one came to gladden the hearts of
those who were already fondly attached to each other, the poor mother
was unable to do justice to her child. Partly nourished by a stranger,
and partly brought up by hand, and missing those numberless little
attentions which either ignorance or a mind otherwise occupied prevented
Mrs Prosser from giving to the frail being who had brought into the
world with it a delicacy of constitution due, in a considerab