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124 self-control, are speedily fatal to the worn-out frame. Apathy may last long; serenity is highly conservative in its influence; and folly and self-love together create a constitutional irritation, under which the low vital powers soon give way. It is a dreary and terrible mode of dying. The contrast of the two courses taken by old age is the contrast between the child under possession at the foot of the Mount, and the sleeping child which the old sage set before him, for his daily admonition and solace. No one can say that he has no power of choice between the two.

Beginning with the earliest stages of life, and ending with the latest, I have pointed out some of the causes of the needless mortality and the prevalent imperfection of health, for which society is answerable. Slight and superficial as my treatment of the subject must be in a series of essays like these, I believe I have exhibited facts enough to show that we have all something to do in checking untimely death, both in our own persons and in those of our neighbours.

If half the thought and sentiment that are spent on the subject of Death were bestowed on the practical duty of strengthening, lengthening, and ennobling Life, we should be more fit to live worthily and die contentedly. Let us prepare the way for the next generation to try whether it is not so.

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, as Mr. Ruskin so often assures us, people work better who are happy in their work—and it is most agreeable, as well as rational, to believe that it is so—one can scarcely imagine anything more beneficial to women who are disposed to work, than that they should direct their attention to the invention of beautiful patterns. Who can have so much to do as women, not only with the choice of fabrics in which beautiful patterns are displayed, but in the study and enjoyment of them when they adorn our dwellings, or when they impart grace and elegance to the human figure? The avocations of men lead them so often away from these matters of social and domestic arrangement, that women are left very much to themselves in this department of taste, and must have opportunities innumerable, in which men take no part, for studying the various combinations and effects, or the harmonies and discords, both of form and colour, as displayed in the objects immediately around them. Even upon their own dresses what an amount of invention must be bestowed to produce those exqusitely delicate and elaborate patterns by which muslin, calico, and silk fabrics are now adorned. Yet how much of this devolves entirely upon men; and how much also upon the exquisite taste, and the skilful hands, of our neighbours across the Channel?

The great want, of which in the present day we behold so many instances, is of something for women to do that will not expose them to hardship—something which they may render remunerative without losing caste—something, in short, that will not vulgarise them. We have at present no recognised step between the governess and the shopwoman. For simple independence of position there can be no question but the latter bears the palm; but as a matter of feeling to a well brought up, and a well educated woman, the difference is immense the other way. It is of no use reasoning on such points. Reasoners are apt to say—“I should prefer the shop.” When their turn comes to make the actual experiment, we see which they choose.

In consequence of this universal and natural leaning to the more genteel occupation, the market for governesses is frightfully overstocked, and their services grievously reduced in value; while a worse evil still becomes incorporated into our educational systems by hundreds and thousands of women undertaking to teach—who hate the occupation most cordially—hate it from beginning to end, and who murmur against the necessity which drives them to it as the greatest calamity upon earth.

Now, if the daughter, without leaving the protection of her father’s house, could sit down in the midst of a happy and united family to draw patterns; if the lone woman in her own neat little parlour could employ herself upon graphic designs; or if the widow with her children around her, taking up her pencil, or her colours, could construct new forms of beauty, perhaps as interesting to them as to herself, and so bring in a trifle for their food and clothing, still keeping over her head the shelter of a roof to call her own, and at her feet the warmth of a hearth, her title to which no stranger could dispute—what happiness of a domestic, as well as individual nature, such women might enjoy, compared with that which falls to the share of those who “go out,” as it is called.

Of course, like all other exact and beautiful arts, that of designing patterns is not acquired in a moment. If left until the season of necessity, there is every reason to fear it will never be acquired at all. The very faculty of invention itself, if allowed to lie dormant for twenty years, will prove very inefficient when suddenly set to work for the first time under the stress of adverse circumstances. Hence the vast importance to that class of women whose position in life renders them liable to the exigences of business, or of any precarious profession, of bestowing their time and attention in moments of leisure upon something better than merely counting threads and stitches, or following with minute precision lines already traced out for them by machinery.

One day spent in observing the patterns contained in a single room, and in considering how to improve them, would do more for the minds of such workers than years occupied in fine stitching, without an idea attached to it; and when once the faculty of invention has fairly got to work, if only in improving what others have invented, it produces sensations of an animating and pleasurable kind, such as can never be the accompaniment of servile and slavish work.

In proof of how much the art of drawing patterns requires cultivation, we have only to look over the rejected patterns of any of our great Manchester cotton printers. I have myself seen the volumes of these rejected patterns, many of which,