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132 fruitless decoration, and all that train of evils which ensue from vacillating between the two extremes of flattering hopes, and mortified ambition. Go home, then, and consult your mirror; no falsehood will be there. Go home, and find, as you have often done before, that even without beauty, you can make the fire-side circle happy there; nor deem your lot a hard one. From many dangers attendant upon beauty you are safe, from many sorrows you are exempt; above all, should you become a wife, from that which is, perhaps, the greatest calamity in woman's history, the loss of her husband's love, because the charms for which alone he valued her, have vanished. This never can be your experience, and so far you are blest.

If personal beauty be so great a good as men persuade us it is, how important does it become to know that there is no certain way of preserving this treasure, but by a strict regard to health! We hear of the beauty of extreme delicacy, of the beauty of a slight hectic, and sometimes of the beauty of constitutional debility and languor, but who ever ventured to speak of the beauty of disease? And yet, all these, if not treated judiciously, or checked in time, will infallibly become disease. On the other hand, we hear of vulgar health, of an unladylike bloom, and of too much strength, giving an air of independence unbecoming to the female character. Sincerely wishing that all who hold these sentiments may make the best use of the advantages of illness, when it does fall to their lot, we will pass on to consider the advantages of health as one of the greatest of earthly blessings.

Perfect health was the portion of our first parents while Paradise was yet untrodden, save by the steps of sinless men, and angels. Since that time, it has become rarely the experience of any of the human family to be altogether exempt from disease ; yet, so much are the sufferings of