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18 this, when she conceives a sudden distaste for the companion she has professed to love. The unfaithful wife does this, when she allows her thoughts to wander from her rightful lord. All women have done this, who have committed those frightful crimes which stain the page of history—all have acted from impulse, and by far the greater number have acted under the influence of misplaced affection. It is, indeed, appalling to contemplate the extent of ruin and of wretchedness to which woman may be carried by the force of her own impetuous and unregulated feelings. Her faults are not those of selfish calculation; she makes no stipulation for her own, or others' safety; when once she renounces principle, therefore, and gives herself up to act as the mere creature of impulse, there is no hope for her, except that experience, by its painful chastisements, may bring her back to wisdom and to peace.

Does this seem a hard sentence to pronounce upon those impetuous young creatures who make it their boast that they never stay to think—that they cannot reason—and were only born to feel? Hard as it is, observation proves it true. If we do not acknowledge any regular system of conduct, habit will render that systematical which is our customary choice; and if we choose day by day to act from impulse rather than principle, we yield ourselves to a fatal and delusive system, the worst consequences of which will follow us beyond the grave.

As youth is the season for making this important choice so it is the season for impressions. You will never remember what you acquire in after life, as you will remember what you are acquiring now. The knowledge you now obtain of evil will haunt you through future years, like a dark spectre in your path; while the glimpses of virtue which you now perceive irradiating the circle in which you move, will re-appear before you to the end of life,