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322 be very imperfectly performed when not connected with the general good. The mighty buines of female life is to pleae, and retrained from entering into more important concerns by political and civil oppreion, entiments become events, and reflection deepens what it hould, and would have effaced, if the undertanding had been allowed to take a wider range.

But, confined to trifling employments, they naturally imbibe opinions which the only kind of reading calculated to interet an innocent frivolous mind, inpires. Unable to grap any thing great, is it urpriing that they find the reading of hitory a very dry tak, and diquiitions addreed to the undertanding intollerably tedious, and almot unintelligible? Thus are they necearily dependent on the novelit for amuement. Yet, when I exclaim againt novels, I mean when contrated with thoe works which exercie the undertanding and regulate the imagination.—For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank till a blank, becaue the mind mut receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little trength by a light exertion of its thinking powers; beides even the productions that are only addreed to the imagination, raie the reader a little above the gros gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a hade of delicacy.

This obervation is the reult of experience; for I have known everal notable women, and one in particular, who was a very good woman—as good as uch a narrow mind would allow her to be, who took care that her daughters (three in number)&ensp;