seem also to have had high principles of conduct, which their imperious lords condescended to respect. *

That the maternal offices and feelings were meant to be the most important and completing, as they always will be the most politically useful qualities of the female character, our own experience and daily observation fully attest; but the female nature is admirable, independent of these; and it has been part of the divine system, that it should have its beauties and benefits distinct from those which result from its social position as a mother. It was foreseen by its Creator, that a large proportion of both sexes, and therefore of women, would in every civilized state remain without the connubial association. Few or none are willingly so on either side; but the artificial and very complicated condition into which property, civilization, and even enlarging prosperity lead society, have in all ages and nations caused a considerable proportion of every existing population to live unallied, in the single state. This result is evidence, that the fulfilment of the purposes of our existence is as attainable in the one form as in the other, and we may likewise add its hap

his farm into the city, he always, if his wife was living, and at home, sent a messenger before him to give her notice of his coming.--Plut. Quest. Rom. There was something formal in this last custom; but nothing could more strongly remark both respect and confidence. Even Cæsar's harshness showed the high standard to which they carried the character of their women. When he was putting away his wife on a rumour of infidelity, which he was assured was unfounded, his answer was, that Cæsar's wife must not only be guiltless, but her conduct must be such that she should not even be suspected.

*It is mentioned by Plutarch, of the Ancient Persians, that "the queens sat usually with their kings at their suppers and banquets, but when the royal majesty resolved upon a drunken debauch, the queen was sent away, and then the singers and dancing girls were brought in."-Conjug. Prec. p. 242.

This is an important passage; for it illustrates that incident in the book of Esther which occasioned her elevation.

Ahasuerus made a feast of seven days to all his nobles and princes. "On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven chamberlaius to bring Vashti the queen before the king, with the crown-royal: but the queen refused to come at the king's commandment, therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him."-Esther i. 10, 11. He immediately held a council, and divorced her, and ordered another queen to be provided for him.-V. 19.

The information given by Plutarch shows that this intoxicated king could not have put a greater insult upon his queen in her estimation, and according to the Persian custom, than to insist upon her presence at this drunken festivity.

piness, although we might prefer to receive the boon of comfort rather in the one shape than in the other. But all can no more command marriage than they can command wealth, rank, or fame, or any specific object depending on others. The temporal blessings of life are generally to be earned and acquired by time, and with uncertainty and inequality; so must those subsisting means, the deficiency of which, according to the individual idea of comfort, is always the chief cause of any remaining unmarried in the young and active period of life.

But this single state is no diminution of the beauties and the utilities of the female character; on the contrary, our present life would lose many of the comforts, and much likewise of what is absolutely essential to the wellbeing of every part of society, and even of the private home, without the unmarried female. To how many a father-a mother -a brother, and not less, a sister, is she both a necessity and a blessing! How many orphans have to look up with gratitude to her care and kindness! How many nephews and nieces owe their young felicities and improvements to her! Were every woman married, the parental home would often in declining life be a solitary abode, when affectionate attentions are most precious, and, but from such a source, not attainable. It is the single class of women which supplies most of our teachers and governesses; and from the lower ranks, nearly all the domestic assistants of our household come. What vast changes, not promotive of the general happiness, would ensue in every station of life, if every female married as soon as she was fully grown! Certainly human life would in that case have a different aspect, and must be regulated on a new principle, and would lead to consequences which cannot now be calculated.

The single woman is therefore as important an element of social and private happiness as the married one. The utilities of each are different, but both are necessary; and it is vulgar nonsense, unworthy of manly reason, and discreditable to every just feeling, for any one to depreciate the unmarried condition.

If from what is beneficial we turn our glance to what is interesting, the single lady is in this respect not surpassed by the wedded matron. For no small portion of her life, I think for the whole of it, with judicious conduct, she is in

deed the most attractive personage. The wife resigns, or ought to resign, always her claims to general attention; and to concentre and confine her regards, and wishes, and objects, to her chosen companion, and domestic claims and scenes. She has quitted the public stage; she seeks no more the general gaze; she has become part of a distinct and separated proprietary. But the unmarried lady remains still the candidate for every honourable notice, and injures no one by receiving it. Those of the male sex who are in the same condition, are at as full liberty to pay her their proper attentions as she is to receive them. Being in this position as to society at large, she is always interesting wherever she goes; and, if she preserve her good temper, her steady conduct, and her modest reputation undiminished, and cultivate her amiable, her intellectual, and her truly feminine qualities, she cannot go anywhere, in any station of life, without being an object of interest and pleasurable feeling, to all those of her own circle with whom she may choose to be acquainted.

It is only by displaying undue solicitude for changing her condition, or disappointment at the change not occurring, or a peevishness which is imputed to such feelings, or unbecoming attempts to obtain or extort notice, that she lessens her natural attractiveness.

It is for us all, never to regret or covet what we do not or cannot obtain; and never to repine that others have what we do not possess. It is for us all to use and value, and cultivate the happinesses which we are possessing, and not to sigh or crave for those which do not come to us.

It is for us all, to be at all times grateful to our kindest Provider, for the daily comforts with which he is supplying us; and to resign every thing else to his will and regulation, and patiently and magnanimously to await his direction of our state and fortunes. Then every one of us would be enjoying a greater felicity from our ordinary life, than we can experience on any other plan.

He arranges and administers life on this principle.-He requires us to believe in his invisible government and guidance of it; to be always content with his dispositions and distribution of it; and to be assured, that if we thus leave it to him, he will, from time to time, place us in that condition, and in those circumstances which will be really best and happiest for us. Let the single of both sexes think, feel, and

act firmly and perseveringly on these principles, and they will find that life, in every one of its states and positions, is like a fine garden, full of rich, though varied, flowers and fruits, in all its compartments.*

LETTER XI.

System of Nature as to the successive states of Human Life-The Util ities of these several Stages, and especially of a young period of Life -Happiness attainable at every Season.

In our seasons we have the grateful succession of the spring, the summer, and the autumn. In our vegetation, the new leaf, the beauteous flower, and the nutritious fruit. These correspond with contemporaneous atmospherical changes of our system, and are followed by that peculiar destitution and apparent death of nature, which frosty and chilling winter brings on. The insect and reptile world exhibit congenial analogies. The vernal temperature recalls or hatches their tribes into life and feeling, in a creeping state. They have their summer day of playful gayety, varying in its duration, and enjoy existence in a winged form; their autumn is their time of depositing their oval brood; and from that they depart into death or insensibility. These four states of all that have vital being, growth, maturity, decline, and death, and these annual successions of aerial agencies which are so much associated with the life, pro

* I cannot doubt from my own experience, that happiness accompanies both the single and the married states; I have been now in the latter forty years, and no one can be happier than I have been in it; but I had left my parent roof, and been living in chambers in the Temple, and therefore much alone, for eight years before I married. This was a complete trial of the single state, and in this I have also to say that I was perfectly happy, though in a different way. I did not marry because I was deficient in happiness, but because the lady deeply interested me; and becoming so attached, my comfort then was associated with her, and having by that time before me the fair means and probability of an adequate maintenance by regular diligence, on a moderate and careful scale, I changed one mode of happiness for another; to that increase of it which always arises from reciprocal regard; if what is already happy can be more happy, by being differently happy.

duce, and suspension of vegetative nature, have been made the characteristics of our terrestrial system. In the human race an analogous series of changes and states takes place, with such striking moral and intellectual results, as to excite our admiration at the kindness of our Creator, for having formed his human nature on a plan of such sagacious benevolence. By this he has appointed, that every human being should have a season of childhood, another of youth, a third of full maturity, with its parental produce, and a following period of decline and death, to pass into another mode of existence elsewhere.

These laws are attached to all who are permitted to pass through the regular course of human life; though its Giver has reserved to himself the resistless right of calling each of us away, at whatever part of it he shall think proper, without completing the full progression of these successive conditions.

These changes in us have the analogy with the rest of the organized and ethereal kingdoms of nature above remarked. But they are obviously a very artificial system of living being, and have been, as to our race, purposely selected and appointed to it; for neither of them was unavoidable. There was no necessity for our being so many years a babe, and so many more in each of the succeeding conditions.

We might have sprung up at once into full-formed beings, as Adam was at his creation; and as the Theban fable imagines that body of men to have done, who emerged instantaneously from the dragon's teeth, which Cadmus was fancied to have sown.*

But the great object with us has been, to make moral and intelligent beings of that peculiar kind which we have thus far attained to be; and we may therefore assume that the successive ages and states through which we grow into maturity, and decline into dissolution and departure, have been chosen and attached to human nature, from such fore

* Ovid describes this fable with his usual ease and picturesqueness. "He opened the furrow with the plough, he urged and scattered the teeth in the ground; soon, passing belief, the clods began to move, and the point of a spear was seen coming above the earth; presently, heads covered with a nodding painted crest emerged; shoulders followed; breasts and arms laden with spears arose, and a crop of men with shields grew fully up."-Ov. Met. lib. 3, v. 104-110.