upon the female mind and character. Even to young men the trial is very great, and the apparent necessity of sending them to college, where all home influence is lost, is fraught with dangers which are often more than an offset to the advantages gained. But to the young lady the evil is far greater; for the most important part of her education consists in the harmonious development of those affections and sympathies which can be developed nowhere but at home, and at no period of life except in childhood and early youth. The hone education must go on together with that of the school, so that while the head is learning from books, the heart may be learning from example, and the hands from practice. The character is thus formed while the Laind is instructed, and in proportion as she learns more, she is prepared to be more useful and more happy, in whatever station of life God has placed her. She is thus educated for her position, not above it nor aside from it, and there is no danger of making her tastes too refined or her intellect too cultivated. The

correcting influence of home is daily applied, so that whatever may be learned is incorporated with what is practised. But too often those educated away from home are trained for a mode of life quite different from that in which they must actually live. Through five or six years they have no one's comfort to think of but their own; no duties to perform except to study a certain number of hours, and to conduct themselves, in the presence of their teachers or of company, with a certain prim propriety, which is a sure indication that they are rude and hoydenish everywhere else. Even when such institutions are conducted on the best principles and with the best instructors, the loss of a mother's influence and care is very great and must be seriously felt; but as they are sometimes conducted, money-making concerns, with much show and little substance, they are nothing but ingenious contrivances to keep the scholar ignorant of every thing she ought to know, and to unfit her for every thing she ought to do. Too often, from such institutions, where young ladies have

been kept year after year in luxury and indolence, at the expense, perhaps, of parents who have denied themselves common comforts for the sake of giving them the best advantages, they return to their homes vain and selfish, with their heads full of false notions and idle plans, looking upon industry as the height of vulgarity and upon indolence as a ladylike trait of character. The probability of their being happy at home, or of adding to the happiness of parents, is very small. If they are by nature very good girls, they may soon learn to repair the error and become sensible women; but commonly it is pretty safe to prophesy, that they will make some absurd settlement of themselves in life, and rue the consequences to the day of their death. For she who leaves home a girl, and returns a young lady, is almost a stranger to her own parents, and does not know how to make them, as they ought to be, her confidants. She has grown up away from them, and does not know how to trust herself to their sympathies. Her intimacies are very apt to be out

of her own home, and although under her parents' roof, she virtually lives at a distance from them. She therefore enters upon the world untried, and almost unprotected. With more self-reliance than wisdom, she is exposed to frequent deception, and suffers frequent and sometimes the severest disappointment.

However much, therefore, we may value what are called the advantages of education, I think that very imperfect instruction at school, together with good home influences, is better than the best boarding-school education ever devised. Let parents have the wisdom to encourage our own schools, by paying as much for their daughters at home as it costs when sent abroad, and the motive for sending them away will soon cease. Let their children grow up under their own roofs, and when no longer children they will become intimate friends, and the necessity of parental authority will yield to the influence of filial love.

LECTURE V.

FOLLIES.

"Whose adorning, let it be that of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price."-1 Peter iii. 3, 4.

IF my remarks last Sunday evening were at all correct, the most important part of a woman's education is that which she must accomplish for herself. Not only during her school days, but after they are passed, the work of self-improvement should steadily go on. Her aim should be, not only to become ladylike and agreeable, but a thoughtful, wellinformed, and useful woman. In other words, the education of her character and the just development of her mind is the object to be obtained. To this end her teachers may help her more or less, according to the manner in which she is taught to read, to study, and to think. The parents, and particularly the