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around it, but more especially springing from that uncontrolled influence (as mischievous as it is vast) which women exercise over society at large-such being the case, would it not be a worthy labour to attempt the curbing down, in the first place, all such influence, wherever dangerous or overgrown, and afterward to seek the direction of a fitting and wholesome influence into its proper and peculiar channels? Let the devotion to Woman (if devotion to a creature there must needs be!) at least rest, and rest only, on the broad basis of devotion to her virtues!

But, at the same time, if such a task is to be carried through—if we are to be enabled, in any degree, to effect the purpose we hold in view, it is a conviction we cannot disguise, that much of what is now so taintingly-luxurious in the female character has to be lopped away,-and perhaps nearly all that is left to be pruned. It is necessary to be severe in many cases before we can venture to be indulgent; just, be fore we can afford to be merciful.

On no occasion has it been sought in these pages to sustain argument (or have merely-satirical feelings been indulged in) by a repetition of those smart, but very often contemptible sallies, which have been levelled, time immemorial, against the sex. Such male impertinencies' are without end; but 'squibs' of that kind, in addition to being no more than common-place, are seldom anything beyond raillery;-all such we have accordingly rejected as unworthy serious attention; bearing in mind, that there is nothing so grave, nothing so estimable, as not to have been occasionally made the butt for shafts of ridicule, as powerless as they are malicious!

Holding all indiscriminate censure to be as senseless as it is illiberal, we have been both anxious and careful to avoid general imputations. But here we must be distinctly understood: We may not in all cases have expressly said (what frequently might have been said with truth) that there are many of the sex exempt from particular failings. Let not an omis

sion, then, be mistaken for an injustice: "it is better to incur the risk of occasional misconstruction, than, by perpetually recurring to qualifying and explanatory phrases, to run the dangerous chance of wearying the reader."

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