Allow a young lady to have any hand in the adjustment of all the components of her dress, each of which has a contour which only the fleeting fashion of the moment can settle; allow her time to receive morning visitants, and prepare for afternoon appointments and evening parties, and what time has the dear one to spare, to be useful and do good? To labor! Heaven forefend the use of the horrid term! The simple state of the case is this. There is somewhere, in all this, an enormous miscalculation, an infinite mischief-an evil, as we shall attempt to show, not of transitory or minor importance, but fraught with misery and ruin, not only to the fair ones themselves, but to society and the age.

We have not, we admit, the elements on which to base the calculation; but we may assume, as we have, that there are in the United States a hundred thousand young ladies brought up to do nothing, except dress, and pursue amusement. Another hundred thousand learn music, dancing, and what are called the fashionable accomplishments. It has been said that "revolutions never move backwards." It is equally true of emulation of the fashion. The few opulent, who can afford to be good for nothing, precede. Another class presses as closely as they can upon their steps; and the contagious mischief spreads downward, till the fond father, who lays every thing under contribution, to furnish the means for purchasing a piano, and hiring a music-master for his daughters, instead of being served, when he comes in from the plough, by the ruined favorites for whom he has sacrificed so much, finds that a servant must be hired for the young ladies.

Here is not the end of the mischief. Every one knows that mothers and daughters give the tone, and laws-more unalterable than those of the Medes and Persians-to society. Here is the root of the matter, the spring of bitter waters. Here is the origin of the complaint of hard times bankruptcies, greediness, avarice, and the horse-leech cry. Give, give!" Here is the reason why every man lives up. to his income, and so many beyond it. Here is the reason why the young trader, starting on credit, and calling himsel a merchant, hires and furnishes such a house as if he really was one, fails, and gives to his creditors a beggarly account

of empty boxes and misapplied sales. He has married a wife whose vanity and extravagance are fathomless, and his ruin is explained. Hence the general and prevalent evil of the present times, extravagance-conscious shame of the thought of being industrious and useful. Hence the concealment, by so many thousand young ladies, (who have not yet been touched by the extreme of modern degeneracy, and who still occasionally apply their hands to domestic employment,) of these, their good deeds, with as much care as if they were crimes. Every body is ashamed not to be expensive and fashionable; and every one seems equally ashamed of honest industry.

I cannot conceive, that mere idlers, male or female, can have respect enough for themselves to be comfortable. I cannot imagine, that they should not carry about with them such a consciousness of being a blank in existence, as would be written on their forehead, in the shrinking humiliation of perceiving, that the public eye had weighed them in the balance, and found them wanting. Novels and romances may say this or that about their ethereal beauties, their fine ladies tricked out to slaughter my lord A., and play Cupid's archery upon dandy B., and despatch Amarylis C. to his sonnets. I have no conception of a beautiful woman, or a fine man, in whose eye, in whose port, in whose whole expression, this sentiment does not stand imbodied :—" I am called by my Creator to duties; I have employment on the earth; my sterner, but more enduring pleasures are in discharging my duties."

Compare the sedate expression of this sentiment in the countenance of man or woman, when it is known to stand, as the index of character and the fact, with the superficial gaudiness of a simple, good for nothing belle, who disdains usefulness and employment, whose empire is a ball-room, and whose subjects dandies, as silly and as useless as herself. Who, of the two, has most attractions for a man of sense? The one a help-mate, a fortune in herself, who can aid to procure one, if the husband has it not; who can soothe him under the loss of it, and, what is more, aid him to regain it; and the other a painted butterfly, for ornament only during the vernal and sunny months of prosperity;

and then not becoming a chrysalis, an inert moth in adversity, but a croaking, repining, ill-tempered termagant, who can only recur to the days of her short-lived triumph, to imbitter the misery, and poverty, and hopelessness of a husband, who, like herself, knows not to dig, and is ashamed to beg.

We are obliged to avail of severe language in application. to a deep-rooted malady. We want words of power. We need energetic and stern applications. No country ever verged more rapidly towards extravagance and expense. In a young republic, like ours, it is ominous of any thing but good. Men of thought, and virtue, and example, are called upon to look to this evil. Ye patrician families, that croak, and complain, and forebode the downfall of the republic, here is the origin of your evils. Instead of training your son to waste his time, as an idle young gentleman at large,—instead of inculcating on your daughter, that the incessant tinkling of a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, or dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make her way in life, if you can find no better employment for them, teach him the use of the grubbing hoe, and her to make up garments for your servants. Train your son and daughter to an employment, to frugality, to hold the high front, and to walk the fearless step of independence, and sufficiency to themselves in any fortunes, any country, or any state of things. By arts like these, the early Romans thrived. When your children have these possessions, you may go down to the grave in peace, as regards their temporal fortunes.

LESSON CLXIV.

Lochiel's Warning--CAMPBELL.

Wizard. LOCHIEL! Lochiel, beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array!
For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight,
And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight:

They rally, they bleed, for their kingdom and crown;
Wo, wo to the riders that trample them down!
Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain,
And their hoof-beaten bosoms are trod to the plain.
But hark! through the fast-flashing lightning of war,
What steed to the desert flies frantic and far?
'Tis thine, O Glenullin! whose bride shall await,
Like a love-lighted watch-fire, all night at the gate.
A steed comes at morning; no rider is there;
But its bridle is red with the sign of despair.
Weep, Albin! to death and captivity led!
Oh, weep! but thy tears cannot number the dead;
For a merciless sword on Culloden shall wave,
Culloden! that reeks with the blood of the brave.
Lochiel. Go, preach to the coward, thou death-telling seer!
if gory Culloden so dreadful appear,

Or,

Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight,

This mantle, to cover the phantoms of fright.

Wizard. Ha! laugh'st thou, Lochiel, my vision to scorn?
Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn.
Say, rushed the bold eagle exultingly forth,

From his home, in the dark-rolling clouds of the north?
Lo! the death-shot of foeman outspeeding, he rode
Companionless, bearing destruction abroad:

But down let him stoop from his havoc on high!
Ah! home let him speed, for the spoiler is nigh.
Why flames the far summit? Why shoot to the blast
Those embers, like stars from the firmament cast?
'Tis the fire-shower of ruin all dreadfully driven
From his eyrie, that beacons the darkness of heaven.
Oh, crested Lochiel, the peerless in might,
Whose banners arise on the battlements' height,
Heaven's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn;
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return!
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.
Lochiel. False wizard, avaunt! I have marshalled my
Their swords are a thousand, their bosoms are one!
They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death

clan

Then welcome be Cumberland's steed to the shock
Let him dash his proud foam like a wave on the rock
But wo to his kindred, and wo to his cause,
When Albin her claymore indignantly draws;
When her bonneted chieftains to victory crowd,
Clanranald the dauntless, and Moray the proud;
All plaided and plumed in their tartan array-

Wizard. Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!
For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
But man cannot cover what God would reveal:
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the bloodhounds that bark for thy fugitive king.
Lo! anointed by Heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold, where he flies on his desolate path!

Now, in darkness and billows, he

from

sweeps my sight: Rise! rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!

"Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors; Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where?

For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.

Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn,

Like a limb from his country cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;`
His death-bell is tolling. Oh! mercy, dispel
Yon sight, that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots, that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown ere it ceases to beat,
With the smoke of its ashes to poison the gale-

Lochiel. Down, soothless insulter! I trust not the tale: Though my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore, Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore,

Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains,

While the kindling of life in his bosom remains,
Shall, victor, exult, or in death be laid low,

With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe,