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practical systems of Education to regulate and harmonize them all; a principle which shall be influential over those influences; which can guide and control them, giving strength and efficiency to such as are salutary, while it represses or exterminates such as are injurious? Every true friend of the young who has watched with attention and interest the development of youthful character, the gradual awakening of thought, the rapid outgrowth of fancy and feeling in the heart, must have felt deeply and painfully the need of something to give the right moral bias to those spontaneous activities of our moral and intellectual nature, which will work and develop themselves under every condition of humanity, be their direction right or wrong. Every vigilant parent has felt this need; and after anxious inquiry some have shouted Eureka, and forthwith proceeded, in the education of their children, to a trial of this newfound philosopher's stone, which has proved, in their estimation, to transmute to gold all the baser passions and tendencies of our nature. One says, "My daughter must be well educated. Mental culture must be the end and aim of all her efforts. Her intellectual training must be scientific, exact and thorough." Another says, "I do not admire learned women. I desire my daughter to cultivate a delicate and refined taste, quick sensibilities, ready wit, and pleasing manners; for these constitute the real attractiveness of woman." A third says, "I don't like a woman to be either learned or sentimental. My daughter shall be neither a student of science, nor a reader of novels; but I will have her accomplished in every elegant art. She must be fitted to move with distinction in elegant and polished society. For this purpose she shall study the modern languages, and have the advantages of foreign travel, and consequent opportunities to learn much of society and the world."

Another parent has the idea that society is injurious, because it fosters vanity, and an inordinate love of admiration and expensive pleasures; and such an one says, "I shall keep my daughter carefully secluded, and train her under my own eye, to the performance of household duties, and the cultivation of the domestic virtues; for this is, after all, woman's true sphere." It need not be said that these views of education are false and distorted, and when reduced to practice can produce no other than disastrous results. To select one bright particular star in the firmament, and determine that that one only shall shed its stellar influence on the earth, to the exclusion of sun, and moon, and other stars, is

not more absurd and impracticable than to attempt to mould youthful character by some one favorite influence, which we fancy is productive of the single end we aim at. Parental views and wishes, which form certainly one of the principal influences which determine the particular and individual development of youthful character, are not more conflicting than those of teachers, to whom the intellectual training of the young is more especially committed in our schools, academies, and private seminaries. To these influences, both so potent in the development of character, we may add as secondary, but by no means unimportant, the manners and customs of social and domestic life, family relationships, the ties of friendship, natural capactiy, idiosyncrasies of mental and moral constitution, besides an infinity of others, remote and indirect it is true, but which do nevertheless help to produce or modify the result.

Millions of moral causes are constantly playing, unseen and unfelt, over the entire field of our intellectual and spiritual nature, crossing, thwarting, and modifying each other continually; and what we want is some guiding principle which shall bring order out of this disorder, harmony out of these discords, and evolve finally a character, noble, symmetrical and beautiful. We want a just and true ideal of female excellence; because, in the formation of our own character and habits, and of those who come within the sphere of our influence, we copy this ideal. What, to us, seems the glory and perfection of our nature, that we strive for,-to that we gradually and insensibly assimilate all our habitudes of thought and action. If our model be a bad one, the copy will be equally defective; and we have asserted, what few will be disposed to deny, that the views on this subject, commonly imbibed from education, society, parental example, and academic instruction, are radically defective and wrong. What, then, is the remedy? What new element of culture shall we introduce into our systems of female education, to rectify the false views so generally prevalent, to furnish this true ideal, so much needed, yet a need so little felt, so seldom acknowledged? The splendid creations of genius are produced only by imitation of perfect models, by the masters. Nations and generations have listened entranced to the song of Homer, and it was by imitating this great master of song that Milton gave a touch to the harp of poesy which shall vibrate through the ages. The hand of Phidias is still seen in the marbles of the Parthenon, where it has struggled to express in stone the human soul's highest con

ception of divine beauty--the beauty of the immortal Gods. We still gaze upon the Venus de Medici, and wonder that all beholders do not become Pygmalions. Raphael has thrown on canvas the Transfiguration of Christ's humanity, nor does any department of art fail to furnish a model of perfect excellence to those who desire to practise its theory, and reproduce its sublime creations. And when we strive to fashion the woman's soul within us, to bring it in contour and proportion to a beautiful and harmonious development, must we strike at random, and struggle on in the dark without a guide? Does the moral world furnish no pattern of human excellence, after which we may shape ourselves, and mould our moral lineaments? Is it possible so to conduct the process of a young girl's education as to keep always before her mind's eye the pattern of what she ought to be, of what she must every day strive to become? To what means, or element of culture, must we give prominence and importance to secure this result? The answer is easy. Christianity furnishes principles of culture, which, if judiciously applied in our systems of female education, would make woman's nature what it was before her hand plucked Eden's fatal apple; "and thus brought death with all our woe." We anticipate the reader's smile at the announcement of this fact, which is so trite and commonplace, that it has almost come to be regarded as a truism; but let those who smile remember, that although our theories of education are in the main right, and do recognize the importance of moral culture, that our practice is, nevertheless, all wrong; and although much has been said and written on the subject of female education, and well written too, it has left the practical bearings and workings of our educational systems unchanged. Let us then reiterate this truth, and ever keep it before the popular mind, till it responds, that all systems of education are essentially erroneous and defective, which do not draw their fundamental elements of culture from the religion and morality of Christianity; and that there can be no true womanly beauty, except that which is developed through its holy and ennobling influences. Young has well said, "the Christian is the highest style of man." It is equally true, that the Christian woman is the highest style of woman-more divine, because more holy, than any goddess of Olympus. We are not sure that the gentlemenpuppets, who figure in the drawing-room, and dance about the reigning belle, like moths fluttering around a candle, till their wings are scorched, and they tumble headlong to ruin-we are not

see,

sure that such will sympathize with the sentiment we have uttered; but every man, with a manly intellect, and a man's heart, whatever be his speculative views of Christianity, even though he were an infidel, will acknowledge that no system of morals extant, nor all the combined lessons of human wisdom, can form a woman's heart and mind after so pure and beautiful a model as that which is offered to us in the life and teachings of Christ. Nay more-if all human goodness and moral beauty should perish out of the world, and the very memory of them be lost to mankind, we should still have, in the character of Jesus, and the words which he uttered, the immaculate essence of all goodness, and all virtue, both human and divine. But we are told by the worldly-wise, that the experiment of educating women religiously has often been tried, and the result has as often been failure. Nothing on earth, say they, is so intolerable as the fanaticism and cant of these female pietists, unless it be the literary pretensions of a Blue. Said a father recently, "My daughter has become a perfect little Pharithrough the influence of the H. Seminary. I shall be careful in future where I send my children to be educated. Under the conviction that retrenchment in dress and family expenditure is an imperative Christian duty, she has forsworn forever silks and jewels, and wears only calico. She has abandoned the study of music, because all showy accomplishments are inconsistent with the humility and lowliness of spirit which ought to characterize a Christian woman. She has become an active and prominent member of the Missionary, Bible, Temperance, Anti-Slavery and Moral Reform Societies, and if her power were in any degree commensurate with her will, she would revolutionize society, and turn the world upside down, with her absurd enthusiasm. I shall send her to Madame D., where, I hope, she will acquire more rational views of religion, in place of these monstrous absurdities." Unfortunate father, and still more unhappy daughter, how utterly had both mistaken the true ideal of a Christian woman, and the influences which constitute a truly Christian education. No good and modest woman can have any sympathy with those of her sex, who turn bold and noisy public reformers of the vices and fashionable follies of society; neither can a true-hearted Christian woman covet that formal and ostentatious activity, in any department of Christian benevolence, which causes her necessarily to parade her religious sentiments and spiritual affections before the eager and irreverent gaze of the public eye. Her religion

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is the cherished and hidden life of her soul. There she garners up her purest and warmest affections, and gives them all to God. She moves gently and noiselessly in the daily walks and relations of life, undistinguished from other women, save that her hand is readier for every kind deed; her smile more cheering and benign, when it falls on the children of misfortune and want, and the music of her voice softer and sweeter, because it is the utterance of a pure, gentle, and tranquil soul. The applauses of the French people sounded not in the ears of Bonaparte so sweet as the voice of Josephine, and that Empress was charming, although nature had not been to her prodigal of charms. It was often remarked of her, that without being beautiful, she produced upon beholders the effect of beauty. Thus it is possible for the Christian woman to make herself admired and loved, and even reverenced by those who know her truly-by the moral and intellectual beauty expressed in her conversation and outer life, each of which is significant of the latent beauty of the mind within. It is possible for a woman, to whom nature has denied every personal grace, to become reli giously beautiful, and that too without singularity, hypocrisy or cant. She may mingle with other women in the great thoroughfares of society, partake of the innocent amusements and festivities of social life, cultivate the elegant arts, gather within her home, or around her person, those adornments and elegancies which gratify a cultivated taste, and enjoy them all, while she yet rises superior, and above all, to find her truest and highest enjoyment, the realization of her dearest hopes, and the true perfection of her nature, in the cultivation of spiritual affections. In the gayest circles she may hear and enjoy the playfulness of wit, the keenness of satire, the encounter of mind with mind, and the flashings of soul meeting soul in the interchange of feeling and thought; and yet, in the midst of all this, and enjoying all this, her spirit may be alone. The human soul can be isolated by the force of high and heavenly thoughts when the body is jostled in a crowd; for a hermit dwelling alone in the deep heart of a forest, is not more secluded than the soul which hides within it deep thoughts and spiritual communings with the Invisible. Above the glare of a thousand lights, the melody of tuned instruments and song, and the footfalls of the giddy dance--yes, above the heaven itself-her thought rises, and dwells alone with God. Her soul hears God, and sees the Invisible. Grosser natures talk and speculate about religion-she feels it. She lives ha

bitually on the confines of two worlds, where the material meets the spiritual; and in these moments of interior solitude and stillness, her Imagination is awed by the solemn shadows cast over it from the spirit land. Then unutterable thoughts and awful imaginings visit her; till, becoming familiar, she invites their stay. Sometimes, by the force of her own thoughtfulness, she rests motionless, with fixed but vacant gaze, till consciousness itself vanishes, and her very inner life and being seem melting away into the Infinite. Then her heart prays-her lips seldom. When her soul is full, and heaving with the impulses of such divine communion, the lips move in wordless sympathy, but no audible sound passes those silent portals of imprisoned thought. Such is the experience of a true Christian woman-such the high spirituality of her ideas and contemplations; but with these joys a stranger intermeddleth not; even the cherished companion of her bosom-the sharer of her earthly joys and sorrows-is a stranger in the spiritual arcana of her soul. He only knows that pure and good thoughts, and all gentle and loving affections dwell there, because they are expressed in her acted thoughts. If we could make the young understand this; if we could make parents and instructors of youth understand-that Christian education does not consist in a formal inculcation of moral precepts; nor yet in loading the childish memory with Creeds and Catechisms, but in a careful oversight of the workings of thought, fancy, and feeling in the awaking faculties of the youthful mind; and a constant vigilance to direct them according to the principles of eternal rectitude and virtuewhat a change it would work in the ordinary routine of family and academic education! No theoretic instruction in systems of religion and morals can avail anything. It is the teaching of example which we want. We want a model, to place before the forming but yet plastic minds of the young, and say, " Be like that." The Infinite mind-the author of all minds-understands intimately the mental and spiritual organization of His earthly children, and the laws of intellectual and moral development which regulate the wonderful and complex machinery of the human soul; and has His divine Omniscience anticipated this pressing want of our humanity? Has He given us such a model, or only taught us in His Revelation didactic precepts of morality? Did not the life and mission of Jesus respond to the deepest want of our moral nature-to the cravings of our most imperative spiritual instincts? What Grecian sta

tuary is in the world of art, the character and teachings of Christ are in the moral world. The marbles of the Parthenon are perfect models of human beauty, idolized and deified,—the material embodiment of man's highest conceptions of physical beauty, and in the like manner the life of Christ is a sensible exhibition of man's highest idealized conception of moral excellence. Many splendid and dazzling apparitions of virtue have, in the ages which are past, flashed out from the dark back-ground of our fallen humanity; but they were evanescent and shapeless meteors, without symmetry or beauty. In the history of the great and good of past ages we have the separate elements of spiritual beauty; but the individual combinations are sometimes monstrous. For instance, we have the predominance of patriotism in the moral portraitures of Aristides, Cincinnatus, and Hannibal-manly daring in that of Leonidas, Alexander, and Cæsarand the faculty of divine contemplation in Socrates and Plato; but in Christ every excellence and virtue, both human and divine, are united in perfect concordance and symmetry. Where then shall we look in the training of the young, and particularly of young women, for a formative influence, at once so perfect and so powerfully efficient as this? Objections may be made to these views of education, on the ground that they are too vague and impracticable; that while they insist upon the absolute necessity of forming youthful character after a Christian model, they do not specify with sufficient minuteness of detail the manner in which the desired influence is to be applied in the practical business of education. The writer has not room in the limits assigned to this essay to enter into such details; but if the reader still asks in what department of education it is possible to make the power of Christianity more directly influential than at present, it may be replied, that it is not only desirable, but possible, both to develop the mind. and mould the manners, in accordance with its spirit and precepts. Parents and instructors of youth too generally regard the precepts of Christianity as capable of being brought to bear only in the formation of correct theoretic views of right and wrong in the minds of the young; and its institutions as the means of cultivating their religious susceptibilities only. They do not consider that it is possible to draw from Christianity such views and motives as shall urge the young mind forward in the acquisition of scientific truth, and even render interesting the dry details of academic instruction. It is because the motives usually placed before a young girl's mind, to incite her to diligence in the pursuit of

literary and scientific acquirements, are so sordid and secular that she pursues her studies in that spirit; and that even when successful as a student, her acquirements are so technical and formal, that they can have no tendency to ennoble and refine her nature. She is told she must study, because it is a burning disgrace to be ignorant; because she cannot appear to advantage in society without at least a moderate degree of intelligence; but rarely is she pointed to the reflex influence of Science-upon the mind itself enlarging, invigorating, and ennobling all its powers. Let her mind once grasp the idea, and swell with the inspiration of the thought, that the study of natural science is the tracing in our own mind the thought of God, when He planned the Universe-that History is but the record of what God has done, and enabled or suffered man to do upon the great theatre of human actionthat the Literature of past ages is 'a daguerreotyped view of the mind of dead nations, who have bequeathed to us their living thoughts, embalmed in language and she will love study for its own sake. She will reverence science, that tireless swift-winged messenger, which, like Noah's dove, has gone forth from the earthly ark, in which we float imprisoned, to explore and bring us some green leaves from those vast undiscovered continents of being, those undreamed of islands of existence, which enliven and diversify the vast expanse around us, but beyond us. Having imbibed such views, science will thenceforth be to her a high and holy thing, because the priest and interpreter of nature's mysteries. The wisdom of God will thenceforth seem to her as it is-a profound deep, a vast ocean, filling the immensity of the universe, "shoreless, fathomless, and sublime." Science has dived but just below the apparent surface, bringing up from here and there a pearl at intervals of ages. Revelation has brought from a profounder depth the pearl of great price;" but what thought of man or angel has computed the priceless treasures of the infinite deep beyond? Human thought is more rapid and extensive than the lightnings of Heaven, yet imagination tires and falters, when under the inspiration and conduct of science we send her forth to those dark corners of the universe, where the Spirit of God. yet brooding, bringeth forth light, life and beauty from primeval chaos and the silent void. It is in expanding and elevating the mind by such views as these of the extent and glory of the universe, and the power and goodness of the great God, who works in all, and through all, that the great uses of science, as a discipline of

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the human faculties, consists. And what studies or pursuits can like these ennoble Woman's nature, divorce her so effectually from the idle amusements and fripperies of Fashion, and make her so entirely worthy Man's reverence and love? By viewing scientific and literary acquisitions in the light in which they have been presented above, it will be readily seen that they have a religious aspect; and that the moral tendency of science thus pursued is highly salutary in its influence upon the female mind. Without the careful incultation of such sentiments, the scientific woman is in danger of becoming a disgusting pedant.

But it is not in the formation of moral principles, and the cultivation of the religious susceptibilities only, nor yet in conducting the process of scientific culture alone, that we may bring Christianity to bear upon the education of the young. It ought also to mould their manners. There is a false school of politeness established in modern society. There are many female Chesterfields, who take especial pains to impress the minds of their daughters and wards with the erroneous idea, that politeness consists in a familiar acquaintance with the acknowledged rules of etiquette, and the conventional forms of polished society, coupled with a graceful carriage of the person, which may be learned from the dancing-master or posture-maker. This style of politeness suits well the forced and artificial display of the ball-room, or the gay saloons of stupid and heartless fashion; but in daily family intercourse, and the ordinary circumstances and relations of life, it is a miserable substitute for that unaffected simplicity, gentleness and benevolence of disposition which prompts its possessor at all times, in all places, and with all conditions of men, to observe the golden rule of Christianity, of doing unto others as we would that they should do unto us. The daub and paint with which a faded beauty strives to imitate the fairness and bloom of youth, is not more revolting to a person of cultivated taste and sensibility, than that false and tawdry mannerism, which passes with the vulgar for elegance of manners. But it must be acknowledged that the false and conventional politeness which is taught by rules, does on some occasions appear to great advantage beside the true, and totally eclipses it, (as gilt sometimes shines brighter than solid gold;) but there are other occasions on which it will inevitably betray its artificiality. The same friction which tarnishes gilding, and exposes the baseness of the metal beneath, only serves to add lustre to pure gold; and thus in the friction of ordinary domestic life, the virtues

of the heart, which constitute true politeness, do but shine brighter, and glow more warmly while its false counterpart grows cold and deadens. The slightest observation of the manners of a lady towards her servants and all other persons who are her inferiors in social position, is sufficient to determine whether she is a truly polite and well-bred Christian woman; because a coarse mind is no where so apt to betray itself, as in the vulgar insolence and heartless severity with which it dares to frown on all beneath it; and the fulsome flattery and sycophancy with which it fawns on all above it. In the estimation of a woman who has learned in the school of Christ, the divine doctrine of human brotherhood, none are noble, and none are mean, by the mere force of social circumstances over which they have no control. Her meanest servant is to her a woman; with the tender sensibilities and gushing affections of woman's nature, and the Queen of England is no more. The sensibilities of the "femme de chambre," who curls her hair, or ties her shoe, are as sacred in her eyes, as though her head bore a crown, and her hand wielded a sceptre. As she acknowledges no one above her, except such as are more exalted by virtue, so she feels none beneath her, but those whom sin has degraded, and upon such falls her tear of pity. The woman whose mind and heart have been formed under such influences as we have attempted to describe, is the glory of her sex-a blessing to the world-and a bright and beautiful ornament to the family in whose bosom she has been reared. If a wife," the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no fear of spoil. If a mother, "her children rise up and call her blessed." And blessed indeed is the true Christian woman, whose ideal we have attempted faintly to sketch in these pages; more to be envied, and more worthy of imitation, than all the women who have lived in song and story-whose names the trump of fame has sounded through the world. The woman who endeavors to shape her being after the Christian ideal, need fear no rivals in her loveliness, nor the decay of her charms by age, for the beauty of the true Christian woman is eternal and fadeless, like that of the stars, which have shed their light for ages, yet retain their primal glory. Though many daughters of Eve have done virtuously, and some reared even under the dark shadows of paganism, have shone out bright and beautiful from the surrounding darkness of their age and clime, yet the humblest Christian woman outshines them all, and though, like the desert rose, she blush unseen, or like the