rity, and with only a little fat beginning of a face, with a button nose and twinkling eyes to guide our estimate of probabilities of comeliness, while on the other hand frowns the fear lest furnishing the brain may, by giving a superabundance of meaning to the face, mar the promise of beauty, how anxious must be the deliberation! A critical survey of society might lead one to suppose that with some parents a decision proves impossible, the poor child being left to grow up without either beauty or brains. Our own convictions on this subject were rendered unalterable some years since, in the course of a lecture by a young gentleman before a debating society, at whose sitting we were so happy as to assist. The question was one not unfrequently discussed on those occasions-the comparative education of the sexes. Our friend was warm against sharing the sciences with women. His picture of the ideal blue-stocking, a hideous man-woman, with highcrowned cap and spectacles, hoarse voice and masculine stride, still haunts our imagination, and has ever proved an effectual scare-crow in that field. On the other hand, his fancy's sketch of a charming young person, was such as to leave in one's mind a somewhat confused mass of roses, lilies, smiles, blushes, pearls, snow, raven's wings, and Aurora's fingers, very fascinating, though suggestive of despair to most of the sex. But what made the most distinct impression on our memory was the question, repeated in various forms as different branches of knowledge were examined with reference to their fitness for female use-'Will it render her more alluring? Here lay the key-far more potent than Blue Beard's, which locked up only women literally headless-to the whole popular philosophy of female claims on the score of intellect. This hint as to the object of woman's being, solved a world of doubts. Here was a touchstone by which to try any pursuit-a test to determine the value of any talent. Whatever does not conduce to the grand aim must be, if not noxious, at best indifferent. Whoever contends that an education regulated by this principle would leave woman insignificant and unhappy, shows only his ignorance of the world; for do we not see every day splendid people who avow it, consciously or unconsciously? and can splendid people be unhappy or insignificant? There is one potent argument against allowing women in habits of literary employment-the injury that would arise to the great cause of public amusements. Our theatres would be worse filled even than they are at present, and the opera would cease its languishing existence at once, if the fair eyes that now are fain to let down their "fringed curtains" as a veil against the intensity of floods of gaslight, should learn to prefer the shaded study-lamp at home, and the singing of the quiet fire to the louder efforts of the cantatrice. Dancing, except in horrible sobriety, after the piano, would become obsolete; waltzing might be studied in the abstract, or as an illustration of the revolution of the heavenly bodies; but certain stars' would no longer shoot madly from their spheres,' to join the giddy round in person. Parties would break up at eleven; for eyes and nerves would so rise in value if put to serious use, that any wilful expenditure of their powers would soon be voted mauvais ton; and if that should ever happen, adieu to suppers and champagne! There is really no end to the overturn that might result from an innovation of this sort. Imagination pictures the splendid fabric of Fashion tottering to its fall-undermined by that seemingly impotent instrument, the pen, wielded by female hands. We shrink from our own picture of so mournful a reversal of the present happy state of things. It is one of the perversities of the imagination to torment itself with delineations of what can never by any possibility occur; and this is truly a case in point. The truth being conceded that no women but those who are ugly and unattractive should or do write, a thought suggests itself with respect to the limited duration of the beauty which is so justly considered the most desirable of female possessions, and the most natural and proper bar to any extensive cultivation of the mind. As none but very robust beauty lasts beyond forty, would it not be advisable to establish schools, specially fitted for that age, in which the remains of a lovely woman might have an opportunity of some education suited to the thirty years which may be supposed still to lie before her? It would be irksome to pass so long a period in silence, and mortifying to continue to talk nonsense without rosy lips to set it off. Here a certain amount of knowledge might be communicated by those whom inexorable plainness of person had condemned to intellectual exercises in early life; and the circumstance might prove mutually beneficial, since the husbands of the once beautiful would undoubtedly be willing to pay liberally for having some ideas infused into their minds, as provision for the conversation of old age. The face could no longer be injured, while the head, and perhaps the heart too, might gain materially. 'Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald, would be valueless, compared with this more potent elixir of life. The practice of the old surgeons, who sometimes filled the shrunken veins of decreptitude with the rich blood of bounding youth, might be considered a precedent for such efforts as we propose. Scruples were sometimes entertained as to the lawfulness of that mode of repairing the decay of Nature; but to the attempt to make education the substitute for beauty, we are sure society will not object, even though the result should be that 'dim horror'—a literary woman. ABOUT PRESENTS. "For his bounty, There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas That grew the more for reaping."-SHAKSPEARE. "Presents endear absents."-C. LAMB. "Nothing can give that to another which it hath not in itself." WELL! it is provoking! I do well to be angry! Cannot one give away the merest trifle, without suffering the insult of being paid for it by a "present" ten times as valuable? And without the least disguise, too! The same article, made grand, gilded, glorious! This is a mean world! Bishop Butler says it would be hard to do justice in this world if it were not for resentment; so, perhaps I should never have had half as many thoughts on the subject of presents, or half as clear an idea of it, if I had not been roused by this instance of mistake. Let me try to bring good out of evil, by setting forth, for the bene fit of others, some of the views that have come to me while I have sat thinking over this matter, in what may be called a tingling state of mind. If I seem to be cross, and to forget that this is a world of mixed motives, the reader will pardon me. Gifts used to be pleasant things, in the early and simple days of this |