have been precipitated suddenly from wealth and splendor to absolute want. It costs perhaps the mightiest struggle which the mind can make to conform at once and without a murmur to altered circumstances; but when it is over, it brings its own rich reward. There is no other way but to submit, and begin to spin the web of hope and endeavor

anew.

.

Then a man's fortunes are in a manner in the hands of his wife, inasmuch as his own power of exertion depends on her. His moral strength is inconceivably increased by her sympathy, her counsel, her aid. She can aid him immensely by relieving him of every care which she is capable of taking upon herself. His own employments are usually such to require his whole time, and his whole mind. A good wife will never suffer her husband's attention to be distracted by details, to which her own time and talents are adequate. If she be prompted by true affection and good sense, she will perceive when his spirit is borne down and overwhelmed. She of all human beings can best minister to its needs. For the sick soul her nursing is quite as sovereign, as it is for corporeal ills. If it be

repose and

weary, in her assiduity it finds refreshment. If it be harassed and worn to a morbid irritability, her gentle tones steal over it with a soothing more potent than the most exquisite music. If every enterprise be dead, and hope itself almost extinguished, her patience and fortitude have the power to rekindle them in the heart, and he again goes forth to renew his encounter with the toils and troubles of life.

A woman has it in her power to add greatly to a man's respectability in the world, and to determine his social position. Indeed his pleasant relations with society depend mainly on her wisdom, her prudence, her kind and conciliatory manners. She cannot make herself odious and contemptible without reflecting i will and disgrace upon him. She cannot indulge in a meddlesome, censorious, bitter, vindictive disposition, without subjecting him to continual mortification, and involving him in perpetual difficulty and embarrassment.

We come in the next place to speak of woman in the most important and responsible relation which she sustains, as the mother. In this relation Providence fully makes up to her the inferiority of her physical powers, the

narrowness of her sphere of action, and the alleged inferiority of her intellectual endowments. In the influence she has in forming the character of the young, and training up each rising generation as it comes forward, and assumes the control of the destinies of the world, she has her full share in that power which sways and governs mankind, which makes nations, families, individuals great, prosperous, virtuous, happy, or mean, degraded, vicious and wretched. Woman is mistress of the fortunes of the world, by holding in her plastic hand the minds and hearts of those who are to mould the coming age, at that decisive period when the character is determined and fixed in good, or irrecoverably bent on vice and mischief. She governs the world in the capacity of mother, because in the forming period of life, the cords of love and gentleness are stronger and more prevailing than all the chains which mere force has ever forged. She sways the world, because her influence is on the whole paramount in the primary element of all society, the domestic circle. Men go forth to act their parts on the great stage of life, the most gifted to exert vast influence over its affairs, but it

is only to act out the character that has been formed at home. Woman then, whose control over the character is almost absolute, presides at the very fountain head of power.

"What is wanting," said Napoleon one day to Mad. Campan, "in order that the youth of France may be well educated?" "Good mothers," was her reply. There could not have been more wisdom condensed into so few words. The greatest treasure a nation can possess is good mothers. Their aggregate influence is greater than all the rest which operate to form the character of a people. Man's task is abroad. He must elaborate his sustenance from the soil, under the heats and the rains of heaven, or tempt the waves of the boisterous ocean, or wind the labyrinths of trade, or seclude himself in the retirement of his study. He cannot know much of his children in their earlier years. The responsibility, of course, is thrown almost entirely on the mother. If she abandons her trust, then are the children lost indeed. While the father is consuming his days and nights in toil, that his children may begin life on the vantage ground of wealth and education, his children, through the negligence or bad man- ·

agement of the mother, may be forming moral habits which will make every care for their fortunes worse than thrown away. The mother has it in her power to form the moral sentiments of her children, and thus to make them either the ornaments or the scourges of society. Unless she co-operates, all that is done by others is to no purpose. The father may hire instructers for his children, but if the mother, instead of aiding them in their tasks, and exacting a scrupulous attention to their studies, is indifferent or negligent, his money is in a great measure thrown away. It is in vain that the father tries to keep them out of bad company, if as soon as he is out of the way, the mother listens to their tears and entreaties, and suffers them to go where they please. It is in vain that he would train them to energy, industry and self-denial, if she persists in indulging them in idleness, sloth, and effeminacy. And if, through a weak fondness and want of decision, she supplies them with money against their father's wishes, their ruin is sealed. Nothing more is wanted to make them profligates and vagabonds.

One of the strongest evidences of the goodness of the Author of our being is the