29. "Many daughters have done virtuously but thou excellest them all.” The number of those women who have acted worthily, who have mightily advanced their families, and nobly served the generations in which they lived, is not small. They are well entitled to applause, and I give it them with pleasure; but there was never any comparable to thee. Thy merits, thou best of women, and most beloved, thy merits far, far transcend them all!

30. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." A good complexion and fine shape are, no doubt, engaging. A graceful mien and lovely features are yet more so. But as the greatest beauty soon fades, and at last vanishes, so, alas! many ill qualities may lie concealed under all those fair appearances; such, indeed, as utterly to disappoint every hope of happiness raised from thence, truly pious woman, one who is governed throughout by a sense of duty, and who to all her other excellent qualities adds that reverence for God, which gives them at once elevation and stability-she, and she alone, is the completely amiable object, who will always impart delight, and always deserve approbation.

31. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own work praise her in the gates." Let all conspire to extol her character; for I cannot

do it enough. Let her never want her just tribute of commendation. While some are magnified for their high birth, some prized for their great fortune, others admired for their singular beauty, and others cried up for attainments of no intrinsic, or of no considerable value; let her personal conduct, and her superior qualities, be celebrated with peculiar honours in the largest assemblies; where. indeed, if all men should be silent, that conduct and those qualities would resound her praise.

What a description is here! Can you attend to it without emotion? Or have modern manners so warped your minds, that the simplicity of ancient virtue, instead of appearing to you an object of veneration, looks romantic and ridicu lous? Tell me then in good earnest, were the women of those days the less estimable or the less attractive, that they did not waste their lives in a round of dissipation and impertinence, but employed them in works of ingenuity and usefulness, of piety and mercy; that even women of the first rank amongst them, as we are informed by the oldest and best authors, held it no diminution to apply their hands to different kinds of manufacture; that they took great delight in such occupations; and finally, that good housewifery, in all its extent, was reckoned an essential qualification of every matron.

I am sufficiently sensible of the influence that the customs of different ages and nations have on the modes of thinking that successively obtain ; nor do I expect, that in this land called christian, which ought to be unequalled on account of its attainments, as much as it is on that of its advantages, our mothers or our daughters, in general, will be persuaded by any thing which preachers can say, to emulate the humble grandeur of many a noble lady, of many a fair princess, in former generations. Yet I am not without hope, that some of them may be induced to copy, though at a distance, those modest but exalted originals.

I mentioned our daughters, as well as mothers ; because I would not have them think that they have nothing to learn from the picture we have just surveyed. Would the Virtuous Women, so sweetly pourtrayed by Lemuel's mother, and so particularly marked by the characters of married and maternal excellence, have been what she was, if in her single state she had not studied the necessary principles ?

After looking at so sublime a standard, I am well aware, that any thing I can now offer on this part of my subject will appear to sink. I am sorry for it. But hence it must be so, let the mortifying sentiment be felt by all, as a just satire on the declension of this age. The zeal

indeed of the preacher is too much depressed by that consideration, to bear him out in urging our young women to a close imitation of what however he must always admire. In short, when we speak of good housewifery now-a-days, we must submit to speak in a lower key. Would to heaven, that of this science many mothers would teach their daughters but the common rudiments; that they were unfashionable enough to educate them to be fit for any thing but mere show!

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What do not great families suffer daily from the incapacity, or inattention, of those mistresses that leave all to house-keepers and other servants How many large estates might be saved from ruin by a wiser conduct! I must say it once more, that no woman in the world ought to thing it beneath her to be an œconomist. œconomist is a character truly respectable, in whatever station. To see that time which should be laid out in examining the accounts, regulating the operations and watching over the interests, of perhaps, a numerous family-to see it lost, worse than lost, in visiting and gaming, "in chambering and wantonness," is shocking. It is so, let the incomes be as certain, as considerable, or as immense as you will: though by the way they are hardly ever so immense in reality as they often appear. But where on the contra

ry, they are both moderate and precarious, a conduct of this kind we have no words to stigmatize as it deserves.

Merchants and tradesmen that marry such women are surely objects of singular compassion, if indeed they were deceived into an opinion, that the women they have chosen for their partners, were taught this necessary piece of knowledge. But very seldom, as matters are managed at present, have they such deception to plead for their choice. Is it possible they can be ignorant in what manner young ladies are bred at most of our boarding schools? And do they not see in what manner they generally behave on coming home? Some of them I acknowledged before, when placed in houses of their own, appear to much more advantage than could be reasonably expected. But I repeat the question I then asked, is so great a chance, in an affair of such consequence, to be relied upon ?

It must be owned also, that in this age the order or figure of a table is pretty well understood, as far as relates to splendor and parade. But would it not be worth your while to improve upon the art, by learning to connect frugality with elegance; to produce a genteel, or however a good appearance, from things of less expence? I know it is difficult, especially in great cities: but I am sure it is laudable, and de