noble women there are who disengage themselves from these shackles and rise to the true altitude of their station, but it is wonderful to observe how many even of this class allow to be perpetuated in their daughters the same' ruinous customs which had well-nigh wrecked themselves. We know hundreds of excellent matrons who are practically conversant with all the details of housekeeping, but whose daughters can neither cook a dinner, nor soar beyond the merest small talk of the drawing-room, nor do any one thing in all this wide world passably well, save to arrange their "fig-leaves" becomingly, and flirt with equally vapid gallants. "We see them return from their "polishing schools" — these demoiselles — cursed with a superficial smattering of every thing but what they ought to have learned — physical and moral wrecks whom we are expected to wind up in the morning for the husband-hunting excite- ments of the evening. And these creatures are intended for wives," In vain do we insist upon occupation, upon the necessity of work — ^work with a sensible object — as the sovereign remedy. Now and again we are allowed the privilege of probing a young lady's "accomplishments" for the purpose of discovering whether by any possible chance some one natural gift may have been allowed its normal development. Alas ! if in rare instances we can exclaim eureka, and if, still less frequently, we succeed in inspiring some faint glow of enthusiasm, the devil interposes in the shape of some perfumed coxcomb, who is no more fitted for the character of husband than our subject for that of wife. Our hygienic rules are then laughed to scorn, and it is expected of medicine what only a thorough, radical, phys- ical and mental revolution can achieve. So the winding- up process is again resorted to, and the victim is, literally, dressed for the sacrifice. Such marriages must, in the
