Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good nature, oth erwise it will create you many enemies. Wit is perfectly consistent with softness and delicacy; yet they are seldom found united. Wit is so flattering to vanity, that they who possess it, become intoxicated, and lose all self-command.

Humor is a different quality. It will make your company much solicited; but be cautious how you indulge it. It is often a great enemy to delicacy, and a still greater one to dignity of character. It may sometimes gain you applause, but will never procure you respect.

LESSON LXIII.

The same, concluded.

BEWARE of detraction, especially where your own sex are concerned. You are generally accused of being particularly addicted to this vice-I think, unjustly. Men are fully as guilty of it, when their interests interfere. As your interests more frequently clash, and as your feelings are quicker than ours, your temptations to it are more frequent. For this reason, be particularly tender of the reputation of your own sex, especially when they happen to rival you in our regards. We look on this as the strongest proof of dignity and true greatness of mind.

Lying is a mean and deswomen of excellent parts,

Have a sacred regard to truth. picable vice. I have known some who were so much addicted to it, that they could not be trusted in the relation of any story, especially if it contained any thing of the marvellous, or if they themselves were the heroines of the tale. This weakness did not proceed from a bad heart, but was merely the effect of vanity, or an unbridled imagination. I do not mean to censure that lively embellishment of a humorous story, which is only intended to promote innocent mirth.

There is a certain gentleness of spirit and manners extremely engaging in your sex; not that indiscriminate atten

tion, that unmeaning simper, which smiles on all alike. This arises, either from an affectation of softness, or from perfect insipidity.

Let me recommend to your attention, that elegance, which is not so much a quality itself, as the high polish of every other. It is what diffuses an ineffable grace over every look, every motion, every sentence you utter. It gives that charm to beauty, without which it generally fails to please. It is partly a personal quality, in which respect it is the gift of nature; but I speak of it, principally, as a quality of the mind. In a word, it is the perfection of taste in life and manners, every virtue and every excellency in their most graceful and amiable forms.

You may, perhaps, think that I want to throw every spark of nature out of your composition, and to make you entirely artificial. Far from it. I wish you to possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manners. I think you may possess dignity without pride, affability without meanness, and simple elegance without affectation.

I would particularly recommend to you those exercises, that oblige you to be much abroad in the open air, such as walking, and riding on horseback. These will give vigor to your constitutions, and a bloom to your complexions. An attention to your health is a duty you owe to yourselves and to your friends. Bad health seldom fails to have an influence on the spirits and temper. The finest geniuses, the most delicate minds, have very frequently a correspondent delicacy of bodily constitution, which they are too apt to neglect. Their luxury lies in reading and late hours, equal enemies to health and beauty.

The domestic economy of a family is entirely a woman's province, and furnishes a variety of subjects for the exertion both of good sense and good taste. If you ever come to have the charge of a family, it ought to engage much of your time and attention; nor can you be excused from this by any extent of fortune, though, with a narrow one, the ruin that follows the neglect of it may be more immediate.

Do not confine your attention to dress to your public appearances. Accustom yourselves to an habitual neatness; so that, in the most careless undress, in your most unguarded

hours, you may have no reason to be ashamed of your appearance. You will not easily believe how much we consider your dress as expressive of your characters. Vanity, levity, slovenliness, folly, appear through it. An elegant simplicity is an equal proof of taste and delicacy.

In dancing, the principal points you are to attend to, are ease and grace. I would have you dance with spirit: but never allow yourselves to be so far transported with mirth, as to forget the delicacy of your sex. Many a girl, dancing in the gaiety and innocence of her heart, is thought to discover a spirit she little dreams of.

In the choice of your friends, have your principal regard to goodness of heart and fidelity. If they also possess taste and genius, that will make them still more agreeable and useful companions. You have particular reason to place confidence in those, who have shown affection for you in your early days, when you were incapable of making them any This is an obligation for which you cannot be too

return.

grateful.

If you have the good fortune to meet with any who deserve the name of friends, unbosom yourself to them with the most unsuspicious confidence. It is one of the world's maxims, never to trust any person with a secret, the discovery of which could give you any pain; but it is the maxim of a little mind and a cold heart, unless where it is the effect of frequent disappointments and bad usage. An open temper, if restrained but by tolerable prudence, will make you, on the whole, much happier than a reserved, suspicious one, although you may sometimes suffer by it. Coldness and distrust are but the too certain consequences of age and experience; but they are unpleasant feelings, and need not be anticipated before their time.

But, however open you may be in talking of your own affairs, never disclose the secrets of one friend to another. These are private deposits, which do not belong to you, nor have you any right to make use of them.

LESSON LXIV.

To a Log of Wood upon the Fire.-NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

POOR LOG! I cannot hear thee sigh,
And groan, and hiss, and see thee die,
To warm a poet,

Without evincing thy success,

And, as thou wanest less and less,
Inditing a farewell address,

To let thee know it.

Peeping from earth, a bud unveiled,
Some busky bourn or dingle hailed
Thy natal hour,

While infant winds around thee blew,
And thou wert fed with silver dew,
And tender sun-beams, oozing through
Thy leafy bower.

Earth, water, air, thy growth prepared;
And if perchance some robin, scared
From neighboring manor,

Perched on thy crest, it rocked in air,
Making his ruddy feathers flare
In the sun's ray, as if they were
A fairy banner.

Or if some nightingale impressed
Against thy branching top her breast,
Heaving with passion,

And, in the leafy nights of June,
Outpoured her sorrows to the moon,
Thy trembling stem thou didst attune
To each vibration.

Thou grew'st a goodly tree, with shoots
Fanning the sky, and earth-bound roots
So grappled under,

That thou, whom perching birds could swing,
And zephyrs rock with lightest wing,
From thy firm trunk, unmoved, didst fling
Tempest and thunder.

How oft thy lofty summits won

Morn's virgin smile, and hailed the sun
With rustling motion,-

How oft, in silent depths of night,
When the moon sailed in cloudless light,
Thou hast stood awe-struck at the sight,
In hushed devotion,-

Twere vain to ask; for, doomed to fall,
The day appointed for us all
O'er thee impended:

The hatchet, with remorseless blow,
First laid thee in the forest low,

Then cut thee into logs, and so
Thy course was ended.

But not thine use; for moral rules,
Worth all the wisdom of the schools,
Thou may'st bequeath me;

Bidding me cherish those who live
Above me, and, the more I thrive,
A wider shade and shelter give
To those beneath me.

So when, at last, Death lays me low,
I may resign, as calm as thou,

My hold terrestrial;

Like thine my latter end be found
Diffusing light and warmth around,
And like thy smoke my spirit bound
To realms celestial