in the hour of danger, to seek shelter in her bosom, and, like the constant ivy, bind their weakness fondly round her strength. And how intense are the affections thus formed! Would she change them for the small likings of a multitude with whom she has few sentiments in common? In proportion to the depth of the intellect, I believe, is the depth of every thing feelings, affections, pleasures, pains, or whatever else the enlarged capacity conceives. It is difficult, perhaps, for an inferior mind to estimate what a superior mind enjoys in the reciprocation of affection. Attachment, with ordinary persons, is enjoyed to-day, and regretted to-morrow, and the next day replaced and forgotten: but with these it can never be forgotten, because it can never be replaced."

As the argument, thus terminated, converted neither party, it is needless to say it left me in suspense. Mrs. W. was still determined her child should not be a superior woman. Mrs. A. was still resolved her child should be at all ventures; and I was still undetermined whether I would endeavour to be a learned woman or not. The little Fanny laughed aloud, opened her large round eyes, and shouted, "So I will, mamma!" The little Jemima coloured to the ends of her fingers, and lowered still farther the lashes that veiled her eyes.

My essay has already reached its customary length. Shall I be excused, if I, for once, transgress, and prolong it yet considerably? For I, like Solomon, though neither so wise nor so old, have seen the end of many things; as well as the beginning: and of this among the many: I have seen Fanny and Jemima brought up in pursuance of their parent's determination: they have become women, and I have seen the results. But when I consider that there is all

this to tell, and the moral yet to come, which is ge nerally much longer than my tale, I feel the necessity of deferring it to the next chapter, begging my readers to wait, before they determine to be either sprightly or stupid, learned or unlearned.

EASILY DECIDED.

I was walking with some friends in a retired part of the country. It had rained for fourteen days before, and I believe it rained then; but there was a belief among the ladies of that country, that it is better to walk in all weather. The lane was wide enough to pass in file, with chilly droppings from the boughs above, and rude reaction of the briers beneath. The clay upon our shoes showed a troublesome affinity to the clay upon the road. Umbrellas we could not hold up, because of the wind.

But it

was better to walk than stay at home, so at least my companions assured me, for exercise and an appetite. After pursuing them, with hopeless assiduity, for more than a mile, without sight of egress or sign of termination; finding I had already enough of the one, and doubting how far the other might be off; I lagged behind, and began to think how I might amuse myself till their return. By one of those for tunate incidents, which, they tell me, never happen to anybody but the Listener, I heard the sound of voices over the hedge. This was delightful. In resuming my proper occupation, I forgot both mud and rain, exercise and appetite. The hedge was too thick to see through, and all that appeared above it was a low chimney, from which I concluded it concealed a cottage garden. "What in the name of wonder, James, can you be doing?" said a voice

significant of neither youth nor gentleness. war'nt ye I know what I'm about," said another, more rudely than unkindly. "I'm not sure of that," rejoined the first; "you've been hacking and hewing at them trees these four hours, and I do not see, for my part, as you're like to mend them." "Why, mother," said the lad, " you see we have but two trees in all the garden, and I've been thinking they'd match better if they were alike; so I've tied up to a pole the boughs of the gooseberry-bush, that used to spread themselves about the ground, to make it look more like this thorn, and now I'm going to cut down the thorn to make it look more like the gooseberry-bush."" And what's the good of that?" rejoined the mother-" has not the tree sheltered us many a stormy night, when the wind would have beaten the old casement about our ears? and many a scorching noontide, hasn't your father eaten his dinner in its shade? And now, to be sure, because you are the master, you think that you can mend it!"- "We shall see," said the youth, renewing his strokes. "It's no use as it is-I dare say you'd like to see it bear gooseberries.' -"No use!" exclaimed the mother, "don't the birds go to roost on the branches, and the poultry get shelter under it from the rain? And after all your cutting, I don't see as you're likely to turn a thorn-tree into a gooseberrybush.""I do not see why I should not," replied the sage artificer, with a tone of reflectiveness"the leaf is near about the same, and there are thorns on both; if I make that taller and this shorter, and they grow the same shape, I don't suppose you know why one should bear gooseberries any more than the other, as wise as you are."-" Why, to be sure, James," the old woman answered, in a moderate voice," I can't say that I do : but I have lived

almost through my threescore years and ten, and I never heard of gooseberries growing on a thorn." "Haven't you, though?" said James, "but then 1 have, or something pretty much like it; for I saw the gardener, over yonder, cutting off the head of a young pear-tree, and he told me he was going to make it bear apples."-" Well," said the mother, seemingly reconciled-"I know nothing of your newfangled ways. I only know it was the finest thorn in the parish-but, to be sure, now they're more match-like and regular."

I left a story half told. This may seem to be another, but it is in fact the same. James in the Sussex Lane, and my friends in Montague Square, were engaged in the same task, and the result of the one would pretty fairly measure the successes of the other; both were contravening the order of nature, and pursuing their own purpose without consulting the appointments of Providence.

Fanny was a girl of common understanding; such, indeed, as suitable cultivation might have matured into simple good sense; but from which her parents' scheme of education could produce nothing but pretension that could not be supported, and an affectation of what could never be attained. Conscious of the want of all perceptible talent in her child, Mrs. A., from the first, told stories of talent opening late, and the untimely blithing of premature intellect; and to the last maintained the omnipotence of cultivation. On every new proof of the smallness of her mind, another science was added to enlarge it. Languages, dead and living, were to be to her the keys of knowledge; but they unlocked nothing to Fanny but their own grammars and vocabularies, which she learned assiduously, without so much as wondering what they meant. The more dull she