ripens into a glorious womanhood. There, go hand in hand the
development of mind, and what is more necessary, if possible for a
woman, the cultivation of heart. Everyone who looks about him in the
social world, and gives a moment of calm consideration to what he sees
and hears, cannot but admit, that though surrounded by a vast field
for active and profitable labour, and with multiplied favours of
circumstances thrown in their way, our girls lead comparatively
useless lives, as if they were a recremental fraction of the human
race, than which, indeed, many are no better, since they choose to
lead such lives as can be fruitful of no direct benefit to themselves
or their fellow-mortals.

It is not because a woman is excluded (rightly or not) from the more
public arena of active life, that her energies need become paralyzed
and wasted. It is not because the popular idea of propriety would deny
her the right or opportunity to do great things for society or for the
state, in the same way as men are expected to do them, that she cannot
work her own great or little wonders in a quieter, but yet more direct
manner.

It is acknowledged that hers is the mission of the heart; it is
admitted that her sphere is in the family, and what is the mightiest
commonwealth in the world, but a family of families. Ah me! It is a
dark day with humankind when the sphere of a woman's action lies
rigidly between her toilet table and the drawing-room.

The proof that such limits as these are both unlawful and unnatural,
is, that our women who are confined within them, are conscious in
their hearts of the wrong they are doing the world and themselves.
Conscience is not yet an extinct, though it is fast becoming an