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218
ROMANCE AND REALITY.

is more than compensated by the pleasure of grumbling at them?"

"Our national safety-valve: a Frenchman throws his discontent into an epigram, and is happy—an Englishman vents his on the weather, and is satisfied. Heaven help our minister through a fine summer! it would inevitably cost him his place; for our English grumbling is equally distributed between the weather and politics, and the case would be desperate when confined to the last."

"Are not the Misses M'Leod dressed beautifully to-night?"

"We agree. Ah, Miss Arundel, what a duty it is in a woman to dress well! Alas, that a duty so important should ever be neglected! Dress ought to be part of female education; her eye for colouring, her taste for drapery, should be cultivated by intense study. Let her approach the mirror as she would her harp or her grammar, aware that she has a task before her, whose fulfilment, not whose fulfilling, is matter of vanity. Above all, let her eschew the impertinence of invention; let her leave genius to her milliner. In schools, there are the drawing, French, and dancing