The province of taste, then, includes all the minute affairs of woman's life—which belongs to all pleasurable feeling,- held in subordination to religious principle—all which belongs to dress, manners, and social habits, so far as they may be said to be ladylike, or otherwise. Should any consideration, relating to one or all of these points, be allowed to interfere in the remotest degree with the requirements of religion, it is a proof whenever they do so, that the standard of excellence is a wrong one; and the individual who commits so fatal an error, would do well to look to the consequences, and remedy the evil before it shall be too late. Religion never yet was injured by permitting good taste to follow in her train; but that lovely handmaid can deserve the name of taste no longer, if she attempts to step before religion, or in any respect to assume her place.
Above every other feature which adorns the female character, delicacy stands foremost within the province of good taste. Not that delicacy which is perpetually in quest of something to be ashamed of, which makes a merit of a blush, and simpers at the false construction its own ingenuity has put upon an innocent remark; this spurious kind of delicacy is as far removed from good taste, as from good feeling, and good sense; but that high-minded delicacy which maintains its pure and undeviating walk alike amongst women, as in the society of men; which shrinks from no necessary duty, and can speak when required, with seriousness and kindness of things at which it would be ashamed indeed to smile or to blush—that delicacy which knows how to confer a benefit without wounding the feelings of another, and which understands also how, and when to receive one—that delicacy which can give alms without display, and advice without assumption; and which pains not the most humble or susceptible being in creation. This is the delicacy which forms so important a part of good taste, that
