PREFACE.
In offering to the public the last of a series of works on the subject of female duty, I feel that to confess their deficiencies, would not be to supply them; and therefore, I would prefer soliciting the attention of the reader to this fact—that they have not been written under the idea of presenting an entire summary of the life and character of woman, in the situations of daughter, wife, and mother, nor consequently under that of offering a substitute for any of those standard and excellent works on the same subject which adorn our libraries, but rather with the hope of throwing out a few hints and observations relative to the present state of English society, the tendency of modern education, and the peculiar social and domestic requirements; of the country and the times in which we live.
Thus I have purposely avoided entering upon many important points of duty, and particularly those of a strictly religious nature, because I knew that the reader could find them more clearly and more ably treated elsewhere; and because I felt it to be more within the compass of my own qualifications, to endeavor to assist and encourage the inexperienced, but well meaning, than to instruct the ignorant, or to convert the irreligious.
Looking seriously at those faults which are generally allowed, and at those follies which are sometimes by society, I have been compelled occasionally to speak in strong language of certain peculiarities in the present aspect of social and domestic life, and especially of some of the habits and a prejudices of my own sex. Had such peculiarities been less popular, or less generally indulged; had they, in short, been regarded as objectionable, rather than otherwise, there would have been no need for me to have made any of them the subject of a book; but the very fact of the opinion of society, and of many excellent persons, being in favor of that
