her duty to perform. She is sent to school, and goes the routine of a genteel education. She can work Berlin wool, perhaps read French, and possibly German, play the piano, and write a commonplace letter, in angular writing, made on purpose for the ladies; but with all this her mind is not cultivated, her heart is not disciplined. She looks pretty, walks genteelly, and talks sometimes quite enchantingly; but with all these appurtenances, the inquiry must and does arise —"What are you good for?" The little, common, necessary daily duties which belong to woman, are unheeded; and when any exigencies fall upon her, she has no alternative. A mind always accustomed to the same routine, and that a frivolous one, cannot, when unexpected adversity comes, plunge into new difficult duties and perform them efficiently. If she have always had a dressmaker to fit her apparel and a waiting-maid to put it on, how can she, should her husband become a bankrupt, be qualified to make and repair the garments for herself and children, which probably she must do, or her children be in a very untidy state.
Now, as trifling as these things appear to many, yet Ireland has suffered, and is still doomed to suffer deeply, on these accounts. Many of these genteel ones are reduced to the last extremity, the mistresses not being able to give even the 10s. per quarter to a servant. She knows not how economically to prepare the scanty food which her husband may provide; and multitudes of this class are either in the walls of the union, or hovering about its precincts.
