the minds of the young and inexperienced, by what men are accustomed to regard in the light of harmless pleasantry, or as an almost necessary embellishment to polished manners. It may be said, that the plain woman has her glass, to which she can refer for never-failing truth. It is true, she has; but there is a vast difference between looking for what we do not wish to see, and for what we do. Besides which, when a young plain woman first mixes in society, she sees the high distinction which mere beauty obtains for its possessor, and she finds herself comparatively neglected and forgotten. In her home she is doubtless valued in proportion to her merits; but in company, what avail the kind and generous heart which beats within her bosom, the bright intelligence of her mind, the cordial response she would offer in return for kindness, the gratitude, the generous feeling which animate her soul? Who, in all that busy circle, cares to call forth any of these? Nay, so little do all or any of them avail her in society, that she begins in time to suspect she is personally repulsive; and what woman of sensitive or delicate feelings ever conceived this idea of herself, without experiencing, along with it, a strange sense of loneliness and destitution, as if excluded from the fellowship of social kindness—shut out from the pale of the lovely, and the beloved? If, then, the treacherous voice of man but whispers in her ear, that these hard thoughts about herself have no foundation, who can wonder if she is found too ready to "lay the flattering unction" to her heart? or who can wonder if the equanimity of her mind becomes disturbed by a recurrence of those painful doubts, occasionally to be dispelled by a recurrence of that flattery too?
To young women. thus circumstanced, I would affectionately say—Beware! Beware of the unquiet thoughts, the disappointment, the rivalry, the vain competition, the
