HINTS ON SEWING.

'WHAT a strange heading for a paper!' says my fair reader, elevating her eye-brows, and pursing up her lips, with somewhat of compassionate disdain. 'Hints on Reading are appropriate enough; but who thinks of sewing now?' Very few indeed, my dear reprover; and therefore it is that I, with somewhat of the auld warld' notions cleaving to me, have taken pen in hand to bring the subject before you. Solomon tells us there is " a time to sew;" nor has he left us to conjecture on whom that operation should devolve. His picture of the virtuous woman remains, under the awful sanction of divine inspiration; and no departure of ours from the standard given, can in the smallest degree affect its authority, or do away with our obligations.

I do not, of course, mean to insist on that literal application which would set us all down to the loom, for the purpose of clothing our household in scarlet, and manufacturing tapestry and fine linen; but, making every allowance for the changes of time and place, customs and circumstances, I do mean most strenuously to maintain, that we have no right to wander away, as now we generally seem inclined to do, from the peculiar line of female duties so beautifully laid down for us in the word of God, and commended to us by the examples of women whose memory the Lord hath blessed. It is of the rising

generation, rather than of that which has now attained to full maturity, that I would speak. Sixty years ago, the now despised order of Notables was in universal request; and one literary or scientific lady to every market town in England and Wales, would have been an average rather above than below proof. A galaxy of female wits was, however, formed in the metropolis, which, darting forth its scintillations to the corners of the land, kindled many combustible spirits, until it might be said that, excepting in the very remote haunts of rural simplicity, almost every parish had its Belle Esprit. The first volumes of Hannah More's Life, will shew the manner of this progressive work. Then sprang forth a female host, who, having thrown aside the scissors and bodkin, brandished the goose-quill with an energy and perseverance truly admirable. The field of romance was first gained; Richardson and Fielding were fain to hide their diminished heads; the men were fairly beaten off the ground, and the shelves of every circulating library groaned beneath the weight of female talent. Flushed with this triumph, the fair warriors dashed on, even into the deadly breach of politics, stormed the heights of science, and sat down before the well-manned citadel of polemical divinity. Every new conquest drew larger re-inforcements into their victorious camp, and what with marching and counter-marching, laying down parallels, building redoubts, mounting batteries, storming strong-holds and other martial operations on this new field of glory, the needles soon rusted in their undisturbed cases; silver thimbles became tetotums for the children to spin, and servants quietly, gradually, slid into offices and re

sponsibilities which I suppose our notable grandmothers would have died sooner than relinquish into menial hands.

Nevertheless, generally speaking, I believe the mothers of families at the present day, can sew-can cut out a boy's shirt, investigate the capabilities of a housekeeper, issue daily orders for family arrangements, and even, on pressing occasions, instruct an unpractised cook in the preparation of some savoury dish. We learnt those things from our mothers, or grandmothers, in early youth; and although ashamed to acknowledge the fact, still we are guilty of some cognizance some participation. In these delinquencies, however, we are not inclined to involve our innocent girls: they, at all events, are destined to be deeply, darkly, beautifully blue'-a pure Italian sky, unblemished by a single cloud of awkward old English notability. There is no limit now to maternal ambition on this score. Every twelveinch globe that is ordered for little Miss to commence her astronomical problems upon, is regarded as an egg, destined in due time, and by proper hatching, to produce a Mary Somerville. Why should bright eyes be wearied, and delicate fingers scarred, in the intolerable drudgery of sewing, when all the schools are craving the support that our plain work affords --and exquisite embroidery furnished by the industry of those who but for such resource might be starving in secret, or cast on a profligate world? There is cogency in this argument-I grant its force: but I cannot relinquish the point, that the first duty of a mother is to see her daughters well instructed in every branch of solid female usefulness; so that, howsoever future circumstances may exempt them from

the actual employment, they may possess that knowledge which can, on occasion, be called into full and immediate activity.

And, to particularize a little; let me ask my young readers which of them can be perfectly secure of exemption from such a call? Although not only possessed of present competence, but enjoying the prospect of increased affluence-although resolved to hear of no settlement in life that shall not enlarge their worldly prosperity, yet, can they in this day of revolutionary intrigue, say of one order among us that its mountain stands fast? Can the hereditary nobleman, the landed proprietor, the church dignitary, the military commander, the scientific physician, the judicial functionary, the prosperous merchant, can any class of men among the higher grades of society, conscientiously assert that he holds his advantages by a tenure as secure as his predecessors enjoyed that he sees no prospect of being displaced from his elevation through the turbulent heavings of the troubled mass below? But the readers of this paper are probably actuated by a higher principle than worldly ambition; their hope it is to become valuable helpers to valuable men, or to have their daughters so circumstanced. Setting aside what we ought not for a moment to lose sight of, the peculiar signs of our own times, and supposing that Peace and safety' will be the word to the end of our days, still what truly good man but must desire to see his household expenditure so economized that he may have to give to him who needeth? and how shall this be done, unless the mistress of his family possess that practical knowledge without which she must, inevitably, throw herself on the care, and fidelity,

and good management of her servants? It is not when engaged in study that a man generally appreciates the society of his wife: it is during the hours of relaxation from that study, when the mind loves to unbend, and to expatiate in the simple attractions of fire-side converse, or a summer evening's walk. He loves rather to hear how his little domestic kingdom prospers, than to reap the benefit of her profound researches into abstruse science, or to witness the yawnings of ennui,-the scowl of discontent, under the burden of duties, for the cheerful performance of which the showy tinsel of her superficial accomplishments has alike indisposed and disqualified her.

Again, who knows but her future lot may be cast in some distant land, where a naval, a military, a commercial, or a missionary connexion may perchance carry her. I can assure my reader, from something better than hearsay, that it is very possible to enjoy a station of comparative rank abroad, where, with money enough at command, she may yet be necessitated to superintend in person every domestic operation, and to work with her own hands too. But, alas! we need not suppose a long voyage to produce such a result. We need only turn our eye westward, and realize the present condition of hundreds among our contemporaries, perhaps some of our own personal friends, who, united to men of comfortable incomes, with every earthly prospect of continued and increasing prosperity, have now, by a sudden movement of the existing disorganization, been reduced to fulfil even the most menial offices, and with painful industry to contrive, out of the scanty remnants of former days, necessary clothing