of either age or class is ever visible in any congregation of society which have hitherto uniformly produced that course and state of human life as to youth and age under which we live, and which have appeared in every period of the worldyouth impelling the social machine-age firmly upholding and preserving it, and restraining and regulating the urgent forces that would disorder or break it. The astronomical orbs are not more potently and skilfully governed by their opposing and ever-actuating impulsions, than the competing ages of human life have been sagaciously adjusted, and are so disposed as to occur with that fitting efficacy in which we find them to be perpetually arriving. But, in either case, though we trace the laws of the motivities, and the phenomena which they have been instituted to occasion, we perceive not the invisible agency, nor do we know the specific process by which the admirable results are so certainly and unceasingly produced, and their harmonizing efficiency is so exactly sustained. The component parts of human society are like the particles of a mighty river, always distinct and inseparable, and ever severing from each other, yet constantly flowing on in streams cohering and incessant; losing themselves by a thousand channels in the great ocean of futurity, but never lessening either in their masses, their movements, or in their relative and sequent continuity. What striking manifestations of plan and government, extrinsic to themselves! In this arrangement you observe that strength, agility, and vigour are principally given to the young, and thought and knowledge to the elder; and it is by the ages between twenty and thirty-five that the largest part of human labour, and the works which require most activity and exertion, are carried on. Without a class of such beings as the first divisions of our life supply, human nature would be stationary, and comparatively unproductive and unimproving. It is at this age that the love of personal distinction, the desire of fame, the wish to excel, the passion to be forward, ambition, appetites, and eagerness for novelty and employment most keenly stimulate. Hence it is, that from youth the progressive principle of society has been assigned to originate, and has been and is ever issuing and operating; while the later periods of life are compelled, by the energy that assails them, to exert and apply their superior judgment and experience to moderate the moving forces of their vivacious offspring, and to turn them into useful channels. Thus society is equally benefited and continually improved by the guardian character of the one portion of its population, and by the spirit and impetuosities of the other; and thus its various classes are made, by the planned and secret mechanism of our social economy, to be the continual instruments of practical good to each other, from the very circumstances of their arrangement and position, however unintended or unperceived by themselves such a consequence may be. "There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, It has been an interesting part of the Divine system of the living world that there should be so many children in it. These peculiarly embellish it. They may even compete with the female world for the beauty and pleasantness which they add to it. If we were to compare society, in its diversified forms, to the varieties of the vegetable kingdom, though we might rank youth as the nutritious and succulent plants, mature life as the fruit-bearing trees, and age as the venerable forest, we should still more justly deem children to be the flowers of social life. Too young to be useful, yet always pleasing, at * I cannot close this letter without citing another passage from Sir Robert Peel's exhortation, because it so eloquently describes the means and qualities to which youth will always owe its most certain success. "It is incumbent on you to acquire those qualities which shall fit you for action rather than speculation. It is not, therefore, by mere study. by the mere accumulation of knowledge, that you can hope for eminence. Mental discipline, the exercise of the faculties of the mind, the quickening of your apprehension, the strengthening of your memory, the forming of a sound, rapid, and discriminating judgment, are of even more importance than the store of learning. "If you will consider these faculties as the most precious gifts of nature, and be persuaded that they are capable of constant progressive, and, therefore, almost of indefinite improvement; that, by acts similar to those by which great feats of bodily dexterity are performed, a capaeity for the nobler feats of the mind may be acquired, the first object of your youth will be to establish that control over your own mind and habits which will ensure the proper cultivation of this precious inheritance. Try, even for a short period, the experiment of exercising such control. Practise the economy of time. Consider time, like the faculties of your mind, a precious estate; and that every moment of it, well applied, is put out to an exorbitant interest. "When you have lived fifty years, you will have seen many instances in which the man who finds time for everything-for punctuality in all the relations of life; for the pleasures of society; for the cultivation of literature; for every rational amusement-is he who is most assiduous in the active pursuits of his profession." tractive, and interesting, whenever rightly and kindly trained and taught; they form three fourths of a moiety of the living world; and from the age of birth to fourteen they are nearly half of it; and are fully so when, as in America, that half does not exceed fifteen years of age. They are divisible into four distinct portions, each highly interesting, but with different qualities and attractions: the babe that feeds upon its parent, and requires her sustaining care; the infant that can walk and play, from its weaning to its fifth year; the growing child, beginning to bud into the future youth, and with many of its qualities, from five to ten; and that youth, with all its expanding bloom, which displays in new forms much that is interesting in childhood, with the developing nature of the future man. Each of these is in due proportion to the others; rather more than one third under five, another third under ten, and less than a third under fifteen.* They have been specially designed to be in these graduating and succeeding forms; and they all present to us so many different modifications of human nature; so many different species of human beings; for although it is the same individual that grows up and passes from the one age and state into the other, yet, while they are in each period, they are distinct forms of human beings, with distinct qualities; each with a beauty and interestingness peculiar to itself, always harmonized and complete, though every year differing from its former state. But they must have been specially devised to be what they are, and a careful system and use of means must have been planned and executed to make them such. For that there are children at all, and such a train of different forms and ages, has arisen from and depends entirely upon the fixed laws of our growth, and upon these having been specifically chosen and settled to be what they are. For it would have been as easy to make a babe to enlarge into the perfect human being in one year as in fifteen or twenty. But the graduated enlargement, which is so interesting, has been preferred, in order to produce the pleasing effects which result from it. Many animals soon become complete; but the hu Both sexes under five were, in 1821, 1,566,268; those from five to nine, 1,376,315; those from nine to fourteen, 1,172,979; out of the whole population of England and Wales at that time, of 10,530,671. man being is delayed in its development, that we may have the charming ages of children; and what should be a continual source of further admiration is, that in all these changes of form and age the human being is always a perfect figure. LETTER XXI. Sketch of the Plan on which the Female World appears to have been arranged, qualified and stationed.-The Effect of it on Human Society. MY DEAR SON, Our view of the Divine economy of human life will not be so complete as experience enables us to infer it, unless we consider the state of the female portion of human nature in the general course and order of society. It is so distinct in many points from that of the male division, and is so differently directed, that it deserves a separate examination. The first great fact which it presents to us is, that daily life shows it to have been designed that the chief and central fountain of family happiness should be everywhere THE MOTHER. From her, the blessing flows to her wedded associate and to her children, to both of whom she is, and has been meant to be, the kindest friend and daily benefactress ; ever doing something serviceable to them, desirous and seeking always to benefit them, and in her very presence a constant object of gentle pleasure to them. It was manifestly devised and settled by the Creator, in his formation of female nature, that this should be the effect; and most successfully and universally has his plan been executed. By the parental system which he has put into continual operation, the mother is always so circumstanced with her offspring that they cannot see her without interest and sympathy, from the constitution of their nature, and from the first portion of their life on earth. Their wants and their gratifications, their good and evil of all sorts, connect them perpetually with her. She is the cause, the maker, the provider, and the distributer of their daily comforts; they perceive, with rapidity, that she is their refuge and preserver, and apply to her as such. She becomes their daily trust and hope; she is as necessary as she is pleasing to them; without her they would perish soon after their birth. To her care, and maternal supplies, and attentions they are indebted for becoming permanent beings on their newly-visited earth, until other agencies remove them from it. She introduces them to its living society, and trains them to be parts themselves of its rational circles. She is to them the immediate and acting representative of that parental Providence under whose guardianship we are all subsisting. Thus the female world is, at all times, united with the new generations which arise and carry on the stream and progress of human nature by the most influential sympathies and causes that can interest human beings with each other. The mother has the felicity of being to them a perpetual blessing, and, by fostering and rearing them, of being a daily and hourly producer of good, and a giver of happiness. No mother lives in vain; no mother need ever say, "I have lost a day." Emperors and men may, and too often do, pass many useless, and some very mischievous days, weeks, and even years; the mother never, unless she counteracts the very principles of her own being, and becomes wilfully unnatural and unsexual; and what is that but being half maniacal, whenever any are so? What the mother is in her maternal life, the rest of the female world are likewise, in no small degree, as her allies or substitutes, although they may not be parents; for as soon as the daughters become capable of intentional and imitating activity, they join her in all her kindnesses and duties; they share in all her labours, and assist in promoting the benefits which she originates and is communicating. The mother and her daughters become thus, in every family, the fountains and makers of its daily conveniences and comforts. They must be most unfortunately fractious and perverse if this be not the habitual consequence of their lives. The effects may not be noticed by those who profit from them as proceeding from these living causes, but they must be always thus issuing, for they have no other source. If, then, the female members of society only keep themselves from being clouded or disturbed by wrong feelings or rude habits, they cannot be inmates of any home without these results naturally and regularly flowing from their daily life, and social position, and constitutional formation. A higher power |