be spared in regulating the diet and exercise, so as to obtain it. If all mothers made a point of establishing regular habits in childhood, it would not be necessary to notice the subject here; but, knowing how carelessly most young persons treat the subject, and that some even consider it a piece of refinement and a privilege not to pay daily attention to this function of the body, I feel it incumbent upon me to point out the evil consequences of such a course.

It may startle some who thus neglect themselves, to know that they carry in their face the proof of their bad habits; and that a medical man has said, he could distinguish, in a large company, all those girls who were inattentive to their health in this particular. He says he knows them by the state of their complexions, and he longs to remonstrate with them on the impolicy, if not the sin, of so maltreating their systems and spoiling their good looks. To those who have right views of the subject, there is something the very reverse of refinement in such conduct; and young ladies would certainly avoid it, if they were aware of all the consequences. Besides the indirect injury to the health, and consequently to the beauty, of all, it has a direct effect unfavourable to the complexion; it also makes the breath offensive, and sometimes affects the whole atmosphere of a person; it is, moreover, a frequent cause of eruptions of the skin. If this be not already your mortifying experience, let me persuade you to comply with the laws of your being, before you find it is too late, before you have felt the chastening which will sooner or later follow their infringement.

A great deal has been said and written, by medical men, against the unhealthy practice of tight lacing; but, it is to be feared, with very little effect. So long as gentlemen admire small waists, and praise those figures the most which approach the nearest to the shape of a wasp, or an hour-glass, it is in vain to tell

young ladies that the practice is destructive of health, and that there is no real beauty in the small dimensions at which they are aiming. The taste of the lords of creation must be rectified, and then the evil will correct itself. Let medical men, let painters and sculptors, teach young men that all such unnatural compression of the body is deformity; let Grecian models of beauty be studied, till the shape of a modern belle shall no longer command admiration. Let mothers, too, make a stand against this general perversion of the uses of the body; let them insist upon regulating the size and shape of their daughters' corsets, until they have attained their full developement of figure, and then it would be impossible for half the mischief to be done that now is ; for, by beginning whilst the bones are soft and pliable, the lower ribs can be compressed into half their natural dimensions.

I have been assured by a girl, shaped like an hourglass, that she did not lace tight; and have been called to witness that she was of the same size without, as with, her corset. The case is plain,-nature has been completely overruled, early tight lacing has produced a permanent deformity, and the space, in which the lungs play has been reduced for ever to those narrow bounds.

Few girls are aware of the force they employ when they lace their corsets; the mode of doing it deceives them; it is so easy to gain inch by inch of that treacherous silken cord, that they are not conscious of the effect they are producing'; whereas, if they were obliged to fasten their corsets by buttoning them in front, they would soon find out how tight they are. Let me beg my young friends to mistrust themselves on this subject, and to refrain from tightening their laces even as much as they can with ease.

Another fruitful source of pain and distortion is wearing tight shoes. A celebrated surgeon of the present day has said, that it is the rarest thing to find

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a foot the bones of which have not been injured by this practice. He says, the foot is constructed on the principle of a double arch, one lengthwise and the other crosswise; when the foot is raised, the ends of the arches contract; when it is on the ground, and the weight of the body rests upon it, they expand, and the arches become nearly flat; and unless there is, in the shoe, ample room for this expansion, some part of the delicate structure must be injured. The frequent complaints we hear of inflammation and pain in the joints, are occasioned by shoes made too tight to allow this necessary play of the foot; all the misery of corns is produced in the same way; and much of the bad walking we see is referrible to the same cause. Now this practice is doubly foolish, because it not only produces much bodily suffering, but it misses the object for which that severe penalty is incurred. However pretty we may think little feet, there is no beauty in a large one crammed into a shoe too small for it. The moment a shoe looks stuffed, and the instep seems to be running over it, the size of the foot is more apparent than it would be in a larger shoe; the aim of the wearer is defeated, and the torture is borne in vain. Shoes that are too narrow, make the foot look like something rolled up and stuffed into them; they destroy all form and comeliness, and render the step tottering, as if the soles of the feet were round instead of flat. Young ladies think everything of size, and nothing of form, in dressing their feet; but this a great mistake. If a person has a large foot, it may be well shaped, and will look better in a shoe that contains it comfortably, than when pressed out of all shape, and showing that it is crowded into one too small for it. What so

disfigures a foot, as a large toe-joint growing out? And yet this deformity is constantly produced by wearing shoes too short. When disease and distortion have been induced by tight shoes, the beauty of a foot is

gone; and the bad style of walking, occasioned by suffering, continues long after the wearer has been obliged to abandon the practice of cramping her feet.

Now, if, in addition to all these reasons against wearing tight shoes, a more correct taste prevailed as to the dimensions of feet, we might hope to see the practice abandoned. Our predilections in this particular savour a little of the barbarism of the Chinese. The masters of Grecian art did not so regard the subject; their models of beauty prove that free scope was allowed to the foot, and that its perfection depended on its shape and proportion to the rest of the figure, and not on its absolute smallness. The foot of the Venus de. Medicis is much larger than any modern belle would approve; it is about double the width of the sole of a French slipper; and distorted indeed would be any statue modelled after the proportions allowed to the feet by the fair ladies of the present day.

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CHAPTER VIII.

BEHAVIOUR TO PARENTS AND THEIR FRIENDS.

IRREVERENCE COMMON.-BEAUTY OF REVERENCE.-SYMPATHY WITH PARENTS. TREATMENT OF ELDERLY FRIENDS. ANECDOTE..

HAVING premised that I write this little volume for those who have been morally and religiously brought up, it will be thought needless here to insist on the grave duties which belong to the filial relation; it may be said that exhortations to these are learned in the Bible, conned in the spelling-book, set forth in every work addressed to youth, and heard so frequently from the pulpit and the elbow-chair, that no one can err from want of knowledge.

Whence comes it, then, that there is so little demonstration of respect, in the manners of many of the rising generation, toward the authors of their being? What can the state of feeling be, when the language to a parent is such as would be scarcely tolerable if addressed to a young companion? Is it compatible with filial reverence, flatly to contradict a father, to laugh at a mother's ways, to reply to a grave question jocosely, without giving the information required, to interrupt parents in the midst of speaking, to oppose their opinions in a tone of self-confidence, implying that your judgment is quite as good as theirs, or to leave the room whilst they are still addressing you? Yet all these things are sometimes done by girls, who, if questioned on the state of their feelings towards their father or mother, would say they loved and respected them, and would not do anything to give them pain.