home,—­the country is by far the best, where early retirement is a rule, with a wholesome diet,—­and she will in a few weeks show a marked improvement.  Mrs. Stowe relates a very interesting story of a city-girl who had all to gratify her that fond parents could procure, and, though constitutionally strong, this hothouse, fashionable life had began to undermine her general health, and having exhausted the skill of the regular physician, her condition became so alarming that other counsel was sought; and this new disciple of Esculapius was a shrewd, honest man, and wont to get at the root of difficulties.  He saw at a glance that the patient’s disease was born wholly of fashion.  He found her waist so tightly laced as to admit of little room for full and free respiration; this, with late hours and unwholesome food, was doing its work.  Being asked to prescribe, he first cut loose the stays which bound her; then, ordering suitable shoes and apparel, gave directions for her immediate removal to the country, where she was to first rest and lounge in the sunshine, and as health returned, to romp and frolick in the open fields and join in the merry glees of country life.  With feelings akin to those coming of great sacrifices, the commands were followed, and this frail, dying girl was, in one brief summer, so far restored as that the glow of her checks and the sparkle of her eyes rivalled those of the farmer’s fair daughter whose companion she had been.

City life is exceedingly destructive to young people, even when considered aside from all undue excitements, indecorous habits, and improprieties.  The custom of late hours, night air, and the vitiated air of apartments where companies assemble together, with the liability to contract colds by being detained in draughts, or from want of sufficient protection while returning from social assemblies; all these things destroy annually a great army of young people, who either do not think of consequences or else willfully neglect their lives to pay homage to fashion—­the curse of the world.

We cannot think all parents wholly neglectful in teaching their children how to preserve health, and much of responsibility must rest with the young; yet by far the larger portion of parents are so flattered by alluring admirers, and led by the requirements and glamor of foolish fashion, that they seem, to the cool observer, to fairly dig and garland the premature graves of their loved ones.

How we wish we might impress one mother who worships at this abominable shrine, set up heretofore—­but we now hope forever cast down to make room for an era of good sense and womanly delicacy—­in Paris, by either a dissolute court, or, as we have often been informed, by the nymphs du pave, who seek to attract by tricks of style till they have come to rule the whole of their sex, or such portions as have not the moral courage to mark out an independent course.  The violation of health, contortions