zeal for reforming the irregular orthography and housewifely penmanship of the last century, we are all become readers, and authors, and critics.  I do not assert, that the female mind is too much cultivated, but that it is too generally so; and that we encourage a taste for attainments not always compatible with the duties and occupations of domestic life.  No age has, I believe, produced so many literary ladies as the present;* yet I cannot learn that we are at all improved in morals, or that domestic happiness is more universal than when, instead of writing sonnets to dew-drops or daisies,** we copied prayers and recipes, in spelling similar to that of Stowe or Hollingshed.

* Let me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day.  There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly entitled to our respect and admiration.  The authoress of “Cecilia,” or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, Cottages, and Caverns, which are so alluring in the catalogue of a circulating library.

** Mrs. Smith’s beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ashamed to appear in.

—­We seem industrious to make every branch of education a vehicle for inspiring a premature taste for literary amusements; and our old fashioned moral adages in writing-books are replaced by scraps from “Elegant Extracts,” while print-work and embroidery represent scenes from poems or novels.  I allow, that the subjects formerly pourtrayed by the needle were not pictoresque, yet, the tendency considered, young ladies might as well employ their silk or pencils in exhibiting Daniel in the lions’ den, or Joseph and his brethren, as Sterne’s Maria, or Charlotte and Werter.

You will forgive this digression, which I have been led into on hearing
the character of Madame de la F-------- depreciated, because she was only
gentle and amiable, and did not read Plutarch, nor hold literary
assemblies.   It is, in truth, a little amende I owe her memory, for I may
myself have sometimes estimated her too lightly, and concluded my own
pursuits more rational than hers, when possibly they were only different. 
Her death has left an impression on my mind, which the turbulence of
Paris is not calculated to soothe; but the short time we have to stay,
and the number of people I must see, oblige me to conquer both my regret
and my indolence, and to pass a great part of the day in running from
place to place.

I have been employed all this morning in executing some female commissions, which, of course, led me to milliners, mantua-makers, &c.  These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien’s wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy’s mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander.