I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of
Madame de la F--------; and though I have, almost from the time we
quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event
was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me.

Exclusively of her many good and engaging qualities, which were
reasonable objects of attachment, Madame de la F-------- was endeared to
me by those habits of intimacy that often supply the want of merit, and
make us adhere to our early friendships, even when not sanctioned by our
maturer judgment.   Madame de la F-------- never became entirely divested
of the effects of a convent education; but if she retained a love of
trifling amusements, and a sort of infantine gaiety, she likewise
continued pious, charitable, and strictly attentive not only to the
duties, but to the decorum, essential in the female character and merits
of this sort are, I believe, now more rare than those in which she might
be deemed deficient.

I was speaking of her this morning to a lady of our acquaintance, who acquiesced in my friendly eulogiums, but added, in a tone of superiority, "C’etoit pourtant une petite femme bien minutieuse—­she always put me out of patience with her birds and her flowers, her levees of poor people, and her persevering industry in frivolous projects.”  My friend was, indeed, the most feminine creature in the world, and this is a flippant literary lady, who talks in raptures of the Greeks and Romans, calls Rousseau familiarly Jean Jaques, frisks through the whole circle of science at the Lyceum, and has an utter contempt both for personal neatness and domestic oeconomy.  How would Madame de Sevigne wonder, could she behold one of these modern belles esprits, with which her country, as well as England, abounds?  In our 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