The hardening exposures, the gnawing jealousies, of overmuch fashionable society, with its shallow and bitter emulations, do far more to contract and sour the spirit of woman, to falsify and deprave her heart, to belittle and spoil her mind, to degrade and veneer her character, than any professional career can well be supposed to do. It cannot be doubted, that many a woman, who displays herself, as good as naked, in brilliant drawing-room assemblies, spends half her existence in the frivolity of crowded dinners, suppers, and balls, is more corrupted and bronzed than she could be by studying medicine, theology, jurisprudence, or political economy, and taking a zealous part in the affairs of her country. Let not the greater and nearer evil be neglected in a prejudiced imagination of a lesser and remoter one. Where do you find an exterior of politeness covering an interior of indifference or guile? a flaming demonstrativeness in front of a soul of ice? a beautiful show of nobleness and happiness, with a haggard reality of weariness and woe underneath? In the glare and fuss of society. And where do you find, purely shielded behind manners all frost, a heart all celestial fire? under conditions of unpretending simplicity, an experience ever fresh and serene, full of joy and dignity, and endlessly progressive? In those who lead lives of quiet sincerity and humility, consecrated to choice studies and chosen friends. What sweet charm or commanding grandeur or satisfying worth can be looked for in persons, the highest palpitations of whose hearts are raised by the touches of pride, money, and vanity? More patience, sincerity, studious seclusion, meditative consecration, and steady sympathy are the foremost want of our age.
The two arts of letter-writing and conversation, invaluable both as instruments of pleasure and of culture, seem to be dying out before the encroachment of innumerable trifles, absorbing amusements, tyrannical egotisms, and that pernicious flood of ephemeral literature, whose varieties are daily spawned upon all tables. The long, careful letters, full of thought, full of true personal interest and earnest general sentiment, so common two or three generations ago, are all but unknown now. There is no time left for them.