Miss Sparkes came to spend the next day according to her appointment. Mr. Flam, who called accidentally, staid to dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Carlton had been previously invited. After dinner the conversation chanced to turn upon domestic economy, a quality which Miss Sparkes professed to hold in the most sovereign contempt.

After some remark of Mrs. Stanley, in favor of the household virtues, Mr. Carlton said, "Mr. Addison in the Spectator, and Dr. Johnson in the Rambler, have each given us a lively picture of a vulgar, ungentlewoman-like, illiterate housewife. The notable woman of the one suffocated her guests at night with drying herbs in their chamber, and tormented them all day with plans of economy, and lectures on management. The economist of the other ruined her husband by her parsimonious extravagance, if I may be allowed to couple contradictions; by her tent-stich hangings for which she had no walls, and her embroidery for which she had no use. The poor man pathetically laments her detestable catalogues of made wines, which hurt his fortune by their profusion, and his health by not being allowed to drink them till they were sour. Both ladies are painted as domestic tyrants, whose husbands had no peace, and whose children had no education."

"Those coarse housewives," said Sir John, "were exhibited as warnings. It was reserved for the pen of Richardson to exhibit examples. This author, with deeper and juster views of human nature, a truer taste for the proprieties of female character, and a more exact intuition into real life than any other writer of fabulous narrative, has given in his heroines exemplifications of elegantly cultivated minds, combined with the sober virtues of domestic economy. In no other writer of fictitious adventures has the triumph of religion and reason over the passions, and the now almost exploded doctrines of filial obedience, and the household virtues, their natural concomitants, been so successfully blended. Whether the works of this most original, but by no means faultless writer, were cause or effect, I know not; whether these well-imagined examples induced the ladies of that day 'to study household good;' or whether the then existing ladies, by their acknowledged attention to feminine concerns, furnished Richardson with living models, I can not determine. Certain it is, that the novel-writers of the subsequent period have, in general, been as little disposed to represent these qualities as forming an indispensable part of the female character, as the contemporary young ladies themselves have been to supply them with patterns. I a little fear that the predominance of this sort of reading has contributed its full share to bring such qualities into contempt."

Miss Sparkes characteristically observed, that "the meanest understanding and most vulgar education were competent to form such a wife as the generality of men preferred. That a man of talents, dreading a rival, always took care to secure himself by marrying a fool."

"Always excepting the present company, madam, I presume," said Mr. Stanley, laughing. "But pardon me, if I differ from you. That many men are sensual in their appetites, and low in their relish of intellectual pleasures, I confess. That many others, who are neither sensual, nor of mean attainments, prefer women whose ignorance will favor their indolent habits, and whom it requires no exertion of mind to entertain, I allow also. But permit me to say, that men of the most cultivated minds, and who admire talents in a woman, are still of opinion that domestic talents can never be dispensed with: and I totally dissent from you in thinking that these qualities infer the absence of higher attainments, and necessarily imply a sordid or a vulgar mind.

"Any ordinary art, after it is once discovered, may be practiced by a very common understanding. In this, as in every thing else, the kind arrangements of Providence are visible, because, as the common arts employ the mass of mankind, they could not be universally carried on, if they were not of easy and cheap attainment. Now, cookery is one of these arts, and I agree with you, madam, in thinking that a mean understanding and a vulgar education suffice to make a good cook. But a cook or housekeeper, and a lady qualified to wield a considerable establishment, are two very different characters. To prepare a dinner, and to conduct a great family, require talents of a very different size: and one reason why I would never choose to marry a woman ignorant of domestic affairs is, that she who wants, or she who despises this knowledge, must possess that previous bad judgment which, as it prevented her from seeing this part of her duty, would be likely to operate on other occasions."

"I entirely agree with Mr. Stanley," said Mr. Carlton. "In general I look upon the contempt or the fulfillment of these duties as pretty certain indications of the turn of mind from which the one or the other proceeds. I allow, however, that with this knowledge a lady may unhappily have overlooked more important acquisitions; but without it I must ever consider the female character as defective in the texture, however it may be embroidered and spangled on the surface."

Sir John Belfield declared, that though he had not that natural antipathy to a wit, which some men have; yet unless the wildness of a wit was tamed like the wildness of other animals, by domestic habits, he himself would not choose to venture on one. He added, that he should pay a bad compliment to Lady Belfield, who had so much higher claims to his esteem, if he were to allege that these habits were the determining cause of his choice, yet had he seen no such tendencies in her character, he should have suspected her power of making him as happy as she had done.

"I confess with shame," said Mr. Carlton, "that one of the first things that touched me with any sense of my wife's merit, was the admirable good sense she discovered in the direction of my family. Even at the time that I had most reason to blush at my own conduct, she never gave me cause to blush for hers. The praises constantly bestowed on her elegant, yet prudent, arrangement, by my friends, flattered my vanity, and raised her in my opinion, though they did not lead me to do her full justice."

The two ladies who were thus agreeably flattered, looked modestly grateful. Mr. Stanley said, "I was going to endeavor at removing Miss Sparke's prejudices, by observing how much this domestic turn brings the understanding into action. The operation of good sense is requisite in making the necessary calculations for a great family, in a hundred ways. Good sense is required to teach that a perpetually recurring small expense is more to be avoided than an incidental great one, while it shows that petty savings can not retrieve an injured estate. The story told by Johnson, of a lady, who, while ruining her fortune by excessive splendor and expense, yet refused to let a two shilling mango be cut at her table, exemplifies exactly my idea. Shabby curtailments, without repairing the breach which prodigality has made, discredit the husband, and bring the reproach of meanness on the wife. Retrenchments, to be efficient, must be applied to great objects. The true economist will draw in by contracting the outline, by narrowing the bottom, by cutting off with an unsparing hand costly superfluities, which affect not comfort, but cherish vanity."

"'Retrench the lazy vermin of thine hall,' was the wise counsel of the prudent Venetian to his thoughtless son-in-law," said Sir John, "and its wisdom consisted in its striking at one of the most ruinous and prevailing domestic evils, an overloaded establishment."

If Miss Sparkes had been so long without speaking, it was evident by her manner and turn of countenance, that contempt had kept her silent, and that she thought the topic under discussion as unworthy of the support of the gentleman as of her own opposition.

"A discreet woman," said Mr. Stanley, "adjusts her expenses to her revenues. Every thing knows its time, and every person his place. She will live within her income, be it large or small; if large, she will not be luxurious; if small, she will not be mean. Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test, both of integrity and judgment, than a well-proportioned expenditure.

"Now the point to which I would bring all this verbiage," continued he, "is this—will a lady of a mean understanding, or a vulgar education, be likely to practice economy on this large scale? And is not such economy a field in which a woman of the best sense may honorably exercise her powers?"

Miss Sparkes, who was always a stanch opposer in moral as well as in political debate, because she said it was the best side for the exertion of wit and talents, comforted herself that though she felt she was completely in the minority, yet she always thought that was rather a proof of being right than the contrary; for if it be true, that the generality are either weak or wicked, it follows that the inferior number is most likely to be neither.

"Women," said Mr. Carlton, "in their course of action describe a smaller circle than men; but the perfection of a circle consists not in its dimensions but in its correctness. There may be," added he, carefully turning away his eyes from Miss Sparkes, "here and there a soaring female, who looks down with disdain on the party affairs of 'this dim speck called earth;' who despises order and regularity as indications of a groveling spirit. But a sound mind judges directly contrary. The larger the capacity, the wider is the sweep of duties it takes in. A sensible woman loves to imitate that order which is stamped on the whole creation of God. All the operations of nature are uniform even in their changes, and regular in their infinite variety. Nay, the great Author of Nature himself disdains not to be called the God of order."

"I agree with you," said Sir John. "A philosophical lady may 'read Malebranche, Boyle, and Locke;' she may boast of her intellectual superiority; she may talk of abstract and concrete; of substantial forms and essences; complex ideas and mixed modes, of identity and relation; she may decorate all the logic of one sex with all the rhetoric of the other; yet if her affairs are delabrÉ, if her house is disorderly, her servants irregular, her children neglected, and her table ill-arranged, she will indicate the want of the most valuable faculty of the human mind, a sound judgment."

"It must, however, be confessed," replied Mr. Stanley, "that such instances are so rare, that the exceptions barely serve to establish the rule. I have known twenty women mismanage their affairs, through a bad education, through ignorance, especially of arithmetic, that grand deficiency in the education of women, through a multiplicity of vain accomplishments, through an excess of dissipation, through a devotedness to personal embellishments, through an absorption of the whole soul in music, for one who has made her husband metaphysically miserable."

"What marks the distinction," said Mr. Carlton, "between the judicious and the vulgar economist is this: the narrow-minded woman succeeds tolerably in the filling up, but never in the outline. She is made up of detail but destitute of plan. Petty duties demand her whole grasp of mind, and, after all, the thing is incomplete. There is so much bustle and evident exertion in all she does! she brings into company a mind exhausted with her little efforts! overflowing with a sense of her own merits! looking up to her own performance as the highest possible elevation of the human intellect, and looking down on the attainments of more highly gifted women, as so many obstructions to their usefulness; always drawing comparisons to her own advantage, with the cultivated and the refined, and concluding that because she possesses not their elegance they must necessarily be deficient in her art. While economists of a higher strain—I draw from living and not absent instances," added he, looking benignantly round him—"execute their well ordered plan, as an indispensable duty, but not as a superlative merit. They have too much sense to omit it, but they have too much taste to talk of it. It is their business, not their boast. The effect is produced, but the hand which accomplishes it is not seen. The mechanism is set at work, but it is behind the scenes. The beauty is visible, the labor is kept out of sight."

"The misfortune is," said Mr. Stanley, "that people are apt to fancy that judgment is a faculty only to be exercised on great occasions; whereas it is one that every hour is calling into exercise. There are certain habits which, though they appear inconsiderable when examined individually, are yet of no small importance in the aggregate. Exactness, punctuality, and other minor virtues, contribute more than many are aware, to promote and to facilitate the exercise of the higher qualities. I would not erect them into a magnitude beyond their real size; as persons are too apt to do who are only punctual, and are deficient in the higher qualities; but by the regular establishment of these habits in a family, it is inconceivable to those who have not made the experiment, how it saves, how it amplifies time, that canvas upon which all the virtues must be wrought. It is incredible how an orderly division of the day gives apparent rapidity to the wings of time, while a stated devotion of the hour to its employment really lengthens life. It lengthens it by the traces which solid occupation leaves behind it: while it prevents tediousness by affording, with the successive change, the charm of novelty, and keeping up an interest which would flag, if any one employment were too long pursued. Now all these arrangements of life, these divisions of time, and these selections and appropriations of the business to the hour, come within the department of the lady. And how much will the cares of a man of sense be relieved, if he choose a wife who can do all this for him!"

"In how many of my friends' houses," said Mr. Carlton, "have I observed the contrary habits produce contrary effects! A young lady bred in total ignorance of family management, transplanted from the house of her father, where she has learned nothing, to that of her husband, where she is expected to know every thing, disappoints a prudent man: his affection may continue, but his esteem will be diminished; and with his happiness, his attachment to home will be proportionably lessened."

"It is perfectly just," said Sir John, "and this comfortless deficiency has naturally taught men to inveigh against that higher kind of knowledge which they suppose, though unjustly, to be the cause of ignorance in domestic matters. It is not entirely to gratify the animal, as Miss Sparkes supposes, that a gentleman likes to have his table well appointed; but because his own dignity and his wife's credit are involved in it. The want of this skill is one of the grand evils of modern life. From the heiress of the man of rank, to the daughter of the opulent tradesman, there is no one quality in which young women are so generally deficient as in domestic economy. And when I hear learning contended for on one hand, and modish accomplishments on the other, I always contend for this intermediate, this valuable, this neglected quality, so little insisted on, so rarely found, and so indispensably necessary."

"Besides," said Mr. Carlton, addressing himself to Miss Sparkes, "you ladies are apt to consider versatility as a mark of genius. She, therefore, who can do a great thing well, ought to do a small one better; for, as Lord Bacon well observes, he who can not contract his mind as well as dilate it, wants one great talent in life."

Miss Sparkes, condescending at length to break a silence which she had maintained with evident uneasiness, said, "All these plodding employments cramp the genius, degrade the intellect, depress the spirits, debase the taste, and clip the wings of imagination. And this poor, cramped, degraded, stinted, depressed, debased creature is the very being whom men, men of reputed sense too, commonly prefer to the mind of large dimensions, soaring fancy, and aspiring tastes."

"Imagination," replied Mr. Stanley, "well directed, is the charm of life; it gilds every object, and embellishes every scene; but allow me to say, that where a woman abandons herself to the dominion of this vagrant faculty it may lead to something worse than a disorderly table; and the husband may find that the badness of his dinner is not the only ill consequence of her super-lunary vagaries."

"True enough," said Mr. Flam, who had never been known to be so silent, or so attentive; "true enough, I have not heard so much sense for a long time. I am sure 'tis sense, because 'tis exactly my own way of thinking. There is my Bell now. I have spent seven hundred pounds, and more money, for her to learn music and whimwhams, which all put together are not worth sixpence. I would give them all up to see her make such a tansy pudding as that which the widow in the Spectator helped Sir Roger to at dinner; why I don't believe Bell knows whether pie-crust is made with butter or cheese; or whether a venison pastry should be baked or boiled. I can tell her, that when her husband, if she ever gets one, comes in sharp set from hunting, he won't like to be put off with a tune instead of a dinner. To marry a singing girl, and complain she does not keep you a good table, is like eating nightingales, and finding fault that they are not good tasted. They sing, but they are of no further use—to eat them, instead of listening to them, is applying to one sense, the gratification which belongs to another."

In the course of conversation, Miss Sparkes a little shocked the delicate feelings of the ladies, of Lucilla especially, by throwing out some expressions of envy at the superior advantages which men possess for distinguishing themselves. "Women," she said, "with talents not inferior were allowed no stage for display, while men had such a reach for their exertions, such a compass for exercising their genius, such a range for obtaining distinction that they were at once the objects of her envy for the means they possessed, and of her pity for turning them to no better account. There were indeed," she added, "a few men who redeemed the credit of the rest, and for their sakes she gloried, since she could not be of their sex, that she was at least of their species."

"I know, madam," said Mr. Stanley, "your admiration of heroic qualities and manly virtues: courage for instance. But there are still nobler ways of exercising courage than even in the field of battle. There are more exalted means of showing spirit than by sending or accepting a challenge. To sustain a fit of sickness may exhibit as true heroism as to lead an army. To bear a deep affliction well calls for as high exertion of soul as to storm a town; and to meet death with Christian resolution is an act of courage in which many a woman has triumphed, and many a philosopher, and even some generals, have failed."

I thought I saw in Miss Sparkes's countenance a kind of civil contempt, as if she would be glad to exchange the patient sickness and heroic death-bed for the renown of victory and the glory of a battle; and I suspected that she envied the fame of the challenge, and the spirit of the duel, more than those meek and passive virtues which we all agreed were peculiarly Christian, and peculiarly feminine.