Untitled Article

It is very peaceful and composed , but , oh ! looking so tired , so weary of the world , so relieved that the journey is over . Stay ! for here comes a priest walking slowly from the church with his massbook and censer . He says a few more prayers over the body , and one of the deceased ' s kindred drops a stone into the grave . "While the priest prays he pours some consecrated oil upon the body , and some more upon a spade full of earth ,

which is brought to him . This also is thrown into the grave . It is not filled up , a stone is merely fastened with clay , roughly , over the aperture , and at night there will be a lamp placed there , which will be replenished every night for a year . At the end of that time the body will be disinterred . If the bones have not then thoroughly rotted away from the flesh and separated , the archbishop will be called again to pray over the body . For there is a superstition among the Greeks , that a man

whose body does not decay within a year is accursed . When the bones are divided they will be collected and tied up in a linen bag , which will hang on a nail against the church wall : by and by this will decay , and the bones which have swung about in the wind and rain will be shaken out one by one to make daylight ghastly where they lie . Years hence they may be swept into the charnel-house , or they may not , as chance directs .

Female Education.

FEMALE EDUCATION ,

A GREAT fault in our system of female education is , that girls are trained up to be , literally , nothing at all . Their education is not that of future women , but seems based upon the supposition that they are always to remain children . Little care is taken , even where the influence of the clergy and of visiting societies is most actively at work , to raise their feelings above the useful and necessary , but not very intellectual duties of a housemaid . As such they may get on in life to a certain extent , and may support a reproachless " character from their last place . "

But this is not the highest aim in life . We do not want all our female population for housemaids . Surely a few hundred respectable and well-trained girls , who had learned to look upon a husband in a higher light than as some one to be scolded for financial derelictions on Saturday night , and who would have even a lady-like horror of bad language and bruised cheek-bones would be an acquisition to " persons about to marry , " in any large parish ! Would not the fact of a few mothers having been trained up with some high views of their duties save many a girl whom undue severity at home has ere now driven into the streets ? Fewer

criminal cases might be the consequence of a young mother having understood some means of communicating the simple lessons of morality which have never been erased from her own heart . Something more than a mere physical affection for those to whom she had given birth might steal many an occasion from the incidents of ordinary life to inculcate a love of purity and diffidence in her own daughters , such as might supersede the interference of any but home authority , and , by increasing the value of home , lead back the recreant child , and teach the girl expanding into womanhood to prefer assisting her mother at home to seeking

debasing excitement from the profligate and low . But we candidly confess that it is with the women of England that this great work of reform must rest . They alone , who have known these sacred , these all-important duties , can set them before the eyes of the less experienced—they alone can penetrate into the confidence , awaken the consciences , and arouse the hearts of their fellow-women . It is not a task where the learning of clerical bodies or the judgment of politicians

can effect much ; it must be woman , knowing woman s weaknesses and woman s trials—woman speaking to the heart of her fellow , and drawing lessons from her own past experience ; it must be our own wives and mothers that mustnot only in their own families , but throughout their whole sex—seek to train up wives and mothers for a future , but morally healthier , generation . —From IJmnt Thoughts ,