but they are of a kind wholly dissimilar from those which we purpose here to display, except so far as regards the still greater restraint, the far more systematical cramping, and debilitating, and enervating mode of artificial training, to which girls are condemned in families of the higher class. But the demand on their physical powers is pretty fairly proportioned to the deterioration thus produced; and such sufferings as they undergo are in a great measure self-inflicted. The young lady, who by parental or educational authority has been condemned to the pains of tight lacing and pinching shoes, rarely avails herself of the discretionary power, in due time devolving on her, to loosen the grasp either of the one or the other. She rejoices in her slender waist, and shapely little foot, and pays the prescribed penalties for such interference with the laws of nature; counting, perhaps, even the delicacy of impaired health as an additional item in her list of attractions. We, therefore, leave that branch of the subject untouched, even as we do the fancied wrong of debarring our damsels from publicly joining in the intellectual pursuits of their academic friends; and figuring in halls of science, or in the senatorial chamber. We have known such privations made the topic of very pathetic or very indignant remonstrance; to which we have always responded an affectionate wish that the fair complainants might never know a heavier grievance, nor suffer a more unreasonable curtailment of their lawful privileges. But the lower, the far more numerous classes, could lay open before us a scene of endurance that our hearts might well quail to look upon. It is, in truth, a page so black with wrongs not to be palliated, that the conviction of its lying perpetually unveiled beneath the eye of God is very awful. We shall attempt, however inadequately, a sketch of this wide blot, for such it is; and if a woman pleading for her sex-an Englishwoman for the daughters of her land—a christian woman for those who have had the like precious price paid for their redemption, may be heard, and win a sympathizing response to the appeal that she ventures to make, it will indeed be one of the happiest, most blessed, of the occupations in which so feeble a hand could be engaged. CHAPTER II. THE VILLAGE HOMES. THE privilege is great, but not less so the difficulty of tracing what we desire to bring before the educated females of Englandthe actual wrongs sustained by those of our sex whose lot has been, providentially, so cast as to render their life necessarily one of labour and so to fix their attention upon this interesting, helpless class, as to rouse the best feelings of womanly nature in their behalf. Beyond this, we would, through such becoming medium, attract the notice of the other sex to any cases that cannot be ameliorated without their concurrence, their companionship in the work of mercy. Indeed, this will be found indispensable to a greater extent than may at first appear. Painful, terrible, revolting, as are some of these wrongs, in their nature and consequences, we will, as much as possible, spare the feelings of our readers, and leave them to draw inferences where description would be scarcely tolerable. Wishing to avoid the admixture of fictitious narrative, yet to realize, as far as possible, the various situations in which female labourers are placed, we will suppose the inhabitants of a small hamlet in one of our midland counties, and not far from a town of considerable traffic, placing out their girls to such employments as their respective circumstances may render advisable or practicable. Hitherto, they have dwelt in the usual manner, according to their domestic circumstances. Ann |