time and health and patience and mental power and domestic peace in the pursuit of wealthy when that women of wealth is expended as soon as gained in maintaining an appearance of elegance and luxury before the world i am not prepared to argue about the benefits from the encouragement of artificial wants and the increase of luxuries on the broad scale of national prosperity there are pens more able and more fit for such a purpose my views are confined to the individual evils from an over strained ambition to keep pace with our associates in our general habits and i would write with earnestness on this subject because i believe that in england at the present time these evils are of rapidly increasing extent it seem unimportant to those who have no experience in these to speak of the private and domestic arising out of artificial wants on one side and inability to provide the demanded supply for them on the other what family in moderate circumstances has not some record of scenes alike humiliating to human nature and destructive to human happiness in which the ill judged request or the harsh denial � the appeal or the reply � the remonstrance or the bitter retort have not at seasons cast a shade over the domestic hearth and destroyed the peace of the circle gathered around the social board it may appear still more like trifling to speak of the sensations with which a member of a fallen family regards her wardrobe and looks and looks in vain for a garment respectable to make her appearance in before a rich relation perhaps she has but one � a call has to be made upon a person of distinction and as she pro habits of on her way with watchful anxiety every speck and spray that would be likely to reduce her garment be � low the average of respectability a storm her there are carriages for all who can afford to pay for them but none for her and the agony of losing her last claim to takes possession of her soul the reader may possibly smile at the absurdity of this case a half clad savage from some barbarous island would probably smile could he be made to understand it but nothing can be farther from exciting a smile than the sensations it occasions nothing can be farther from a smile than the look with which a failing regards the forlorn condition of his hat when he dares not brush it lest he should render its more apparent nothing can be farther from a smile than the glance he casts upon his coat when he knows of no possible resource in art or nature that can supply him with a new one and nothing can be farther from a smile than the cold welcome we give to a guest who presents himself unexpectedly and must look in upon the of our half furnished it is easy to class these sources of under the head of and to them unworthy of rational beings but i do believe there is more real misery existing in the world at the present time from causes like these than from all those publicly acknowledged which are more uniformly attributed to the of providence i do not mean that these miseries arise directly from or are by any means confined to our personal appearance or the of england the furniture of our houses but when we contemplate the failure of pecuniary means as it is regarded by the world and attempt to the immense variety of channels through which the suffering it produces is made to flow in consequence of the customs and habits of society i believe they will be found to extend through every variety of human life to the utmost range of human feeling is it not to escape this suffering that the man of too frequently applies himself to means � that the suicide the deadly draught � and that the sometimes his native land and himself to the of � in short what more remains within the range of human which man has not done with the hope of flying from the horrors attendant upon the falling away of his pecuniary means when the reality of this suffering is acknowledged as it must be by all who look upon society as it exists at the present moment the next subject of importance is to consider how the suffering can be and its fatal effects upon the peace and happiness of society prevented the most immediate means that could be made to operate upon woman would unquestionably be by in her mind a deeper and more rational foundation of thought and feeling � to put a stop to that endless variety of ill natured gossip which relates to the want of elegance or fashionable air in certain persons dress and manner of living so that there should be no more questioning what will be thought of my wearing this dress again what will miss p or mrs w say if they see our old curtains general habits of what can the mean by travelling outside what will the people at church or chapel say when they see your shabby veil i positively don t believe the can afford a new carpet or they would surely have one and they have their to our book society it is neither grateful nor profitable to pursue these remarks farther than as they serve for specimens of that most contemptible of small talk which yet exercises a powerful influence over the female mind � so much so that i have known the whole fabric of a woman s philosophy entirely and her peace of mind for the moment destroyed by the simple question whether she had no other dress than the one she was so often seen to wear there is another instance that occurs to me as illustrate ing in a striking 