The Hillsborough Recorder

From the Christian Journal.

FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

If a woman be as beautiful as one of those celestial beings with whom the vivid dreaming of imagination have peopled Mahomet's paradise, as lovely and fresh as the fabled Aurora, and as light and airy graceful as Hebe, yet if she does not unite to the external charms of her person the refined accomplishments, and sublime sentiments of an elegant mind, she can never enchain the heart of her husband with those golden fetters which only death can sever. Sweetness of disposition, and intellectual endowments wreathe those fetters with the ever blooming roses of enjoyment, and call forth the introduction all the tender ties which irradiate the sphere of connubial happiness. A woman as alive in mechanical accomplishments, though a ray of mental light does not dawn upon her mind; she may paint, sing, and play upon musical instruments, and by those manual vocal arts, gain transient triumph over those who are contented with female cultivation hanging on walls, or hearing it vibrate upon strings. But the man of discernment feels that a woman thus gifted, can only amuse for an hour, and attract by her adscititious donations, some frippery fops, who, like the stupid butterflies, light on exotic flowers, without fragrance or perfume, rather than on the odoriferous blossoms that yield delicious honey. The looks of a stupid beauty, who has not soul within her eyes, are fixed in the dead calm of insensibility; they emit no electric spark to kindle the affections--so that they are examined without emotion, and as they do not express passion or intellect, they are beheld without love.

In the winter of life, when the gaudy flowers of personal beauty are nipped by the rude breathing of age; when the lustre of the blue eye is dimmed, and the bloom of rosy cheeks fled, how fallen then will be the unmarried who has no resources in the treasury of mind: she will remain a tyrant without power, a prey to envy and remorse. A woman of intellectual accomplishment on the contrary, in the evening of life, will draw at the fountain of the graces, the limpid balsam of literary knowledge--diffuse the pleasure of instruction to her children, and illuminate by her cheerful conversation all who are circled within the attractive sphere of the society in which she moves. Beauty is as fleeting and as fragile as the bloom of an exotic flower blown under the chilling influence of a northern breeze: education alone is the towering oak that defies the tempest of years.

The most estimable blessings which the benign bounty of the Creator has bestowed upon man, is the possession of a virtuous, amiable and educated woman--her love is the highest delight which gladdens him in the vale of suffering: it is a green oasis that spreads for him its grassy verdure on the desert of despair. In the possession of a lovely, sympathetic woman, even in the solitudes of life, only illuminated by her smiles, the soul is more gratified than upon the throne of Napoleon, when the world honored him with its homage, and was dazzled by the lustre of its glory. Though Rousseau threw enchantments over the tender passions, though Byron and Ossian transfused the most sublime and profound sensibility into love, yet they never experienced those fine feelings of which the pure heart of woman is so susceptible. It is the fountain from which piety and ardent affections gush in a spontaneous and living union. It is in the midst of distress and anguish, that the finest qualities of the female, and the noblest traits of the female character, are displayed in all their characteristic grandeur.

When a husband is suffering under the pressure of unutterable woe, when his prospects are withered by the dissolving illusions of hope, and the cruel desertion of friends, it is then that the consolations of a wife pour the balm of sympathy into the corroded bosom of grief. Adversity only gives an additional impulse of ardor to her attachment; it seems to inspire her with a spirit of devotedness to the object of her love, which rises superior to the afflictions of misfortune. No changes or chances can estrange her constancy, or subdue the intensity of her devotion.