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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 7, Issue 361, 17 September 1863, Page 1

PRACTICAL YOUNG LADIES. Many changes have passed over the world in the last fifteen years. We are all colder, more prosaic, less hopeful than we were. A generous theory, based on a belief in the perfectibility of man, was as certain then to evoke a cheer as it is now to be scouted with a scornful laugh. In those days men believed in an extended suffrage, and eternal peace, and the possibility of extirpating crime by reformatory prisous. Some went so far as to believe in an approaching union of all Christian churches. Others, of an opposite turn of mind, had persuaded themselves that a drab-coloured milleuiuin was dawning on the other side of the Atlantic. Rude facts have roughly woke us from these luxurious dreams, and taught us that the antagonism which divides sects and classes, the ambition which'!'embroils nations, and the love of a good dinner which animates the garotter, are passions as rife and powerful as they ever were before at any period of human history. It is the melancholy but common collapse of optimism. We are compelled with heavy htearts to give up our aspirations after ideal churches and ideal commonwealths, and content:ourselves with patching a little here, and altering a bit there, in the hope that the systems under which we live may at all events furnish us with a shelter for our time. Practical philanthropy, which has abandoned all other hope bur. that of being a; temporary palliative for ills it cannot cure, is useful, but little fascinating. The flood of evil wells up ceaselessly ; and it requires no small philosophy to labour on, baling it out little by little, with the certainty ! that no exertions that we cau make will Sever materially abate its flow. Such thoughts, pressed home by; tbs events of our time even upon the most : sanguine, have produced a marked alteration, not always for tbe better, in the tone of popular thought. Many delusions have disappeared ; but much of the zeal which it seems can hardly be maintained without their aid has evaporated at the same time. Of course, this tendency shows itself' the most strongly in the women, who are always the quickest barometers to mark the; progress of a general change of feeling. / The feature “ most conspicuous by its absence” in the educated society of the present day, 13 Ihectaaaof devout womtm" iind -cicricras young ladies, who formed a very familiar type of womanhood ten or fifteen years ago. Whether the women of the ptesent day are essentially better or worse than those of the j same age half a generation back, is a matter too delicate for male critics to decide. But that they are externally less devotional there can be no question whatever. At the time to which we ai’e referring, religious observances formed a material part of a young lady’s business in life. She entertained very strong views in favour of one or other of the schools into which the religious world was then divided. She got up regularly for early church, or taught industriously in a Sunday school. She had some pet clergyman whom she defended against all comers, and the praise of whose voice in intoning, or whose eloquence in preaching, she sounded on every possible occasion. She was usually engaged in the conversion of her parents, and often of one or two Guardsmen into the bargain ; and besides this, she was active in good works—especially in collecting money for penitentiaries. She possessed an abundant store of devotional works, magnificently bound ; and she was a diligent reader of the religious novels which at that time issued so copiously from the press. Her conversation between the intervals of dancing was upon subjeets ol the day—that is to say, transubstantiution and baptismal regeneration. So decided was the theological tinge of her mind, that she imposed the pretence of it at least upon those who sought her favour. Flirtation involved a certain proficiency in the terms of current controversy ; and love-making ware the pleasantest disguise of a mutual exploration into each other’s religious difficulties.

There was a good deal that was ridiculous in the young-lady religion of that day , but its absurdities were a healthy sign. The affectation and fashion of the many was a sure symptom of the real earnestness of the few. There is no fertility where there arejno weeds. Moreover, the pretence did a good deal of indirect good. If people were talking polemics, they could not be talking scandal; and as there is no evidence that they talked above the feminine average at that period, it is evident that a,considerable amount of scandal was thereby elbowed out of existence altogether. Nor was the general fashion which it induced, under which every one was obliged to have a theological opinion of some kind, and to be able to support it in argument, altogether an unhealthy, one. A religious fashion, il it does nothing else, at all events fills up the ground that would be otherwise occupied by an irreligious fashion. The world is in the main composed of people who have no particular opinions, or tastes, or tendencies of their own, and who must, by the (law of their being, always begin by pretendling to be something that they are not, though Jtliey sometimes end by confirming their characters to the pretence. Whether these people pietend to be or pretend to be had- I —i-whether they conform to the fashions of Victoria’s time, or the fashions of George IV’S time —matters little as far as their sincerity is concerned. In. each case, they