have yet attained to so perfect a development of fashionable character as we have here described; but to some it is already an attainment; to many—we fear to most, young women of what are called the higher classes in our large cities—it is an aim.
Nobler spirits there are, indeed, among us, of every age and every class, and from these we must choose our example of a woman of fashion as she should be. On her, too, we will bestow a name—a name associated with all gentle and benignant influences—the name of her who in her shaded retreats received of old the ruler of earth’s proudest empire, that she might “breathe off with the holy air” of her pure affection, “that dust o’ the heart” caught from contact with coarser spirits. So have we dreamed of Egeria, and Egeria shall be the name of our heroine. Heroine indeed, for heroic must be her life. With eyes uplifted to a protecting Heaven, she must walk the narrow path of right,—a precipice on either hand,—never submitting, in her lowliness of soul, to the encroachments of the selfish, and eager, and clamorous crowd,—never bowing her own native nobility to the dictation of those whom the world styles great. “Resisting the proud, but giving grace unto the humble,” if we may without irreverence appropriate to a mortal, words descriptive of Him whose unapproachable and glorious holiness we are exhorted to imitate.
In society, Egeria is more desirous to please than to shine. Her associates are selected mainly for their personal qualities, and if she is peculiarly attentive and deferential to any class, it is to those unfortunates whom poverty, the accidents of birth, or the false arrangements of society, have divorced from a sphere for which their refinement of taste and manner and their intellectual cultivation had fitted them. Admission to her society is sought as a distinction, because it is known that it must be purchased by something more than a graceful address, a well-curled mustache, or the reputation of a travelled man. At her entertainments, you will often meet some whom you will meet nowhere else; some promising young artist, yet unknown to fame,—some who, once standing in the sunshine of fortune, were well known to many whose vision is too imperfect for the recognition of features over which adversity
