benefits the soul, and how women, whose mission is so noble, and whose influence is often so decisive, need a strong and solid education to escape the frivolity and waste of their lives, and to make them capable of fulfilling their grave and serious duties. In this respect St. Paula s life gives a grand lesson to great ladies in the world. To become to their husbands, in all things, that help and stay which God meant them to be; to form the minds, hearts, consciences, and characters of their children; to rule their households with discretion and
firmness, and yet with kindness, for such a task, certainly, a frivolous, ignorant, vulgar mind, or a weak, narrow, super ficial, self-indulgent, indolent one, with frivolous tastes and useless occupations, is not sufficient. A strong character and high principles are needful. But to produce such, the soil must be prepared by careful culture and a solid education. On this foundation the social edifice can be raised; without it, everything fails; and we witness the ruin of the happiest natural gifts of mind and heart, which sink into the mediocrity of a miserable, purposeless existence. If St. Jerome had not
found in St. Paula that fine mind, those high reasoning
powers, and that taste for solid instruction which characterised her, he never would have been able to train her to the attainment of those noble virtues, those fruitful labours, that life at once so earnest and so holy, of which you have given us such a beautiful picture.
More than ever are these lessons needful to English ladies of the present day. Among us, as amongst the Romans in the few years which preceded the decline and fall of the Empire, habits of excessive luxury and extravagance disguised under the specious title of the worship of the beautiful effeminate and sensual indulgences of all kinds, are steadily gaining ground in every class of society. We know how all this ended in Rome: in what utter humiliation, disaster, and ruin; and yet we fail to see the consequence to ourselves, or to take the lesson to heart.
Will no St. Paula rise up amongst us to set the example of better things, and put before us a higher standard?
October 1885.
